Rear Arches

My target for today was to get the rear wheel arches fitted.  First thing to do was to lay out the arch and decide how many fastenings to use.  I came up 3 inches from the bottom edge of the arch, front and back, and then spaced out at between 6 and 7 inches to give me a final total of 7 fixings.  Looking at some images I had taken at the factory, this seemed about right.  I also measured in 1 inch from the out edge to keep everything neat.

Once these were marked out, I drilled 6mm holes for the M6 x 20 hex bolts to fit through.  I also used large M6 repair washers to help spread the load out.  Once drilled, the arch can be offered up to the car.  This is quite awkward and is best done initially with the wheel in place.  The lower edge of the front of the arch should sit flush with the bottom of the chassis rail and the lower edge of the rear of the arch should do the same with the bottom of the rear panel.  I used some masking tape on the arch to then mark on the body where the arch should sit.

Next, remove the wheel so you can get access under the arch.  Offer the arch up again try and mark through the holes on to the body where the rivnuts need to be.  This is a very fiddly job, especially if you try and do it single handed (like I did!!).  If you have 1 or even 2 helpers to hold things in place it will help.  It would also help to do the job out side where you have a bit more room around the car and can stand back and line the arch up by eye.  The method I employed was to drillthe 2 lowest holes at 6mm and used 2 M6 .x 20 hex bolts to hold the arch in place whilst I marked the other holes.

Anyway, once the holes are marked, they can be drilled out to fit the rivnuts and you end up with a panel that looks a little bit like this.

Next job to tackle is the tadpole trim that sits between the arch and the bodywork.  This will need a lot of V cuts putting it it so it goes round the curve and also cut out where the rivnuts are.  Once this is done, the arch can be fitted losely, to allow for the trim to be slotted in.  Once the trim is fitted, the whole thing can be tightened up.

Repeat the whole process for the other side and you end up with the following result.

And here is a view from the rear.  It may look a bit lop sided but I think that is more the photographer and not the car!!

I still have the lights to fit but the rear end is now getting close to being completed.

The final task I did today was to remove the clutch from the engine so that I could fit the spigott bearing.  This has to be fitted to the Zetec engine to match up with a rear wheel drive gearbox, in my case, the MT75.  This was straight forward although the spigott bearing does have to be taped in with a hammer.

Next time I will move on to the front of the car.