Can Am: Time Line:

Panel how to:

1. Make a cardboard template of the piece.
2. Trim the template to fit.
3. Trace the cardboard template onto the alloy panel.
4. Trim the alloy panel.
5. Test fit alloy panel, mark locations for more trimming.
6. Repeat step 5 until the panel fits perfectly.
7. Measure and draw lines on the panel for the rivets.
8. Center punch the rivet lines. Some fudging of the 30mm spacing may be need to make the intersection of 2 rivet lines meet up correctly. Also be aware of the location of rivets in adjacent panels. You may need to make the spacing on one panel match the spacing on another. Finally be aware of the location of the nearby frame rails, in some cases it will be impossible for you to get a drill / rivet gun to some areas of the panel. If this is the case there is no need to mark the rivet location.
9. Center punch rivet locations.
10. Drill rivet locations out of alloy panel.
11. Flip panel over and deburr with a larger drill bit.
12. Reinstall panel on the car and clamp into place.
13. Drill holes in the frame using the alloy panel as a template.
14. Remove alloy panel
15. Spray waxol in the frame holes to prevent rusting.
16. Clean frame rails with degreaser. (you may also want to scuff the rail for better adhesion)
17. Run a line of sealant over the rivet holes.
18. Place panel back in place. Insert rivets into all the holes.
19. Use a rivet gun to install the rivets. (do not be tempted to rivet the 4 corners first, start at one end and work your way to the other)
20. clean up excess sealant with WD40.

feb 10th

The new panels are in. This time I am going to take my time and do things correctly. Shipping things from the UK is not cheap and I don't plan on screwing up again. I also ordered a front splitter that FedEx was nice enough to break in half for me. We will see how they handle the claim. Back to the panels. The best advice I can give is use a cardboard template for each piece. Just trace the alloy panel on a large sheet of cardboard and test fit the cardboard piece. After trimming the cardboard piece trace the pattern on the alloy panel and trim the alloy accordingly. The cardboard template is not an exact science has it bends more than the alloy but it will give you a great place to start from. I went down to a local mailboxes etc. store and picked up to long boxes to cut up and make templates out of. Believe me the 20 bucks I spend on cardboard is a fraction of the cost of having to order and ship new panels over from the UK. Second cover all of the adjacent pipes with duct tape to help prevent from scraping off the powdercoat. You are going to be installing and removing each panel several times and sooner or later you going to scrape something. Another tip from other builders is to put a rubber grommet over the drill bit. This way when you are drilling the holes in the frame rails and the drill bangs into the panel you will not scratch the panel. It's a great tip and works perfectly. In fact almost every hole I drilled ended up with a little black ring left behind from the grommet.

Cardboard templates:

Where to trim the panels:

Support brackets for the fire wall engine bay side.

feb 17th

Due to 30 + inches of snow I had a nice 5 day weekend to work on the car. The first thing I wanted to do was finish fitting the panels so I could polish them. Before fitting the cabin and radiator double skin (lower layer), you need to trim and mark the upper layer first. After fitting the upper layer cabin floor + rad panel mark the cross braces with a marker from the under side. If you don't do it before installing the lower panels you will have no idea where to put the rivets. You also need to mark the location for the rear radiator supports and cut the holes for them in the upper radiator skin. On a side note the radiator support bolts need to be cut short before installing them as they are to long and will hit the lower rad panel. (See below picture) Once you have fitted and marked the upper double skins, you need to flip the car over to install the lower rad, cabin, and battery tray. 2 people can flip the car over with no problem. Before flipping you may want to wrap the roll bar in towels to avoid scratching. I rested the front of the frame on a bucket.

Once the frame is upside down you can start working on the lower panels. I started with the rad panel and worked my way back. These panels are pretty strait forward, little to no trimming needed. The only thing to watch out for is trying to line up the rivets from one panel with the rivet line on the adjacent panel. Once your mark the rivet lines, drill the holes and deburr, you are ready to install them. Don't forget to run a line of sealant along the riving holes before installing. If you get the sealant on the panels or your hand (and your will) WD-40 does a wonderful job of removing it.

I did not install the battery panel at this point because it need to be polished and anodized before installing it. Next up was flipping the car back over and fitting the battery tray. Here again a cardboard template is needed. After it's fitted, mark your rivet lines. Before drilling take note of the frame as you will not be able to get a drill or rivet gun in some places so there is not need to drill holes along the entire length of the battery panel.

At this point all the panels I want to polish and anodized are fitted, so lets get down to polishing. To polish the panels I used a dewalt 7/8 inch buffer with a wool pad and Tripoli compound. Since the panels are flat and smooth they are pretty easy to polish. It's still time consuming and very, very messy but as far as polishing goes it's easy. After I polished them all up, I used mothers aluminum polish to remove all the black dust and bring them up to a nice shine. Again I need to stress how messy polishing aluminum is. Everything in my garage is covered in black dust. Not to mention every piece of uncovered skin on my body was also black. If your smart you will wear a respirator. Here is the end product, now to pack them up and send them out to be anodized. The last picture is of the color samples the company did for me. Although I like the blue the most the color does not match the car, so I decided on the silver. Because I polished the panels first the end product should be pretty shinny. Or at least I hope so.

feb 23rd

The radiator pipes came back from www.hpccoatings.com. The coating is actually an exhaust coating. Other builders have complained about the radiator pipers radiating heat into the passenger compartment. This coating will keep the heat inside the pipe. Must more effective than wrapping the pipes in insulation.

