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Originally Posted by viperjim  hello people , not posted for a while and its time to get my finger out and spend some time on the viper. going to dummy fit the body so i can hang the doors boot and bonnet but i hav`nt a clue where to start . So questions ; 1/ WHERE DO I START ? |
Hi There!
That's a damn good question!
Where abouts are you located in the country? It may help you if you saw a Viper with the body already fitted.
My advice would not be to do so much of a dummy fit but do it properly. The bonnet and boot hangs off the body so just dummy fitting it may not help. It's pretty much the same with the doors but they hang off the chassis and not the body.
I would be tempted to look at it something like this :-
Put the body on the chassis
Choc up the front (under the oil cooler aperture) so that the front is the correct height
Do the same with the rear end
Centre the wheels in the arches as best you can front to back
Centre the body across the wheels front and back
Check and double check ALL measurements
make sure that the sides of the body (that fits along the chassis rails) actually touch the chassis rails. If they do not then when you press them in then the body will pinch and the shape will change.
Ride height will affect the wheels in the arches and if it's anything like mine was (I had been supplied the wrong suspension) then it may even look like a 4x4! I actually had to cut my body in half and lengthen it by nearly two inches just to get the wheels centred in the arches.
I would spend a lot of time doing this and a lot of time looking at how it looks. Once you're happy with it then I'd drill some holes in the side of the chassis/body for rivets, add some bonding compound and rivet it on.
The front end will require some brackets making and welding to the chassis. I had some made and fitted to where the front nudge bars mount. I then riveted the front of the body to those brackets. I also made some supports and welded those to the chassis to cradle the body just behind the centre of the front wheel. I fibreglassed those supports into the body. More supports were welded to the chassis just behind the door aperture. These were riveted and fibreglassed into the body. These were so that when getting in and out of the car you could just about put your whole weight on the body at the point just above where door striker goes (kind of hard to explain so let me know if you want some more info on that). I then fibreglassed the rear end of the chassis to the body.
Once all the inner wheel arches are fibreglassed in it becomes a pretty rigid body! Then you can start looking at the doors, bonnet and boot. I threw away the Viper door hinges because they were SH1T! and instead modified some AK hinges to suit. More info can be supplied if needed. Make sure you fibreglass the bonnet hinge into the body before you fit the body to the chassis. A quick idea here is to assemble the bonnet/hinges etc. and position in the bonnet opening (shim if required to get the fit right). Then go under the body and fibreglass the hinge to the body. Make sure that the bonnet will open properly before going too far with this. It might be better to do a temp fit with some P40 first, set your hinge lengths and positions and then fibreglass the hinge in position.
Let me know if you want more info, or if you're local then you're welcome to call round and have a look.
Hope this helps!