Trial fit for suspension and bodywork

Now I've got my HSR body (woohoo!) and my bike has been sold (boohoo!), I can finally get round to fitting the body and seeing what work needs to be done. And to be honest, it's looking quite good...

This is the narrow body sat on an SSC based MX5 roadster. It was easy to see what work is to be done, mainly around outriggers to carry the base of the bonnet, a front mount for the hinge, and maybe some bracing along the trailing edge. As you can see on both sides the wheels stick out, this was more or less what I expected. There's a few options here, either attach some fender extenders (chrome ones would be very interesting), or swap the wheels for something with a lower offset. I'll deal with that afterwards though, at the moment I'm just happy the positioning is good.

In this pic there is a piece of metal going from left to right that is clamped under the chassis, and another at the front doing the same. These will be where the outriggers are going to sit.

This is the height of the bonnet when the bottom edge is in line with the chassis (you can make out the clamped bar to the right of the picture). Having said that, it's the rear shell that needs to be put in place first, I've not been able to do that purely because the chassis isn't finished.

It's certainly an interesting view from the drivers seat!

I also trial fitted the suspension, front...

And rear...

I'm glad I did this though, as I wanted to make sure I had everything available. Basically I have a bag of nuts and bolts, and as I build things I've been using the fixings to test out how everything goes together, then taking them apart and putting them back in the bag. The only problem is that I've double used some of the bolts, so when it came to put everything together at the same time I was short of quite a few bolts!!

So, in no particular order, here are my new 'to do' items;

1. Buy TRE's. I spent so long tracking down the front upper suspension arm track rods that I forgot the steering rack needs them too!!

2. Buy proper extenders for the TRE's. This one is an interesting one, I'll talk about this in the next post.

3. New bolts for the rear upper suspension mount. The block in the picture above holds the upper rear suspension arm, the MX5 upright, and the suspension coilover. Problem is the bolt that I had available doesn't go through them all. So I need a new pair of bolts for that. 

4. Diff bolts. As mentioned, I've used these diff bolts in several places, so I now need some for the actual diff!!

5. Steering rack fixings. Same again, double used.

6. Seat fixings. OK, they're not related to this, but I had to get some. That will be in the next next post.

Overall I'm so impressed with the bodywork, there's plenty of room available for the engine, I don't have to worry about radiator fittings, and most of all I won't have to deal with some of the sharp edges that most seven's have to sort out for the IVA. I have different ones to sort (I already have scratches and cuts from the body itself) but I'm hoping there will be less of an issue.