Body Work

I decided that I could at least make use of my free time over the next week or so by getting as much of the bodywork done as I can without having the chassis back in the garage. Yesterday I shared the new rear floor that my dad is working on. Today I decided to begin work on the lower gearbox area panels.

The FC configuration had a rear diffuser that had about 6-7" of rise from the front of the rear tires to the end of the floor behind the gear box. That meant that the lower panels below the lower rear suspension sloped in the same way.

FF rules (as of last year) do not allow much (1" total) deviation in the flatness of the rear floor. The slope of a FF floor can really only begin in earnest BEHIND the rear tires.

That means that with the new rear floor in place, there will be a growing gap (front to rear) at the bottom of the engine/gearbox covers. Conveniently the existing panels in this area are small slivers of fiberglass and can easily be extended to cover the gap.

One other convenience was that the car came with molds for the diffuser strakes that fairly accurately depicted the slope of the diffuser and the missing verticle gap area.

So I took the two lower side panels (pictured below) out of the trailer this afternoon and begin to mock up a template to fill in the missing area. Satisfied with these templates, I decided to make up two rough-fit panels in their shape. Pictured here are the two panels in process on the work table.

No fancy vacuum bagging equipment on had, I had to resort to old school techniques - wax paper, clamps and weights.

Tomorrow morning they should be dry enough to peel off the wax paper and see how they turned out.

I deliberately made the filler panels a little taller then needed (about 1/4") with the thought that I would trim them to fit later on once the chassis is back in the shop and the floor is mounted up.

My thought right now is to bond these to the existing smaller panels once they are trimmed to fit.

Here are the existing lower side panels. In this picture you can see how they slope upward starting near the curved front of the lower piece. Here's hoping that the new pieces turn out well in the morning.

Sean