Well lets start with the after pictures first.. he he... looks nice doesn't it. Excellent quality from Maciej in Poland... the pictures below were taken by me whilst I was fitting the GP widebody kit, I got this far (both sides) on my own in 6 hours. There is still a lot to do, now the kit is dummy fitted and trimmed/fettled is a better word to describe the minimal amount of work involved, but it is fitted with a couple of screws here and there, now I will remove the kit, tidy up some bits of the old rusty body underneath, I didn't do it before as I wasn't sure how much the GP widebody would cover. Then I will treat the old body underneath for rust, run some bonding agent around the edges of the rear quarters and fit it permanently.
I'll run some screws right through the leading and trailing edges of the glassfibre and into the existing body to hold it all tight while the sealer/glue is curing, once cured I'll remove the screws and fill the holes.
I little bit of bodyfiller will be needed to smooth the leading edge of the rear quarters into the door opening, and also at the rear below the rear lamps, but other than that, I think I'll need more filler in the doors where I welded the bump-strip holes closed.....
The wings and bumper will fit together nice once I have drilled some holes, although worth mentioning is that the GP bodykit is obviously for Mk1 S12's, as my mk2 bumpers have the raised part to match the rubber body mouldings that we removed from the old wings and doors. We will live with it, but if you want your car perfect perfect, then you'l either fit the rubber strips on again (heavy) or better still, get a mk1 bumpers, as I expect the rear bumper to be the same with regard to the rubber bump-strip things.
Bonnet to wing gaps are tight, but acceptable.....
The side skirts and wings fitted together nicely... probably helped by the fact that the glassfibre is less than a week old, I wonder how difficult this would be if the body kit had been laying around for a few years.....
Rear window mouldings and tailgate cover the entire upper edge of the new rear quarter... well thought out mr nissan!
Left front wig had great fitting tolerances... straight on there with almost vacuum like fitting...
Which left me dissapointed when the right wing wasn't as good and was pretty much like every other glass fibre panel I have ever fitted.
Side skirts require the "most" trimming"...
Yes... look at how much I had to cut off and tidy up.... ;-)
And then snug as a bug in a rug...
Lovely......
Right side front wing is not as good as the left, maybe they removed it from the form too soon, but the gaps are larger (could be my doors also) and remember e have welded in a roll cage so its possible my car is a bit tweaked... but for glass fibre... the gaps are ok... it's not a show car...
The metal trim that goes between bumper and grille did not want to mate with the new wings...
Probably better if we were using mk1 lights and grille and metal thing..... but we trimmed the metal part and will use bonding agent and screws to hold it all together, removing the screws once it has cured, and filling the holes before painting
Done..... took 15 minutes... just need to drill a hole bond and screw....
Then when fitting the sidelights we found that the dreaded right front wing "tweak" where it had been removed from the mold before curing properly had really done it's best to ruin our morning coffee....
You can see that the side light aperture on the left wing is perfect, but the right "tweaked" wing wasn't wide enough to allow fitting of the light, so I had to take out the rotary burrs and open the hole up... so not much gelcoat left in there now, but the light fits where it touches and it will be ok. Hopefully the later bodykits will be allowed to cure before coming out of the molds
Left was 66-68mm
Right was 63mm ish.....
Here you can see how it bends together...
Ground out... and now the light fits.
...and finally the wing gives up and the light slips into place... see how the rubber seal is totally compressed at the top right edge... oh well...
Consolation is that the left side was better than perfect..... so remember I am not knocking this kit in any way... as every other kit I have ever seen has been like the right front wing......
We will rewire the sidelights and fit yellow bulbs to use them as indicators, as we have used the indicator apertures for air intakes for the brakes. We will find somewhere to hide the sidelights... in sweden it is law to run with headlights on at all times... so sidelights have no other purpose here than for parking lights...
Here you can clearly see the "flap" below the rear light, we will use bonding agent between the glassfibre and steel, put some screws through to hold it in place until it cures, remove the screws and fill the holes. Then also fill the step where the "flap" doesn't blend into anything....
Wheel arch is all but 2 inches wider... 48mm at the rear, I have not measured the fronts yet...
But it looks like 50mm (2 inch) wheel spacers will be needed to get the right look.
We will paint the inside of the wheel wells with white smootherite, it will sort the rust flashes and make it nice and clean, and light for working on..... so excuse the mucky look in there right now... but we never intended the car to have a widebody kit and to ever look this darned good... shows up the rest of the car now...
This is the same wheel arch after we beat theold lip up with a copper/hide hammer.. and with a coat of matt black... it vanished...
Right side... I fitted this after the left as I was expecting a fight from the fuel filler... and I got it...
If you look closely you can see the fuel filler door fitted, but this as close as I want you to look for now.... as this is the worst part of the kit and needs to be sorted out better.
It is cut badly on both the kits I have here, and a little too small for the opening in the rear quarter, not the same shape at all... but I am sure that maciej will be able to improve this and send me a new one.
I also cut out the opening a little too much, I followed the line of the original fuel door, and it is too high. TOP TIP... remove the fuel door BEFORE you fit the rear quarter panel.. you can almost see into the fuel filler even when the door is closed.... but with a new better filler door this will be ok... I hope.
I took a cutter disc and removed the hinge panel part of the original fuel door.
Here it is removed, I retained the fuel cap holder "U" thingy... because I could.....
More pictures later, but I ran some screws through the new rear quarter inside the fuel filler recess to attach the original hinge, then I drilled some BIG holes in the new fuel door, and fitted it with BIG washers and screws into the original hinge plate thing, beside the "U" thingy.. the large holes let me move it all around to get it into place (and cover my fcuk-up where I cut a little too much out of the opening. Once it was all lined up and I was happy, I removed the screws and large washers, blobbed a ton of bonding agent between the hinge plate part and the new fuel door, fitted it all back together, lined it up, tigtened the screws and left it overnight to cure, then I will remove the screws, and fill the holes in the fuel door....
Here's the inside of the fuel door, I haven't fixed the latch yet, which could be a problem as the car is now in the paintshop for prep... Haven't removed the screws yet either... but I'll get it sorted during the week.
Drove the car outside ot take pictures for the artist, my website art dude is going to photoshop the images of the car we took and try some different lines and colour schemes... red white and blue is decided, classic datsun/nissan colours... but his way of laying them down will be so much better than ours...
Just threw the light covers, lights and spioler on there, rear wing still needs end plates designing, laser cut and bent, wheel spacer drawings are now done and they will be under process this week, 50mm at the front and 65mm at the rear, this will place the S40 BBS wheels where we want them. Actually making 4 x 50mm spacers, with studs, and then having some 10mm and 5mm "shims" laser cut to get the rear out to 65mm, but also allowing us the option to fine tune the track width for handling and looks depending on if we use S12 wheels on ice, or BBS for drifting and track use..... you can see the bumber vents in this picture clearly... what you cant see is the lightened bumper mounts and complete lack of metal whatsoever in the rear bumper....
