Sunday, 27 January 2013

Nearside rear wheel arch

I want to get the silencer fitted so I can tinker with the engine without shaking & waking the house and neighbourhood - makes sense therefore to install the wheel arches so I know how much room I have to play with:

First offered up - trying to get the front and rear edge on the edge of the panels & high enough to cover the hole for the shock absorber. I've seen builds cut a crescent out for the shock - but I don't see why - the wheel arch doesn't get in the way of the mechanism - it would have to be removed to remove the shock though:

Once happy I marked the potential positions for bolts, trying to miss existing rivets, chassis tubes etc - then drilled the wheel arch, placed it back in position and traced through the location for rivnuts. Then a problem - 
    I'm virtually out of rivnuts :(

Still just enough to get things going - 6 of them in place here, & minor issue with the frontmost one - it happened to be in virtually the same location as the seatbelt mounting bolt on the other side - I'll have to move it a little upwards when I have a few more rivnuts:

It doesn't look too bad - the front half fits perfectly, the top and rear is not so great partly due to the rear panel side not being completely flat & partly because it needs another bolt fitting once I have more rivnuts:

All set to fit the silencer...