Fitting the body

November 2000
Finally ordered body shell in blue, stuck for cash and cannot pay for it at present, so we agreed a delivery date of late Feb. 2001.
Late Jan 2001 I get a call from DAX to say the body is ready and will I be up this w/e!!! Also it was still in the original gray, no gel coat! After a few phone calls DAX agree to make a new one the right colour and it will be ready late Feb.

February 2001
Hired a bigger van to pick up body shell, this time I stopped every 1.5 hours and had a little rest, much better trip. 5.5 hours to get there. As I said before I was expecting to see a finished body shell with a blue gel coat. So you can imagine my horror when I saw the shell with all the seams still present and the gel coat was not correctly mixed so there are shadows in the colour. Well there wasn't much I could do so I took all the bits and left. DAX agreed there had been a "misunderstanding" and refunded the gel-coat cost, but I was still facing a bill for £1500 for a respray.

Arrived home about 8:00 PM and phoned a few friends, Tony, Dave, Charles and Malcolm and we lifted out all the parts and even sat the shell on the chassis. I was still unhappy about the gel-coat, but it did look good :-))

First job was to cut the holes for the fuel tank filler and bracket. This wasn't easy as you couldn't offer anything up to check the fit. It was all done by measurement and fitted very nicely, even if I do say so myself!

April 2001
Ordered, Fuel lines, battery cables and brake pipes. Need to find a fuel pump! Got one from a friend but I'm worried it will be too small, it's off an MGB.

May 2001
Fitted battery cable and brake pipes. Picked up steering column from local scrapper £20. Oops forgot about the ignition key, Doh! Marie's dad has an old Sierra with key, so took the steering lock from that Sierra. Things were now almost ready to fit the body so I ordered the adhesive. All tubes arrived damaged and I had to request two more tubes, fed up with complaining by now :-( Also received door hinges which were out of stock when I picked up the body shell.

Fitted Aluminuim Linings to engine bay, what a palava! Problem with the footwell covers as they were not long enough and when they fitted at front they did not reach back to meet the bulkhead, I had to pad out the bulkhead piece. Also made up a couple of plates to join the footwell sections to the bulk head plate. At last they were glued in!

At this point I noticed the handbrake bracket was missing from the chassis! What else could go wrong! Apparently a few chassis were made like this and an extra bracket was available, had to wait for this bracket before I fitted body shell. Bracket arrived, but it appears you fit this after the body shell, so I could have fitted body shell earlier, Doh!

Sharyn taking the body shell for a quick spin!

June 2001
Fitting body shell: A few mates were rounded up to help with the final fit, Charles, Malcolm, Tony & Dave. The first dry fit failed as the Aluminium lining prevented body-shell moving forward fully and rear fouled on seat belt supports - Oh no!!! Charles has the idea of fitting the locating plate on the chassis up between shell and liner. Fortunately the glue is thick enough to allow this. Cut out glue using one of Dads old saws (he probably doesn't know I've even got it and I moved out of home 16 yrs ago). Second dry fit, the plate on the chassis fits up between the shell and lining, Hurray! Cleaned all surfaces, applied glue and riveted down body. Bolted the frame down and the handbrake bracket fitted very nicely. Thanks to my young friends Ben and Joe for there help, although Joe was a little trigger happy with the drill!