new fender retrofit problems

[gwarden]

I was able to mount the fenders at the rear bottom then pulled the passenger side towards the front and bolted it to the upper mount while pulling on it. Its not a perfect fit but not too bad

[Mechie3]

Copying from my build thread to see if I can't get some input here.

Side sails are mounted the same left to right relative to the frame at the front. Fenders are mounted to those (little triangle recess mates with the side sail, only fits one way). At the front the fender is mounted to the center insert with all the body lines lining up. Center insert is centered on the subframe. Once the hood is lined up at the front it fits like crap at the back unless I pull the passenger fender way out and push the driver fender way in. At the windshield the fenders were clamped and the distance from the edge of the windshield surround to the fender edge was the same. If I use the hood pins holes that were drilled previously for my old front end then the hood is 1" from even reaching the edge of the fender.

I've tried pulling and pushing on things but at this point all it's doing is putting stress on the fender/side sail junction. FFR told me that I just didn't have it centered (i've measured, it's centered on the frame....though, that might not mean much) and I just need to square it up.

Front looks nice


Rear looks....not so nice:

[ben1272]

Craig, I noticed that my adjusting got easier when I loosened pretty much ALL of the bolts holding the front brackets....this allowed up, down, in, out, and rotational tweaks of the fenders. I fought for a while, loosened these, and then it got easier. That said, I have not mounted mine yet, I was just doing a dry run.....but it looked promising. My radiator mount was swapped for a factory welded unit versus using the retrofit bolt on parts FFR supplied....dont know if this makes a difference. My kit is #352.

I can take pictures to show you what I have, if it would help.

-Ben

[Mechie3]

That pic with the hood was taken before things were bolted to the frame, I think. If I go too far left or right the subframe will hit the center. I'll have to swear it at...uh...work on it some more tonight. Some reference measurements or pics would be good.

[Frank818]

Holly damn crap WTF is that? That's way off. Even I was able to get things very acceptable in 1-2 shots. There will be some stress on the panels, but nothing that is overstress.

What's the height of the bottom front fenders wrt the 1.5" bottom frame tube right behind the wheels?

Your hood looks crooked to the left, the rear of the hood on the left side goes outside the windshield but on the right it's inside.

I think the front of your fenders is too much inside, you have no gap at all on the pictures but there should be some. I don't think you can squeeze the front of the fenders onto the nose insert, it's the other way around, stretching the nose insert to reach the fenders. How's your nose looking? I mean the one on the car, man.

[STiPWRD]

Craig, I followed the same method you did but let the hood fall into place at the end. I had to really push out the top back corners of the fenders to allow the hood to drop down. I'd ignore the old hood pin locations. I'm not completely finished with the gaps but close.
IMG955298.jpg

[Mechie3]

@STiPWRD: My hood pin locations are definitely off. If I reuse the old holes (that worked with the original nose) then the hood is >2" too short.

@Frank818: The fenders and center insert are now spot on as best they can be relative to each other. I did have to shift each side over about 1/8" from where I had them before. The body lines all line up with the exception of one spot there the center insert doesn't have the right angle. I talked to FFR and they said "you need to loosen everything up and get it all centered" to which I replied that the fenders were spot on with the side sails and center insert (so front and rear datums were set), everything else is floating, and the center insert is centered on the frame. To that they said "everything needs to float and be loose. And that you can’t base everything off the center front of the subframe. It’s gonna be more to one side or the other until you find the center for everything. " So....centered, but not centered, until it's centered.

Hard to get good pictures with the available lighting, but here's the best I have.

Hood lines up with drop line on insert (as per manual):


This is the one spot of the insert that doesn't line up perfect. The angle of the triangular cross section on the bumper is different than the angle on the triangular section on the insert. The insert has a wider included angle. The driver side angle is different and matches the bumper. It's low enough no one will notice so I stopped caring.


Driver side. Good match along the upper portion:


Lower portion pieces match very well too:


I wouldn't be so cynical about this if I wasn't an engineer (that used CAD/CNC/Mfg everyday) and for how much they touted their use of "the very latest technology to engineer new levels of performance" (quote from their website) and made a big deal of their "development partners Hewlett Packard and SolidWorks software" (from their youtube video caption).

3D CAD has been around since the late 1970's (it's not new). Solidworks has been around since 1993 (it's not new either). The whole point of CAD is better designs, easier updates and changes, better fitting parts, more complexity with less error, and smooth transition to manufacturing. Yet, it seems they took advantage of only part of that (and not the part that benefits the customer).

So far, most of the parts in the new front end have not fit well if held the standard of CAD designed parts, IMO. The side bumper supports (wings) can't go low enough as required in their manual (entire bracket and adjustment slots are 1" too short), the inner fender brackets don't fit in the cutout in the sheet metal if you put the brackets where FFR says to (why make a cutout for clearance if it's off by so much?). The side sheet metal is about 4" too tall for the fender (and that's with the fender being 1" too high because the side supports can't go low enough). Fenders aren't symmetric ( I've been told that the plugs and molds for the body were hand made). All of these issues (with pictures) are in my build thread.

Every new freshman mechanical engineer I know of took two classes their very first quater/semester: CAD and GDT. CAD: Everything is perfect. GDT: nothing is perfect, but here's how we make it work together anyways. Seems the GDT part got lost in favor of "let them fix it in the field". Sure, it's a kit car "build it how you want", and somethings are expected to require modifications, but there should be a limit. You could deliver a pile of raw material and say "it's a kit car, build it how you want" and technically not be wrong either. CAD means nothing if you can't manufacture parts to the form shown in CAD or if the parts don't fit together correctly in the CAD to begin with.

/soapbox. Don't mind me. Just needed to vent frustration with 30 minute tasks that end up taking weeks because "bolt up bracket A" translates to "cut bracket A in half, change spacing, reweld it so it fits, bolt up bracket".

[RM1SepEx]

Ouch, I had the same types of problems with my second set of body panels, You have to give up on even measurements and loosen, pull relocate etc to make it look good. Lose the tape measure and accept that the panels are NOT symmetrical as you would expect. Any yes like you the engineer in me struggled for hours that no matter what I did side to side I couldn't get it anywhere close to even.

[Frank818]

Craig did you need to pull, stretch and twist the insert? I had too, that's where I did the most compromise on bowing, twisting a panel.
Hood sits ok on fenders around windshield, now?

[Mechie3]

Craig did you need to pull, stretch and twist the insert? I had too, that's where I did the most compromise on bowing, twisting a panel.
Hood sits ok on fenders around windshield, now?

I attached the insert to the fenders with everything off the car. That way nothing was fighting me (except gravity and mismatches in those specific panels) and it was easier. Not so much twisting and pulling as needed more than 2 screws (used three per side plus 3 cleco clamps left on for a week) to pull the contours together. I couldn't make that one corner of the insert match because it is a three sided feature so is quite strong. All those pics above were taken at the same time the hood didn't fit.

I haven't had a chance to work on it since. Monday night I put my daughter to bed and fell asleep myself on her bed, woke up at 4am. Last night I had to box up some parts to ship and finish a CAD model for something else.