Wheel Arch Modification

When the car had the proper 106 Maxi suspension fitted it extended the wheel base and meant that the front wheels no longer sat squarely within the wheel arches as they had with a standard suspension position and the Dimma body kit.

This meant that at full suspension drop the tyre on the wheel made contact with the front bumper which explains why it was damaged. If you look at Maxi rally cars they have big tyre gaps around the front arches because they’ve been modified to compensate for this. You can see this on Dave Hunt’s 106:

So the undertaking was increase the size of the wheel arches and repair the damage to the bumper. Bit of an undertaking that I had been putting off, but it was time to bit the bullet and crack on. Along the way it was time to look at how the bumper and wings were fitted and try and improve the panel gaps.

Having marked it out and cut the sections off, the plan was to bond the cuts offs, which included a return which added some structural rigidity back on the inside. This was the situation post cut, a bit rough around the edges and needing to be smoothed out.

I bought a carbon fibre rapid repair kit from Easy Composites, it’s designed for trackside repairs and has everything needed for small repairs. Having done a fair bit of fibreglass work back in my teenage years and having worked with epoxy resins a fair bit since then I was up for giving it a go.

First off both wings off. They’d been pop riveted on and part of the mission was to revert to using the standard mounting points so that there was adjustment on the wings for panel gaps. To get those panel gaps right, both wings needed spacing off the wing mounts on the shell. I ordered some nylon for this:

And made up the spacers. These were then bonded onto the wing mounting points.

Before they could be fitted or anything else done, it was time for some cleaning. They’d not been touched since Gatebil.

They were filthy inside covered in a combination of Rudskogen Motorsenter dirt, rubber crumbs and oil. First job proper clean and degrease. The other one was the same, but not the subtle differences in the layup around the inside of the arch lip.

The differences come from where the honeycomb core is laid in to the panel. I needed to chop some of this out to get back to the single skin to bond on the arch lip returns.

Bonded on (some finishing required). Note the extra section added at the top of the arch.

Some making good on the inside too. Then it was on to repairing where the panels had been riveted on and creating the mounting slots for the original wing fixing points.

Looks messy but it will all clean up at the end.

The near side wing had originally be drilled for a battery cut off and fire extinguisher buttons, but I have a different plan and these were deleted with some filler repairs.

Repairs done, there was a fair bit of work on panel fitment, but we are in a much better place now. This was at some point of working on the finishing.

This has solved the tyre to bodywork clearance issue. All the photos are from one side, but both are done. Likely to be coming back to bodywork in a future update.