Mounting Hood & Trunk
Doors go on the same way, kind of.
As of 11-19-05
This is not for the faint of heart. The doors, trunk and hood molds are rough and are oversized to allow shaving to fit the openings. A word of warning that comes from my mistake. Before fitting any of these pieces, bolt the body to the frame completely. The slight misalignment of the body makes a BIG difference in the spacing around the openings. This takes a lot of patience and time.
I began by mounting the trunk hinge. (Note: there is a plate that installs between the body and the hinge that is shaped like the piece in the front that the hood hinge mounts to. After I mounted the trunk, I found that the trunk hit the body when partially opened. The only choice that I saw was to put spacers between the hinge and the body to move the pivot back, or to modify the hinge to allow more space. I decided to modify the hinge and drill holes toward the front of the car and move the pivot back. Of course that meant that the holes that I had tapped were wrong and needed to be redone.
I had my partner (my son) to hold the trunk lid in the correct location while I was underneath marking the holes with a sharpie. This means that this needs to be done before the engine or gas tank is installed. The fiberglass has a metal plate that is formed into it for the purpose of drilling and tapping. Be sure and measure and use a socket or some other stop when drilling to keep from going all the way through. I used a deep socket that worked well.
Once I mounted the parts, I used tape to mark the edge so I could file or sand the edge and make the gap uniform. A wood rasp works good to rough the edges, then sand with a long board or block to finish the edges.
