The final stage of the rear gauards is the inter mount holes. To make this acurate the guards had to be full assembled. I got the required bolts and buttoned up both guards.
The hole locations were marked out and then drilled out to 16mm, in three stages, 5mm,10mm,16mm. They were made this big so I can weld in anti-crush tubes as these will be tighted very tight. And since they go through the floor to the chassis also act as extra body to chassis mounts.
Crush tube ready to be welded in.
All the welding done and cleaned up. This pretty much completes the fab work on the rear guards. They took along time to get sorted. But are now looking pretty darn good. There will be extra work done once I finalise the paint and detail work for the RattyT.
But the objective to have easy on/off light guards was achieved.
I now had to finish off the interor holes. The wood floor was drilled ,but not the chassis below.
Final test fit with the mounts all drilled and complete.
Next big job was to start the transmission tunnel. I was planning to do this with wood, But after a bit of play I was going to be to bulky and I wanted to have it as streamlined as possible. So I decided that I would have to fibreglass it. Since I havn't done fibreglass before ... another first.
After some reading and basic knowledge from talking to other people who have done it I decided to fibreglass over cardboard.
I mocked up the tunnel in simple box cardboard as it was easy to work with and I planned to transfer to foam cored cardboard once I got the shape right.
Rough cardboard template transfered to the foam card.
The card is 5mm high density foam with card either side. I used it alot when doing my design course. Its easy to work with, you can use hotglue gun to join. It allows you to mock things up very quickly and it strong.
First part of the tunnel mocked up.
Complete cardboard work all glued in-place.
Body now off the frame ready for epoxy fiberglass, now on the hunt for a cheap fibreglass supplier.
The plan is to glass over the top, and also around the ply firewall, for additional strength. Then to trim and then do the underside of the tunnel in glass and the complete underfloor in resign to make it water proof.
The once clean chassis... now needs a cleanup and repaint ....
