Disturbance in the Force
There has been a disturbance in the bodywork that requires attention. When the bodywork arrived it was very green and was parked on the workshop floor for preparation work. After being worked on in the workshop with the various temperature variations the nearside rear wheel arch has closed up by around 10mm.
Arch Gap Before Treatment.
This is going to take a bit of body wrestling to sort out. Targeting heat with heat guns and heating the workshop with space heaters and then setting the arch shape with blocks the arch was prepared for correction.
Heat Guns Mounted On a Plank.
4 hours of heating later the two heat shrink guns and paint stripper hot air gun along with the workshop heaters were all switch off and the workshop was allowed to cool gradually.
Two days later the arch blocks were removed and the gap measured. The target gap was 20mm and the initial measurement was 22mm which is great. But after a few more ours the gap had reduced to 18mm which was worrying. Measurements were taken over the next two days and thankfully the gap remained at 18mm.
Arch Gap After Treatment.
The only remaining problem was some small ripples that will need to be buffed out of the wheel arch. This seems to have occurred to to the gel coat not moving to the same degree as the GRP causing some distortion. This is only a minor distortion and should be easily corrected.
Click Onward to the Internal Smoking Session.