The Body is Back On!!

After a TON of work, sweat, bruises, cuts and scrapes we finally have the rear body shell back on the chassis.  Hopefully it’s on there for good and we never have to take it back off again.  We’ve been working non-stop on the car since Wednesday morning and I believe we’re going to take Sunday off to let our bodies recover.  Working out in that 30 degree heat can take a toll on your body.

But with that said, I don’t think I’ll seal it down to the chassis until I double check that the car is running and I don’t have any fuel leaks.  The tank is a bit of a pain in the butt to install and it would be a really difficult task to pull it back out and re-install it with the body attached.  Not impossible, but REALLY difficult.

Cabin Walls Re-Installed

Now for my second post for the evening…

After we finished the final fabrication for the fuel tank our attention turned to getting the chassis ready for re-installing the cabin walls.

This was your usual work of running the file over the steel to get rid of any of the slag from welding, sanding away any existing surface rust and wire-brushing the dust left behind from welding.  Once that was all done it was a matter of taking the shop-vac and cleaning out all of the debris.

Preparing the Fuel Tank

I decided to break today’s work into two posts (by topic) so that it would be easier for those researching specific instructions to find the information for their own builds.

One of the main things that needed to be completed before we could finish the chassis work was to make sure that every detail of the fuel tank was figured out and fabricated.  Once the tank is in there I don’t want to have to remove it again nor have leaks of any kind!

We had to make a few phone calls today to make sure we had the right parts (which we did) but we also needed a few more accessories so that we could have everything together for final assembly.  I didn’t want to get into the weekend to find out that stores were closed for some reason.

After a quick trip to the local performance parts shop we had everything we needed and started work on fabricating the fuel filler neck entrance to the rear cabin.

More Chassis Prep

The day started off with fixing up those damn cross threaded bolts from the exhaust tip mounts.  I still can’t figure out for the life of me just how a bolt that was already fastened cross threads itself on the way back out.  Strange!

Anywho… I just did the usual and cut out the nuts/washers in a square shape and then cut replacement pieces of steel to weld back in.  From there it was the usual process of creating a nut insert, drilling the hole and welding it back in.

Once everything cooled we used the tap and made sure all the threads in the nut were clean and clear of any debris.  I don’t want to have to replace them again 😦

Finishing up the Chassis

What a great first day of work on the chassis!  We made a lot of progress today and hopefully will make a bunch more tomorrow.  I wasn’t quite sure how well the body would come off the chassis but it  actually wasn’t very difficult at all.  It was the first time that the rear section of the body had been removed from the car in about 2.5 years 🙂

To start things off for the day I had a couple more flanges that I needed to finish off before my parents arrived to lend a hand after lunch.  To get things started I worked on the front area where the top of the body shell meets the chassis.

Canopy is now Structurally Sound

It was another hot, sticky and stinky day of fiberglass work on the canopy.  After I finished the short-strand filler on Saturday it left Sunday as a day to bust out the fiberglass matt/cloth and start sealing in the frame.

The filler work that I did on Saturday worked like a charm.  I started off with the top of the windows and cut a bunch of small strips of fiberglass matt that fit between the screws.  I made sure that the screw heads were raised up off the metal so that the resin could soak around them but still be able to get the screws back out.

Although with all the goop that got all over everything those screws will take a little bit of work to remove.  I tried 2-3 of them to see how much trouble they would be.  Nothing too terrible bad… just more annoying than anything.

Fiberglassing the Canopy

This afternoon was filled with fiberglass and short-strand filler!  I decided to pop off the canopy and start work on fiberglassing the steel frame to the outer shell.

I had figured that this would be mainly some fiberglass matt and resin work to just wrap the steel to the outer shell but unfortunately found out that approach wasn’t going to work out so well.

I soon realized that the matt wanted to push up off of the steel no matter how much resin I applied to it.  This resulted in air gaps between the matt and the steel bars.

Cabin Walls are Finished

What a great Father’s Day!  This morning I woke up to some great gifts and then spent the rest of the morning watching Top Gear with my daughter and then we both headed out to the skatepark for some fun on our BMX and Scooter for about an hour.

The afternoon was then spent working on the cabin walls for the BatBerry followed by a great steak BBQ!

This afternoon I mainly spent drilling out the holes on the cabin walls, grinding off the excess and sanding the surfaces to take some paint.  From there it was out to the exterior paint booth known as my front yard 🙂

Preparing the Cabin Walls

In preparation for the removal of the body and final clean-up of the rear half of the chassis I needed to make sure the cabin walls were also ready.  Once I get the body off, and chassis prepared, the cabin walls will go back in permanently with a water tight seal to the chassis.

This means that the existing 1/2″ plywood walls needed to be skinned with some fiberglass.  This is a common technique used in old-school Hot Rodding and boat building.  Using the plywood as the core material gives the structure lots of strength, and then laminating both sides with fiberglass cloth sealed with resin creates a water proof finish.

Front Cockpit Flanges

Today I set out to build the body supports for both in-front and behind the side intake cones.   However, when I started to take a closer look at the area I found that with the existing body supports behind the intake and the new ones for the side-mechanics that the body is actually pretty well supported.  So I decided that I won’t need to fabricate these 🙂

Instead I turned my attention to the connection flanges that were needed at the front of the cockpit.  These flanges need to be in-place for a couple of reasons.

1. They act as a dam to stop any water from draining back into the cabin
2. They provide a connection area where I can bond some fiberglass to the cabin and bolt it to the chassis.