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How are these nose panels supposed to line up?
I have an 818 kit with the "early" nose (Camry headlights) and I'm using an 818C roof. We've got the rest of the body panels lined up OK, but the nose is very confusing because everything interferes with everything else.
First, we found that the lip on the lid was far too thick, so even when we had it properly seated on the flanged sides of the fenders, it stood up WAY too far. We trimmed this to reduce interference, trimmed the A-pillars back, and yet this is the best we've been able to get it to fit (see pictures).
Basically, with the lid far back enough to line up nicely with the rear edges of the fenders, it seems like it's a good 2" too long! Those of you who have built cars using the "early" nose, how did you deal with this?
Does the "late" nose with the componentized headlights fit any better than this disaster?
Front edge right 2.jpg
Rear edge left.jpg
Rear edge right.jpg
Front edge right.jpg
Front edge left.jpg
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Senior Member
Hi Lemming104
Don't feel bad. A lot of people have had problems putting together this 3d puzzle. Including me.
Trying to get it all to line up on the car is very difficult. So I decide to move it off the car to get everything line up.
To date I have not trimmed or sanded anything. my hood does sit about 1/4" high.
I made a video on my process. You should watch.
I had my hood, fenders, bumper and headlights all screwed and taped together when I put it on the car. Here is a picture of my front end:
hood.jpg front.jpg front2.jpg
Last edited by Bob_n_Cincy; 07-28-2019 at 06:05 PM.
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1. I swear my hood shrunk. No matter what I tried, I had a 1.5" - 2.0" gap on one side of the hood where it would meet the fender near windshield surround. To fix this, I ended up trimming some of the fender away so it would tuck underneath the windshield surround. I ended up trimming quite a bit. This got rid of the massive gap to an amount that I am currently happy with. HOWEVER, I have not yet mounted the doors, so I might end up having to do some more trimming to clear the door. I was going to mount the doors, but everyone said to wait and do that very last for the body mounting, so wish me luck when I get to that part!
2. For the hood overbite / too long issue, I trimmed a decent amount off the pointed tips on each side of the hood near where it meets the windshield surround. Without that, I had the same issue you did. I was scared doing so, but it turned out alright. Before trimming, the pointed tips were laying down on top of the windshield surround and no way it was going to sit flat or fit underneath it.
This is just my experience. Be sure to test, measure, double-check before trimming anything. Like I said, I was shaking when trimming some of this stuff, hoping that I had the right idea and it would turn out. Hopefully I made the right choice :/
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It seems like one of the key points is in Bob's video. On the "old" nose, the headlight buckets are not actually wide enough to fill the corresponding gaps in the bumper cover. The way they show them being attached in the manual will not work, particularly the area you can see in the thumbnail image for Bob's video--that long "tab" is shown in the manual as overlapping the corresponding piece of fiberglass. Not only can you not do this, it is probably necessary to use a spacer, as shown in the video.
We refitted the headlights to the front bumper off the car per the description in the video, and it looks like things are probably going to line up at least a bit better now.
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