Body Fitment

[Steve Borneman]

I’m going to start this thread because as I finally have my body, the fitment and body work is going to be a long term project.

First of all, I’m not building a kit. I have a chassis and aluminum panels from Active Power Cars and that’s about it from Chris, I’m building everything else out of my imagination and a lot of reading.

So I picked up an MKII body from a known enthusiast. I was told that this body was a splash mold from an original 1966 MKII which makes it a very special body (I believe). Unfortunately, this body had been sitting around for 10-15 years so it was a little beaten up. Also, because it was just a body out of the mold, there were no inner panels, no inner support of any kind so I had all the inner panels installed by a professional fiberglass guy. I also bought the doors and rockers from the fiberglass guy.

So to start, here are a few questions that I hope I can get some answers for:

1) it appears that the rear of the front clamshell where the latch is, seems flimsy. What can you do to make it a little beefier? Or are they all like that?

2) there seems to be some warpage in the fiberglass in the same area I mention above it has seemed to curl in some, it’s not a straight flat panel (see pic 1 below). However, the door is just sitting there and I pulled the bottom of the front clamshell out to match the rocker.

3) I’m looking to get some body cones to line up the body when the clamshells are closed, but the front is so warped, it will always be out of shape.

4) the doors are in two pieces, the inside piece and the outside piece. Do you put these together before fitting them or fit them individually and then bond them together? Also what do you bond them together with? There has to be some sort of bonding glue that is used to match two pieces of fiberglass?

Any advice you can give me from your experiences fitting body’s to cars will be very appreciated.

Thank you

Steve

 

[Graham Endeacott]

Hi Steve,

The main problem that you have here is that the doors don't match the front clip. The doors are from a kit/replica whereas the front clip has the same curvature (just below the fuel filler) as an original. To save yourself an awful lot of hassle I would ditch those doors and get some that are patterned as per the original.

 

[Steve Borneman]

Hi Steve,

The main problem that you have here is that the doors don't match the front clip. The doors are from a kit/replica whereas the front clip has the same curvature (just below the fuel filler) as an original. To save yourself an awful lot of hassle I would ditch those doors and get some that are patterned as per the original.

Hi Graham,

It’s not the doors, they are just sitting there. They are brand new and haven’t been fitted yet. They are two separate pieces (inner door and outer door) I just wanted to see how they looked.

I have a long way to go before I even touch the doors.

 

[Steve Borneman]

Here’s a question, I installed the spider before I got the rear and front clamshells.

The rocker panels, seem a little long. I think I might have installed the spider incorrectly. I think if I move the rear of the spider back in inch the rockers will fit perfectly.

I wonder if somebody could take a measurement for me with an accompanying picture measuring the distance between the rear of the spider in the front of the spider.

I don’t want to change it if I have it incorrectly, but if it’s too narrow I need to open up some.

Appreciate the help, thank you