Operation: Trackday

gnon18s · Jul 13, 2012

Here you can see how the trunk hinges need modified so they dont hang down into the new wheel well.

gnon18s · Jul 13, 2012

Added around 4" of material to space the stock sheet metal inboard. Im going for a clean factory-appearing look.

gnon18s · Jul 13, 2012

Stock wheel well looking at the rear seat area-

New rear well -

gnon18s · Jul 13, 2012

Instro84 · Jul 13, 2012

thats a pretty good mini tub i'll asume you doing a frame notch also?

gnon18s · Jul 14, 2012

Yes, I will be redoing the whole back half of the frame. I will be needing an additional 4-4.5" of clearance. I havent gotten that far yet, as of now the stock chassis and drive train are just sitting covered while ive been finishing the sheet metal work on the body.

THE BLACK MAMBA · Jul 14, 2012

What rim are you putting on in the rear? Simmons

gnon18s · Jul 14, 2012

The new wheels are Fikse "Profil 5S". I always loved Fikse's and I've seen them on a lot of legit road race cars so I know they are good enough for my thing. I thought about widening my Simmons but that would have been so expensive i decided to just start with a fresh set of Fikses and sell the Simmons since they still bring good money.

Fikse quality....

forcefed3.8's · Jul 14, 2012

Nicely done. I would do this to fit a 315/60 15 drag radial, but your workmanship is awesome. I am not much on making a car corner, but I love the look, and can appreciate the fabrication.

gnon18s · Jul 14, 2012

Thanks for the compliment. Ive always had two sets of wheels for the car, one for street and one for strip. After the car is finished I want to order a killer set of drag wheels with some type of drag radial. Then I can switch back and forth. If you look at the beginning of this thread you can see I had the Simmons 18's and a set of blacked-out Welds/Hoosiers. Everything will just be wider this time around.

motorhead · Jul 15, 2012

I love it. Nice to see someone doing their own work too!

gnon18s · Jul 15, 2012

Thanks. I couldnt afford to pay a shop to do all this work for me, I have a hard enough time affording some of these high-end parts.

gnon18s · Jul 16, 2012

Fully welded and ground

gnon18s · Jul 16, 2012

I wanted to close off the trunk area and add some stiffness to the body so I built a rear "firewall" out of 18ga steel.

gnon18s · Jul 16, 2012

I dont know how much you guys want to see, but this is one of several tedious things I had to do, The flanges of the fuel tank mounts needed to be swapped from one side to another. When stock, each mount has a "wavy" side and a "straight" side. I needed both wavy sides on one mount and both straight sides on the other mount to be able to center them on the trunk floor. I just cut one flange off each and swapped them. You can see here I started welding one back on where I needed it.

View attachment 165873

gnon18s · Jul 16, 2012

Quick round of filler to take care of imperfections and getting ready for Epoxy primer.

gnon18s · Jul 16, 2012

$150 worth of seam sealer, not very exciting but necessary.

Permagrin · Jul 16, 2012

Keep up the good work! Can't have too many pics of this project.

gnon18s · Jul 19, 2012

Finally got around to spraying the trunk and undercarriage. First I sprayed Epoxy primer (PPG DP90), then I sprayed everything in "Raptor" bed liner made by U-POL. The bed liner is tough stuff and is sprayed using a "Shutz" gun. Im really happy with the sheen and texture. Looks like factory, but better and stronger!(These pictures are spraying the epoxy with a 3M accuspray gun)