The other job of the day was to finish fitting the upper rad pan. The problem was if I rivet the upper panel in place I would later have to remove some rivets to attach the radiator side panels. I also couldn't see how I would know where to drill the hole in the side panels. My solution was to fit the radiator and side panels prior to fitting the upper rad panel. This way I could rivet the radiator upper + side panels at the same time. The first thing you need to do is trim the upper rad panel and mark the rivet lines. If you forgot to mark the locations of the x-braces before installing the lower rad pan, it's going to be very difficult to mark the location of the rivet that run across the x-brace. When marking the rivet lines some fudging of the 30 mm spacing is needed. There is now way to get all the rivet lines to match up without some cheating. If you changed the spacing between a couple of rivets by 5mm or so it is visually hard to tell there is a difference. Once the upper rad panel is drilled, it's time to install the radiator itself. To protect the radiator fins from being damaged I cut out pieces of cardboard and attached them to the rad panel.

The first step is attaching the upper and lower rad brackets to the radiator. The large piece goes along the bottom and the 2 little pieces go on the top. The large lower bracket has 4 predrilled holes already in it, these holes are spaced for the factory supplied fans. This in nice because you can use the larger predrilled piece as a rivet template for the smaller pieces. Now mark your rivet lines on the upper and lower brackets. Carefully clamp your brackets onto the radiator and center punch the holes.

Next come a nerve racking part, drilling holes in the radiator edge. The secret here is to place a piece of scrape panel under the radiator lip. This way when you drill through the radiator lip, the drill with hit the scrape metal and not the core. Be careful not to drill through the scrap metal.

Once the lower bracket holes are drilled in the radiator, go ahead and rivet the brackets into place. At this point it is best to go ahead and fit the fans to the lower bracket, this way you will know exactly where to mount the upper bracket. You will run into a little problem here, because the factory supplied nuts are to big to fit into the channels of the radiator. The solution is to file the corners off of the channel. Once the radiator fans are in place you can install the upper bracket and center punch the holes. Now remove the fans and drill the rivet holes in the rad, using a scrap piece of metal again. Once done rivet the upper bracket onto the rad. I went ahead and ran a bead of sealant on both brackets, although it is probably not needed.

Now you can temporarily install the rad and side plates. Mark the location of the side plates on the upper rad panel. Remove the rad and upper rad panel. Clamp the rad side panels onto the upper rad panel and center punch our holes. After the holes are drilled it's time to rivet the upper rad + side panels in place. Before installing the panels I decided to put some 3/4 inch insulation foam in-between the upper and lower rad panels. This will help keep the panels from flexing. A simple way to get the pattern for the foam pieces is to place a large piece of foam over the frame and firmly press down on the foam. If you push hard enough the frame rails will leave small dents in the foam. Then all you have to do is cut the piece with a razor knife.

With the panels in place go ahead and reinstall the radiator. You will notice there is still a significant gap between the bottom of the rad and the upper rad panel. After the sealant dries I intend to put some foam sealant tape around the rad to get a better seal.

With a little time left in the day I decided to work on the upper floor panel. The only tricky part here is cutting out the pedal area. The manual is not that clear how to do it. If you marked the frame rails on the panel before installing the lower panel you fine. After you make your cuts and fold the panel over you will have 3 90 degree bends, the shortest piece lays right against the x-frame rail. All you need to do is measure 20 mm from where you marked the rail and that where your one cut is. Now it's just a matter of measuring the factory recommended cut out. After the cuts are made you need to crispy bend 90 degree angles in the panel. To do this I clamped the panel to the edge of my work bench and used a block of wood and a dead blow hammer to gradually bend the metal. I am pretty happy with the end result. The bends are pretty tight. I am sure if you had a real sheet metal bender you could get better results, but I couldn't justify buying one for a few bends.

Next up is to find the locations for the alloy tubing. You want to try and make the alloy tubing mirror the angle of the other x-brace. Since the factory rail goes corner to corner, using a string to mark the corner to corner line is a good way to match the angle. Just place the alloy tube under the string and mark it's location. That's it for today, more paneling fun tomorrow.

feb 24th

First thing I did today was fill the gap between the radiator and the upper rad panel. You can see in the above picture the gap I am talking about. Air will take the path of least resistance, which means it will go through the gap and not the radiator. Filling the gap will force more air through the rad and increase the cooling efficiency. To fill the gap I used 7/16 inch rubber foam and silicon. I put one strip under the rad, one in from front of that, and one on each side panel. I also put silicon around the foam and a large glob in the hole where the rubber rad support comes through the panel. I really didn't want water getting in this hole and being trapped between the panels.

On to the last panel. The factory gives you a couple of aluminum supports to put under the floor panel. I took the liberty of adding a few more pieces to give the panel more support. I again went with the foam insulation panels between the alloy. Marking the rivet line is the not to hard as long as you traced the location of the x brace prior to installing the lower panel. The tricky part is getting the location of the aluminum x brace. My way around this was to use some strong 3M double sided tape. I simply put a couple of pieces of tape on the aluminum x brace then placed the alloy panel in the car. The tape held the bar in place an allowed me to remove the alloy panel flip it over and mark the location of the x brace. Simple but effective. Now that I had the location of all the x braces, I just marked the rivet lines has usual. There are several intersections you need to be aware of. You also need to keep in mind the location of the rivets in the passenger cabin side panels. You can see in the below picture I marked the rivet lines and the location of the rivet on the adjacent panel. When center punching the rivet locations fudging the 30mm spacing is once again needed to make the lines intersect nicely. Once the holes are center punched, drill and deburr. Put the panel back in the car and drill the holes in the frame. Well that's really it for all the panels, until I get the other panels back from the anodizer I really can't move on. I think I am going to take the last panel I just did and have it anodized black.

On to March 03 / Page 3