fbekholden.com

That's awesome , great work mate - do you mind if I steal your idea for the 2 door ???

That is just the sort of "is that stock or modified??" subtle mod that really gets the crowd guessing.

Mebbe two little (4”?) contrails back from each budgie wing tip?

Cheers,
Harv

Blacky wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 9:07 am That's awesome , great work mate - do you mind if I steal your idea for the 2 door ???

That is just the sort of "is that stock or modified??" subtle mod that really gets the crowd guessing.

Go for it - it is exactly that subtle mod that I am after

Harv wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 9:33 am Mebbe two little (4”?) contrails back from each budgie wing tip?

Cheers,
Harv

That was kinda the original plan - well a lot less subtle than what your suggesting. When the bonnet was hanging in storage I taped blue lines following the 3 tips of the bird to the back of the bonnet to get a visual on what it might look like with a twin bulge set into the bonnet. Closest visual to that would be the bonnet of an RX-8 - it's embossed into the bonnet rather than sitting up proud. But that would require more than hand tools.

Will have a look at the contrails.... hmmmm

Errol62 wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 8:55 am Anyway, a thorough skim bog will have it looking smooth as Stephen’s scone in no time……..

Did a separate post on how I made these overriders - https://www.fbekholden.com/forum/viewto ... 61#p275061, but I'll put the final results here as well as a reminder to me

Let’s set the way back machine to Jan 24 - I was not 100% happy with these corners https://www.fbekholden.com/forum/viewto ... 13#p268713 So I tried a bit of persuasion Also the gap near the top on the passenger side was still not right, and there is a slight hump half way down the deck. Out with the grinder. Again. And the gap to the parcel shelf is still too wide and a little high. So while I’m here and the grinder is handy…. It’s a large gap, not sure I like the idea of filling it with weld, but with the boot back on it is looking (mostly) better. Then I lifted the boot up. I straightened that, then whilst attempting to weld it back together I managed to weld the boot to the parcel shelf instead Basically a shit show. Grind the weld off, remove the boot lid, tools down, walk away.

For about 15 months.

Came back from a holiday in April and actually had the motivation and a new welder to finally fill this mess in. Apart from being even wavier, not sure I really did that much in the end. Was so over it that I didn’t have the heart to re fit the boot lid to check the gaps.

Until the other day…..
It’s okay.

But this is not. WTF. Bit hard to tell in the photo but there is s 4-5mm hump on the passenger side rear quarter. Yes the same hump I cut out in attempt 2 at gapping this side. Tried hammering it down but the lip for the rubber, plus all the weld I have added is making it move in all the wrong places. So form a new plan. Remove the existing passenger side lip and use the boot lid edge as a guide to make a new section for the rear 3/4 panel. Me thinks I could have saved A LOT of time using this approach from the start.

Bend a bit of 1mm 90 degrees Get a profile from the drivers side. This dolly was a lucky fit. Use powerful and flap disk on the grinder to create profile in a bit of hardwood. Tap Tap Tap…….

Use the shrinker to bend the straight side of the 90 to profile the subtle curve of the boot. Use the stretcher to curve around the top of the boot. Cut out the boot lip for final fit. Scribe a line around the piece, cut with a 1mm cutoff disk and fine tune with the die grinder/powerfile/roloc disk. With the panel relaxed you can see how much it wants to bend up. Doesn’t take much force to push back down, so decided to go for it. Hammering each tack to help keep the two sides in line as I go. Fully welded in. Used air to keep things cool but as there is so much shape in this area to hold things in place there is very little distortion.

Grind, hammer and dolly to get out a couple of waves, and I’m calling this one a win. Just need to weld the boot lip back in and I’m done with the repairs on the boot. Only took 3 years.

Damn.

nice work

Wow. Very impressive work Scott.


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Outstanding work Scotty

Nice work Scotty. Sometimes you gotta walk away, pause and reset your approach. You got there in the end with a good result.

Stephen

Hey thanks all for your support!

Been scratching my head trying to come up with a place to store the spare wheel since the original position got deleted with the mustang tank upgrade.

Option 1 - The simple option. Strap it to the floor on top of the tank and put the battery box on the passenger side of the car.
Option 2 - The harder option. Mount the spare wheel on a stand so that it slides up and under the lip of the boot, with the battery behind it, making sure that at no point the wheel can fall on the battery or, more importantly, touch the terminals.

Only way to find out if option two is even possible is to mock it up.
Wheel does fit - just, on a jaunty 40 degree angle. Take a bunch of measurements and it’s off to the computer for a bit of 3D.

There were lots of iterations and changes as this progressed which I won’t bore you all with. It ended up being the 3rrd version I designed and by far the simplest - a post, bolted to the chassis, with a tilting/sliding top that is bolted to the rim, and when in its final position, 1 bolt at the bottom locks the post to the slider.

Added a frame to mount the battery behind it, which ended up needing to lay on its side for clearance. Need to get an AWG battery for that as they can be mounted in (almost) any position. In this case I am looking at an Optima Red Top 25 which is W 173, L237, H194, 15KG, 720CCA, 44Ah and weighs 15kg

First things first. Need to strengthen the chassis with some crush tubes, so I made a couple for the stand, and a couple more for the rear sway bar as well, which did not have them, and (surprise) had crushed the metal where it was bolted down previously. Used 1.6mm sheet for this
X marks the spot for where the centre of the load is for the wheel, which is just on the outside edge of the chassis .
Didn’t grab many pics of the building, but it was mainly made out of scrap 50mmx 6mm angle, 50x 6mm flat bar, some 1.6mm cold rolled for the top battery clamp, 40mm x 40mm x 5 RHS for the post, and I had to buy a length of 25mm x 3mm angle for the battery base and 6.25mm gal rod for the for the battery clamp.

Here is one of the sliding/tilting head for the top of the post, all clamped up temporarily on what will become the main post, to keep it all squared when welding. First fitting. Tacked the post the angle and bolted it in. Had to do a bit of shimming to get it to not touch the side of the car. Not super happy at this stage as the whole thing had a bit of flex even with the bolts tight, so went ahead and extended the base and added the frame for the battery. In one of the many test fits I discovered that although the battery does to touch the tyre/rim when locked in place, when you are removing/re installing the spare it would be fouling on the battery.

So back to 3D and come up with a solution. Battery has to be on an angle. Cut the frame, add some filler and extra bracing.