RCR's body mods... (Page 51/67)
mr_corean DEC 29, 10:20 PM
To adjust your headlights you will need the hood to be open, obviously. Will the part of the hood that is over the headlight bucket be low enough to be in the path of the lights and affect the aiming process? I guess even if it is it won't be much to remove the hood for the aiming since that will rarely change. Good idea and implementation for the mounts though. The one thing I can think of that you need to be sure of is that the fiberglass the housings are suspended from needs to be heavy or reinforced. Because there are 2 lights per side with all there weight hanging behind the mount they are working as a lever to bend it back. If they are bending it at all the lights will bounce when you go over bumps and possibly crack the paint on the buckets from the flexing and possibly the fiberglass itself eventually. The easiest way to check that would be to just push down on the rear of the bulb housing lightly and see if it moves at all. If not I'd consider it good enough for government work.
RCR JAN 01, 07:41 PM
Mr Corean...Thanx for the feedback. My thoughts exactly. I was thinking of building a support for the back of the lights that would connect at the original headlight mounts. I was waiting to get it all together to determine how much support is needed.

Bob
RCR FEB 26, 07:03 AM
Mid winter update...

Garage is cleaned up and ready. I need to swap a motor on my son's Dart. He trashed the motor by driving it low on oil Modern VVT's really want oil. Now I'm stuck fixing it.

Itching to get back at it (pun not intended). I picked up the steel I needed to fab a front bumper. I hope I never need it, but you never know... Then back to the body work.

This year's plan (and goal) is to finish body mods and make it driveable. We'll see how that works out.

Thanks for checking in. Comments and suggestions always welcome.

Bob
Neils88 FEB 26, 10:23 AM
Glad to see you back at it, Bob! Hopefully the Dart repairs go fast so you can get back to the important stuff.
RCR MAR 17, 04:57 PM
Nothing yet to relay, but I wanted to post up some info for a fellow 308 builder, and one of the items to finalize this build season is the door handles/latches.

My style kit uses hidden latches built into the body line on the door. It uses the Fiero door handles mounted to a plate that gets glued/bonded to the door. There is a hole in the body line to allow one to grab the handle with one's fingers. I thought it was cheesy and I preferred something more like the 308 door pulls, or maybe something off the 355 or newer.
(edit): After thinking about it and seeing the pics again, I don't think the plates are actually mounted to the door skins, but screwed to the door itself. That makes much more sense, but must be a bit#@ to line up with the door skin.





Here are the handles that came with my body panels.







More soon...

Bob

[This message has been edited by RCR (edited 03-18-2019).]

freedom0226 MAR 18, 03:57 PM
thank you soo much for posting this info ..... pm sent
RCR MAY 04, 03:47 PM
It's been slow getting back at it. But, today I got something worth posting done. I made a front bumper. I'll let the pics speak for themselves.











In a nutshell, I used some 2" x 3/16 round stock for the bumper. The ends were hitting the fascia, so I cut some slots about a foot in on each side to fold the bumper ends back a bit.
I welded some 1.5" 1/8' square tubing to the bumper to make the mounts. Then made nut plates to sit within the frame rail to bolt it all together. Grade 8 hardware holds it all together.

Now, I have less worry that in the event something goes wrong, the first major stopping point won't be the firewall. Plus, now I have someplace to mount a tow ring.

Bob
dobie1 MAY 04, 04:48 PM
Bob are you using the OEM bumper attachment points to secure to? And are you using the original kit fibreglass bumper cover over the steel ?
Always nice to be moving forward. šŸ˜Ž
Iā€™m busy prepping the dash pod mold to produce the the piece I need to complete the dash , sure is time consuming!
Wayne
RCR MAY 04, 06:20 PM

quote
Originally posted by dobie1:

Bob are you using the OEM bumper attachment points to secure to? And are you using the original kit fibreglass bumper cover over the steel ?
Always nice to be moving forward. šŸ˜Ž
Iā€™m busy prepping the dash pod mold to produce the the piece I need to complete the dash , sure is time consuming!
Wayne



Ain't that the truth, Wayne.

No, the new nose design doesn't use the original bumper cover. It's much lower and pulled back 3', so the bumper is slung underneath the frame rails. Not optimal, but I didn't want to move the rails back, nor block the big air intake opening.



The bumper fits behind the fascia, under the lights, air intake opening, and godzilla's feet.

Bob

[This message has been edited by RCR (edited 05-04-2019).]

dobie1 MAY 04, 08:21 PM
So now that I look at the picture I can see what your doing.
So are you going to mold the lower facia so that if you do crunch the front you can repair or replace it?
Wayne