Passenger Door

May 6, 2016 -

  A couple nights ago I worked at fitting the passenger door.  This was a lot harder than the driver's side door.  This one took a lot of sanding to get it to fit ok where the top of the door meets the rear body panel part.  At this stage you really want the top two corners to fit with the body well.  Later you can move the main body in or out some to get the bottom corners to look right.
  Today I put the striker and the latch on.  Fairly similar to the driver's side here.  I ended up using the latch spacers on both the passenger and driver sides.  I think riders will feel a lot safer now.  :-)  Here is a picture of both doors latched.

Door Latch 1

May 1, 2016 -

  I've attached the driver's side door and did some sanding down of the edges on it with a Festool random orbit sander and connected dust collector while I wore a 3M respirator.  That got the door edges fitting pretty well. (I'm sure it all changes some after painting.)  Then I attached the stiker and then the latch.  (I did grease up the insides of the latch mechanism while I had it open per the instructions.)  Here's a picture of the latch attached to the door and locked onto the striker.  I show it closed to show it is all lined up.

Windshield Part 2

April 17, 2016 -

  I wish this advice was in the manual, but in order to bolt the windshield on the driver's side you need to remove the fuse panel. That made it a lot easier. On the passenger side it's more difficult, especially if you have your engine ECU and a windshield wiper motor mounted in this area like I do. And definitely try not to drop washers and nuts in the dark spaces between the body and the frame that you can't see. Anyways, the trick to the passenger side was to put your arm and socket or wrench behind that ECU. Yes you will still have to tighten it from 1 foot away moving one click at a time without being able to see what you are doing and you might even have to lay superman style across the engine like I did, but you can do it. Here it is all tightened down.

  I forgot to mention, in order to drill the holes in the side mounts of the windshield, get a step drill bit that looks like this.

  It works *way* better than your conventional bits!

Windshield Part 1

April 10, 2016 -

  After attaching the windshield side supports, I was able to get help fitting the windshield into the car and see how they lined up with the frame mounts for the windshield.  Of course the windshield side mounts were about 3" - 4" too long and prevented the windshield from sitting down on the body.  After pulling it back out, trimming the windshield side mounts with a Dremel and a hacksaw it fit in nicely.  This is to show you how much had to be trimmed off on both sides.

  Unfortunately the slots in the body aren't quite far enough forward for the side supports to line up with both holes in the frame mount on each side.  I will need to expand those slots in the body just a little more forward. Here's a shout out to my fiancee and helper Michele for helping me fit it!

Turns out the windshield moved slightly between marking the driver's side and then going over to the passenger side. So I decided to just drill the driver's side, bolt that side in, then mark the passenger side. Turns out the sharpie is pretty easy to wipe off the chrome finish.

Body Dash

March 10, 2016 -

  I haven't gotten a lot done lately. Still wrapping up house build punch list items but I also got another case of the frustrations when the passenger side windshield support wouldn't fit in the slot in the body because it was obstructed by the dash aluminum. I spoke to Factory Five and some others and there are ways to adjust the body. Some that have gone before me highly recommend trimming the body away from the dash covering regardless, so that the fiberglass body isn't digging into the dash. I trimmed off about 1/4" using a Dremel.

  This created a lot of fiberglass dust which is blocking the view of the gap I created between the body and the dash but you can get the idea here.

  I should have done this at the beginning of the project for anything related to cutting the fiberglass but I invested in a decent respirator for this kind of work. I highly recommend it.

  In the end, this didn't help the body move at all and the trick to getting the windshield to fit in the slots is just to lengthen the slots themselves. (More chances to wear the respirator!)

Hood Part 3

January 10, 2016 -

  Most of this was actually done yesterday but I wrapped up the hood latches today.  The only odd thing I found was the metal brackets that are the "catch" for the swinging lever under the hood needed holes bigger than the 7/64" drill bit the manual recommended. Other than that it was pretty straightforward.  I did go with the manual's recommendation when drilling the big 5/8" holes through the hood of stepping up in drill bit size slowly and using reverse for the larger bits.  I also used some masking tape on the top side of the hood to help prevent chipping. Maybe it helped. Unless you have a *really* big chip, the hood handles will cover up divots around the edge of your holes.

Hood Part 2

January 9, 2016 -

  While the hood was mounted, it wasn't aligned very well. To line it up there are 8 nuts to loosen and tighten where the bracket and frame mount come together. First I decided that it would be easier to access these nuts from beneath the car so I jacked it up and put it down on the jack stands.  With the nuts loose I put something heavy (my pancake air compressor) on the hood to hold it in a good position.  From below I tightened the nuts. I came up from beneath the car and found that the vertical alignment was good.  It now sat down onto the body the way it should but somehow I moved it while tightening so I loosened the 4 nuts that hold the horizontal alignment and put it back into a good position.  Then I went around tightening each of the four nuts little by little so as not to move the hood.  I also got up periodically to check the alignment. Yeah it sounds annoying but it was more like a slow and steady wins the race kind of feeling.  Here's the hood down so you can see how much aligned I got it:

  Ultimately the hood needs to be trimmed, filed, sanded by a body shop so I didn't drive myself too crazy over it.  Next up are the hood latches.