Operation: Trackday

[gnon18s]

Here you can see how the trunk hinges need modified so they dont hang down into the new wheel well.

 

[gnon18s]

Added around 4" of material to space the stock sheet metal inboard. Im going for a clean factory-appearing look.

 

[gnon18s]

Stock wheel well looking at the rear seat area-

New rear well -

 

[gnon18s]

 

[Instro84]

thats a pretty good mini tub i'll asume you doing a frame notch also?

 

[gnon18s]

Yes, I will be redoing the whole back half of the frame. I will be needing an additional 4-4.5" of clearance. I havent gotten that far yet, as of now the stock chassis and drive train are just sitting covered while ive been finishing the sheet metal work on the body.

 

[THE BLACK MAMBA]

What rim are you putting on in the rear? Simmons

 

[gnon18s]

The new wheels are Fikse "Profil 5S". I always loved Fikse's and I've seen them on a lot of legit road race cars so I know they are good enough for my thing. I thought about widening my Simmons but that would have been so expensive i decided to just start with a fresh set of Fikses and sell the Simmons since they still bring good money.

Fikse quality....

 

[forcefed3.8's]

Nicely done. I would do this to fit a 315/60 15 drag radial, but your workmanship is awesome. I am not much on making a car corner, but I love the look, and can appreciate the fabrication.

 

[gnon18s]

Thanks for the compliment. Ive always had two sets of wheels for the car, one for street and one for strip. After the car is finished I want to order a killer set of drag wheels with some type of drag radial. Then I can switch back and forth. If you look at the beginning of this thread you can see I had the Simmons 18's and a set of blacked-out Welds/Hoosiers. Everything will just be wider this time around.

 

[motorhead]

I love it. Nice to see someone doing their own work too!

 

[gnon18s]

Thanks. I couldnt afford to pay a shop to do all this work for me, I have a hard enough time affording some of these high-end parts.

 

[gnon18s]

Fully welded and ground

 

[gnon18s]

I wanted to close off the trunk area and add some stiffness to the body so I built a rear "firewall" out of 18ga steel.

 

[gnon18s]

I dont know how much you guys want to see, but this is one of several tedious things I had to do, The flanges of the fuel tank mounts needed to be swapped from one side to another. When stock, each mount has a "wavy" side and a "straight" side. I needed both wavy sides on one mount and both straight sides on the other mount to be able to center them on the trunk floor. I just cut one flange off each and swapped them. You can see here I started welding one back on where I needed it.

View attachment 165873

 

[gnon18s]

Quick round of filler to take care of imperfections and getting ready for Epoxy primer.

 

[gnon18s]

$150 worth of seam sealer, not very exciting but necessary.

 

[Permagrin]

Keep up the good work! Can't have too many pics of this project.

 

[gnon18s]

Finally got around to spraying the trunk and undercarriage. First I sprayed Epoxy primer (PPG DP90), then I sprayed everything in "Raptor" bed liner made by U-POL. The bed liner is tough stuff and is sprayed using a "Shutz" gun. Im really happy with the sheen and texture. Looks like factory, but better and stronger!(These pictures are spraying the epoxy with a 3M accuspray gun)

 

[gnon18s]