I have to admit putting this particular bit of paneling off! It just worried me as it is going to be massively on show and any mess ups would be obvious! Anyway, it had to be done, so the tried and tested method of paper templates went straight into action. Below is the drivers side front infill piece. You can see here that my first cuts of the template were not quite right and copious amounts of masking tape were used to get it just right.
So when I was happy with the template fit it was time to cut out the ally. Now normally, if the pieces are squareish, I measure the template and then draw this onto the ally, but as there were not many straight edges for this piece I just drew around it. The only problem with this is that if, like me, you have used masking tape to increase the length of the cardboard, you have to be careful to not crumple it up and getting too many lines too close together! The ally was actually a bit from a previous panel that had gone a bit wrong, but luckily I could just squeeze this one in!
Below is the final article. You can see on the left hand side of the panel it actually has a section that fills in the gap at the top of the arm cutout. It also has a return, going forward, so it can be riveted to the chassis. Hope fully this will be scrutineer proof!
So, it was now time to move to the passenger side. As this side doesnt have an arm cutout in the chassis, Icould make the top panel all in a single piece.
As there was not much of any interest in the middle, between the two returns, the template was just lashed together. In fact I was able to use the same templates from the other side, with some very minor alterations, and then just tape some lengths between, which all helped keep down the time!
As ever the first cut was not 100%, I forgot to cutout the slots where the sidepods wrap around the chassis. This was more annoying than it might seem as getting it under the spider it a little tricky on your own has you have to lift about three things, slide the panel in, then line everything up and drop down the spider. Anyway, I realised what was wrong, it might seem obvious now, but at the time i was stumped for about 5/10 mins!
And here is the finished panel, you can see here the slot I forgot to cut! D’oh!
It was then the normal measuring, drilling, countersinking and cliquoing to get the thing mounted up.
Tags: Ally Panels
