Sneak Peek

I bid on a fibreglass widearch kit for my BMW recently. I set myself a limit and lost the auction. Hey - Ho, nevermind. I was about ot travel up to Peter Lloyd Rallying to measure up a set of Mk2 Escort fibreglass tarmac arches to see if they could be altered to fit ther E30, when I received an email from the the guy auctioning the M3 kit. Turns out the person who won the auction was full of B.S. and didn't have any intention of buying them. A quick Sunday morning trip up to Shrewsbury and the M3 replica widebody kit is mine. A brand new one from Smith and Deakin is £1000. I didn't pay anywhere near that, but f*ck all fits as it should on the one I bought - yet! Here's couple of sneak peek pics of the NSF arch with fibreglass wide arch kit fitted (one screw holding it).

Sorry looking, but a solid shell!

Well, she's back from Brian's workshop and a shed load of cutting, fabricating and welding has been done. All in all, Brian spent a full 35 hours working on the car. I'm more than pleased with what he did for me.

She may be a little sorry looking now, but underneath she's got a solid, rust-free shell. We didn't try to save the paint as I've decided that I'm going to respray the whole car once all the body work is complete. I'm thinking works BMW touring car colours from the Warsteiner period.

Here's the roof minus it's sunroof. The motor, mechanism and rails were cut out. The metal outer skin of the sunroof was then tacked back in a skim of filler dabbed on to finish it off. Putting the outer skin of the metal suroof back in was a complete nightmare because there was a 6 mm gap all the way round its perimeter where a rubber seal used to be. A thin strip of metal had to be formed and welded all the way round to fill the gap! All in, about 7 kgs of metal and other crap were shaved off - a good weight saving high up on the car. Hopefully it'll help lower the car's centre of gravity too.

Here's pic of the roof panel from inside the car. There should be plenty of room for the roll cage now.

The holes in the scuttle panel at the bottom of both A Pillars were welded up and skimmed.

Inner door skins were cut out and the door handles repositioned into the top rear corner of the door. we didn't bin the locks as I want the car to lock securely when she's finished - extra peace of mind when she's parked up overnight on the trailer in hotel car parks/event paddocks.

These new inner door handle mounts were fabricated from scratch. The catch should be located halfway along the door.

The Warsteiner E30 BMW Touring car from the early 1990's. This is the colour scheme I'm going to go for once the body work is all done. I'm going to put this garage wall to keep my motivation high!