So, carrying on from last week, I pressed on with the overall bodywork fitment. Having started fitting that ply floor I showed you last time I carried on and added some diagonal supports to stiffen it up. You may noticed that I added a piece of angle all along the edge of this; this will provide some place to rivet the outer surface to.
I did wonder at one point about whether I should be using the ply. However, after doing a bit of measuring and calculating it is quite a lot lighter than 1.6mm aluminium which is the obvious alternative. I did wonder, though, about making some flat GRP panels; the aluminium would do for a mould.
Those diagonal supports are retained to some attachments that are part of the chassis. The only problem with using them is that I’m going to have to take all this off to fit the side panels in a while.
Back in the here and now, though, I finished fitting the chain and sprockets. So, what you see in the next photo is all ready to go. The only issue is that experience is that the first run with a new chain makes it go alarmingly slack. Hence, I tried to get all this near the front of the adjustment to account for this and the likely sprocket size changes which would all be smaller.
The next thing was to set about bodywork fitting in earnest. I’ve learnt from long experience that when fitting the bodywork to cars like this you’re much better off getting all the bodywork onto the car and shoving it around as a unit. Essentially it’s impossible to work out where things are going to be before everything’s together.
So, I set about getting bits of GRP stuck into my hands by laying waste to all the rough bits from around the mouldings. Luckily I could go outside as you can see.
I fitted that front bodywork and worked out where I needed to support it. I spent some considerable time looking at the photos of the buck and working out where the bodywork should be and turning that into some mounts for the front moulding. After a while it looked like the next photo. What you can’t really see there, though, it the array of clamps and bits of wood that are supporting things.
I carried on in the same vein until I got all the bodywork sitting on the car in pretty much the right place.. To be honest, I’m pretty pleased with it as it looks like what I wanted to achieve. At least it does in my head where there’s some very clever visual processing that adds all the things that aren’t there yet like air intakes and race numbers.
I’ve made some progress, too, in supporting the sidepods (well the left hand one anyway) on the diagonalised sidepod floor. if I’m honest I’ve spent hours this weekend staring at this trying to work out the best way of supporting everything. I’m pretty pleased with this final version even though this is just the start. I’ve not done any trimming of the wheelarches (hence there are no wheels) or the back panel yet, before you point out to me that it’s all wrong at the moment…
You can also see that I’ve starting using the bodywork as a work bench; it’s just so inviting.