Saturday 2 June 2012

Drivers side footwell & tunnel

The bonded panels from Friday evening had all set fast so I ran a bead of bond around the rear axle well and inside the footwells and made sure all the panel corners had no visible holes to at least try and be watertight.

I'm going to under-seal the exterior axle well area and eventually work forward to the floor pans. I'm not sure yet if its worth a brush width of under seal around the inside of the passenger space too, its all going to be carpeted anyway so looks are not an issue at this stage.

Fitted the entire drivers side tunnel this morning:

This vertical join is the only part which needed a fold, clamped it with a piece of scrap wood over the bench and carefully eased in the bend.

My panel fitting process is

  1. Offer panel/clamp & mark chassis tube positions
  2. Remove panel fettle/fit as required
  3.   Drill panel on the bench & de-bur holes
  4. Refit the panel, clamp and drill through holes into the chassis (I know not ideal :)
  5.   Cleco the panel as the holes are drilled to make sure nothing moves
  6. Remove the panel
  7.   Clean the chassis to be bonded with white spirit & dry
  8.   Apply a bead of bond to the Chassis running over/in the drilled holes
  9. Refit the panel and line up by push fitting some strategic rivets
  10.   Pull all the Rivets working on opposite sides
  11.   Apply a bead of bond to the reverse side & fill any holes with bond


I must remember not to fit the passenger side before the gearbox is in place!

 Generally the panels are fitting really well, a little filing required in places, and the top of the tunnel panel needed about 1cm taken off with the nibbler, taking care to put rivet holes in where I have access to drill them out & pop them, nothing too close to the corners etc - no major snags yet.

The 8x mini clamps and Clecos are the perfect tools for this job - well worth the investment.
Pleased overall with how this came out.

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