Moving on, I attacked the nose aluminum install. The manual is great in that it doesn’t mention these 2 pieces at all! The half-oval curved piece fits into the underside of the nose, and the funky U shaped piece fits upside down over the top of the hood’s ‘mouth’ and attaches to the flat curved nose aluminum piece just described.

The U shaped piece does not fit as is – I cut 1.75″ off the entire back of the piece – sides and top – and slid it up from underneath. This took some patience and trial and error, but it went in. I only had to notch it out a little bit with the Dremel for the radiator bolts. The large curved underside piece had to be cut pretty extensively on the back end so it could clear the radiator/condenser walls when the hood was opened.

Once everything was fit in I drilled out everything and clecko’d it together. The nose underside has to be powdercoated yet, then I will rivet it all together.

After that, I found the window switch mounts that go in the console trim plate, so I cut out the holes in the center console for those switch plates.

Lots of stuff done today, so I will break everything up into a couple posts.

Started off getting the front body closeout panels installed. These little panels mount at the bottom-front of the doors to seal off the body from air flow. The pieces don’t fit very well, and are meant to slide behind the footbox aluminum. Oops, I already riveted those into place. No matter, though. I trimmed the closeout panels to fit better and riveted them in place. The driver’s side panel was modified a bit to close the body gap better. Both panels were sealed with silicone to fill in any gaps, etc. Ideally, you should install these with the doors off – pretty tricky to drill and rivet them into place with the doors mounted. I used a remote drill Dremel attachment to snake the 1/8″ bit in there.

With the body close-out panels in place I went back to check on how my louver mesh was looking. This turned out very nice – I trimmed the excess screen down now that everything was dry and stuck into place so that it looks cleaner.

I also assembled the side duct louvers made by Shane @ VRaptor Speedworks. Shane also made the AC blow relocation plenum that I used. These will be powdercoated and then adhered to the inside of the body with the 3M Panel Bonding Adhesive.

Finally, before moving onto bigger things, I installed the headlight covers that screw onto the headlight covers I installed previously. These allow access to the headlights, but keep them sealed off otherwise.

Today was pretty productive. First thing on the agenda was to install the headlight cover panels. The cover panels mount to a diagonal support that rivets into the underside of the hood, and into the bottom lip of the body. It took a while to figure out the proper angle for mounting this so that the headlight cover, when put in place, would not hit the back of the headlights, nor interfere with the tires when turned all the way left/right. After some trial and error I got the support bar clecko’d in place, drilled out and clecko’d the headlight cover, then riveted it all.

After doing the headlight covers I jacked the car up and pulled off the passenger rear tire. The wheel well closeout panels are pretty straight forward. I forgot to snap a pic of the well closed out before putting the tire back on, but I will get one later. I did not rivet the front rear wheel well panel in place yet as I have to assemble my side duct louvers, have them powdercoated, and then finally install them first. Didn’t feel like doing the driver’s side rear well today so I moved on to applying mesh to the fender louvers up front.

I used some aluminum mesh screen material and cut long oval pieces of mesh to fit over each louver vent under the hood. I sprayed the mesh black first before getting ready to install it. Once they dried I siliconed them in place and taped them up to dry/cure over night. These should look real nice when done, as well as prevent any big debris from coming up through the louvers and onto the hood, windshield, etc.

I received my harness bar earlier in the week and after having it powdercoated, I was ready to install it.  The harness bar (made by North Racecars) uses 2 mounting bolts on each side – one through the rear wall and into the 1″ frame the wall mounts to, and the already-present seat belt mount. I set the bar in place using the seat belt mount bolts, then drilled out the frame through the rear wall. Rivnuts then had to be installed for the harness bar bolts so I had to remove the fuel tank covers, engine covers, and one of the upper cockpit walls to get the wall out. Unfortunately, one of the rivnuts stripped out when removing the rear wall so I had to carefully cut the bolt head off to get the wall out, then cut the rivnut out. With that out of the way, and a good chunk of time wasted, I set in the new rivnuts and reinstalled everything. During the reinstall a rivnut in the wall for the passenger fuel tank cover stripped out, but I was able to get the bolt out and re-thread it with a tap. Good as new.  The harness bar, with the extra rivnuts in place, installed in about 30 seconds. Nice quality piece.

After doing the harness bar I riveted the defrost ducts in place on the center console.

Today was one of those days where it feels like its two steps forward, one step back. I pulled out the center console and cut out the fiberglass for the shifter, ac controls, and ignition, hazards, and fog light switches. Test fit them all and put the console back in. Oh, fun, the cable shifter box is overlapping the holes that the ignition, hazards, and fog switches mount in. Going to have to cut the shifter box out, trim the mounts a bit, and move it back down the tunnel an inch so that I can get the switches in there, and reweld it. Bit of a bummer since I was hoping to mount all the switches and shifter boot, etc. Turns out I wouldn’t be able to anyways, as the faceplate for the console calls for 2 separate window switches, and the mount that came with the kit is a dual switch mount, which cannot be separated to fit the individual mount slots on the console plate.

With the console taken as far as it could go, I turned my attention to the defrost ducts. Picked spots that I thought looked good by laying the aluminum trim rings on the dash edges of the center console, marked the holes and inside edge of the aluminum trim, then cut out the slots with the Dremel.  Once those were cut out I drilled out a hole on each side into the duct, clecko’d it, then drilled out the rest of the holes. Screens were then siliconed into place and taped for overnight curing. I decided to spray the aluminum trim rings a gloss black, as the raw aluminum seemed a bit much.

While the silicon cures and paint dries, I mocked up the seat belt mounts. Took some trial and error to realize that the belts work best swapped side-to-side (ie: driver belt on passenger side, visa versa). Would be nice if the manual mentioned this. I set them in place loosely since I need to everything apart for the harness bar mount (at the powdercoat shop right now), and for the harness belt mounts that will bolt on the seat belt mounts.

Taking a little break from working on the dash, I installed the door sill carpeting. Pretty straight forward. Plenty of trimming involved since I have the 1/2″ dynaliner and dynamat on the floor. Once the carpet was in place I installed the door sill aluminum pieces. I had my powdercoat guy give these a ‘brushed aluminum’ look with a nice clearcoat. They look pretty sharp. I didn’t want to ruin the look by riveting them into place like the manual would have you do, so I stuck them on with heavy duty double-sided adhesive tape.