1690 replies to this topic

[76lxhatch]

Green's nice... go the Barbados

[fenz]

Big fan of blacking the bonnet and tops of guards/windows looks tuff.
This combo with a nice red would look pretty sweet i rekon.

[Stinga]

nice work,i like the front end, indicators look good as does the bar (cant wait to see that bar with fresh chrome on it) will turn alot of heads, and have torana fans taking a second look. look forward to the engine installation.

[dirtbag]

Thanks so much guys for the ideas and kind words. i think I agree, barbados green looks better on 4 doors. Only time will tell. : )


Well today I got stuck into mounting the front flares. Originally this car wasn't going to have any flares, that's why I made the front spoiler from steel. This means the flares will need a little bit of trimming to suit. If only the rotten things would fit in the first place : )


The flares weren't even close to fitting at first. The front and back of them were at a weird angle and wouldn't follow the shape of the guard. I thought I'd just chop them up a bit, that'll fix it : )

I'm not worried about the front of the flare where the spoiler normally meets, as this is getting trimmed off.





What huge gap?





I love torries with the guards cut. Speedway style!!!!!! : )





Next step was to trim the front of the flare off. I don't love the look, but had no choice and it'll look fine once it's painted anyway I'm sure.





I really hate how the wheelarch curves back into the wheel at the front and rear of the flare. This'll need fixing.





Choppy choppy!!!!!!! : )






With the wedges cut out of the front and back of the flare, I taped it into position and fibreglassed it back together from the inside. Looks a lot better in my opinion.





More speedway action on the other side now : )





Again, this side was a mission to get into a decent position, and then needed to be cut a bit as well.





Make sure you sand the inside of the flare with rough paper, then clean with acetone or thinners. You can see how I've taped the flare together so there is only a very small gap where I cut the flare. I taped underneath the gap so resin didn't run all over the outside of the flare.





I then added the resin and matting. I ended up putting on 4 layers of resin and matting. Should be nice and strong.





I hate fibreglass. I should have made the flares from steel too : )

Well the front flares are now both mounted with cleco pins and actually sort of line up. Tomorrow when the resin is dry I'll finish off the flares and get on with something else : )





I hope to have the whole engine bay in primer tomorrow too. Fingers crossed.

[Stinga]

its getting tougher by the minute, nice work with the flares

[wot179]

You must eat nescafe with a spoon.


Nice work.

[dirtbag]

Thanks guys. Eat nescafe with a spoon - hehehe. Love it : )

[Potta]

Yeah, working quickly and not cutting any corners either.

Very impressive.

Can't wait to see this one finished.

I didn't like the brake ducts on the front spoiler at first but it looks pretty good with the bumper on.

[dirtbag]

Oh well, you can't please all the people all the time : )

The UC guards taper in at the front more than the LX ones, where they meet the nose cone. I just split the UC guards to open them up a bit and they lined up with the nose cone no problems. It's probably only the first 8 inches or so of the guard that needed changing, from there back is stock.

[dirtbag]

Well here's a few more pics of some more progress.
The flare alterations turned out well. When I pulled the tape off the join looked really good. Just needed a tiny spot of bog to smooth them out.





The engine bay is finally all in it's first stage of primer. It's looking pretty good in my opinion. It's certainly been a lot of work.





The front flares also copped a few coats of primer filler after the filler work was done.





Next job was to move the new motor from the top shed down to this shed. Of course that's when it decided to pour with rain : ) Thank goodness for tarps!!!!
I used my trusty old J10 Jeep to move the motor. I always wanted a Gen3 in the Jeep : )





I'm just chucking this pic in for fun. I love my Jeep and volksrod : )





We were told by another member on this site that the LS3 sump would be too low with the CRS engine mounts. Bugger, they were right. I'll have to raise the mounts on the crossmember I think.





The pan hangs down a long way too.





Well here's a pic of the new motor in the smoothed out engine bay. It has a lot of potential. Once the motor is cleaned up it'll look sweet in there.












There isn't a heap of room at the back of the motor, but it's not too bad. I might end up having to trim the heater box a little, but I can live with that.




The flares look a lot better refitted this time. They fit better now and blend in more being the same colour as the car.

[Heath]

So are you as good with the mechanicals as you are the fabrication? lol

Are you going to alter the radiator panel where the headlights mount somehow? What have you got in mind there?

[orangeLJ]

Steel, moulded flares would look sooooo much tougher then the bolt ons.

just whip up a few more cups of coffee and Im sure you could get it done!

Great work so far, definitely wish I had the patience for metal finishing, but my attention span is waaaay too short.

[dirtbag]

I've seen a couple of torries with the flares moulded in, and I don't really like the look. That's my excuse for not making steel ones : ) hahaha

I didn't get a lot done today, but I did a bit.

I started on one of the rear flares. Of course it didn't fit properly, but I've come to expect that. The thing is to find the sweet spot where the flare still sits flat and needs the least amount of modification.

Just like the front ones they rear ones curl in towards the middle, so that'll get sorted out too.




Yeah, they're nearly the right shape!!!! : )





Hangs down a bit at the front too, so this will get fixed.




Once I'd found a spot for the flare that I was happy with and all the holes were marked out, I could mark where I'm going to cut the guard to give the tyre as much room as possible.





Here's the little bits I cut from the front of the flare.





This is how it will be once it's been fibreglassed.




The 'glass work is now done on this flare so tomorrow I'll untape it and see how it fits after the alterations. Then I can cut the metal : )

[76lxhatch]

Fixing the rear flares is something thats still on my future to-do list - do you have a pic of how you cut the larger part at the back? Thanks

[dirtbag]

Hey there. The rear of the rear flare didn't need as much altering as the rear of the front flares.

I'll attach 2 pics. The first pic is the rear flare, and the second will be the front flare. These are the only pics I have of the flares cut.

I hope they're what you're after.


Rear flare



Front flare




If you noticed the horizontal cut at the top of the vertical cut, that's there to take the pressure off the piece I want to move. If I didn't cut it there I don't think the tape would hold it in shape and it would be under constant pressure, meaning it would probably break later.

[76lxhatch]

Awesome thanks