First Job - Strip & Protect
Finally it was time to start my GBS build.
Obviously the first thing I wanted to do was jump straight into bolting on parts and moving it closer to being a car but I decided that there was a much more pressing job that needed doing.
This is how the car came from the GBS factory. Looks lovely but has a lot of panels on it that are not needed (or even practical) for the early stages of the build.
So my first task was to remove:
- Nose cone
- Transmission tunnel
- Scuttle
- Bonnet
This was along with the painted but not fitted parts such as the front and rear wings and the dashboard.
These all needed storing somewhere safe, luckily my garage has a handy loft area perfect for the task.
But I hit a major snag when I realised the bonnet would not fit through the loft hatch. After a bit of head scratching, I settled on building a wooden frame to hand the bonnet from the garage roof.
With the easily removable parts safely in storage, I could now see the chassis at least!
I know from experience that you spend a lot of time leaning against or clambering into the kit car while you are building it, so I needed a way to protect my shiny (and very expensive) paint job.
After a put of research, I settled on thin foam tiles (laminate floor underlay) available from my local B&Q.
I decided I could use these interlocking tiles to make a thin layer of protection between the pain and the outside world. It will not stand up to much but should prevent small scratched from belt buckles etc.
I simply worked my way round the car, cutting templates and sticking them over the painted panels. I avoided any tape on the paint itself, only on the chassis but even so, I used Frog Tape (which is expensive but worth it) which should not cause any residual stickiness even if the tape is on there for several months.
Finally, I used some foam pipe insulators (also from B&Q) to run along the top of the exposed chassis rails as I know I will be leaning into the car a lot as the build progresses.
So by the end of my first session on the garage, absolutely nothing had been done to progress the car and it look considerably less like a car than it had at the beginning of the day. Time for a coffee!