Fitting the underneath panels. We really should have done this early on in the build, as it is more convenient of we can turn the empty chassis upside down. Since we had the engine out anyway to do the starter motor and propshaft, we decided to do the footwell, and seat panels as well. This shot shows Ryan drilling the rivet holes with the Cleco pins holding the driver's side footwell panel in place. We are also fitting a propshaft cover, but this is screwed in to rivnuts, so we will fit the rivnuts, and fit the panel after the engine and propshaft ( and handbrake) are in place and working. The cleco pins make the job a lot easier. Wish we had an air rivet gun though!

The Westfield manual recommends a spacing of 50mm between the rivets for the floor panels. I was hoping to have aircraft quality rivets for the floor panels, but they weren't available at the time. We applied a 3mm bead of Sikaflex all round before fastening the panel on. The Sikaflex is pretty messy to work with, but it seems to do the job, as the panel is nice and tight. We used a bent piece of ali as a template to draw a line 10mm in from the edges, then made indents in the template at 50mm intervals for the holes. So far, it's fairly neat.

This shows the floor panels completed. The rivets for the under-seat panels are applied from the top down. The cover for the prop shaft is attached by screws into rivnuts (nutserts), so it can be easily removed. There must be an easier substance to work with than Sikaflex. That stuff is awful. It sticks to everything, is difficult to work with, and is expensive to boot. Anyway, the panels are looking pretty good so far.

Here is the passenger side panel going on. Cleco's are great. I fixed the position of the panel, and clamped it while I drilled two or three holes for the cleco pins. They held the panel in place securely while I went around and drilled and cleco'd the rest of the holes. Many of the holes for this panel were drilled from the inside, after I had marked the position of the cross braces on the inside face of the panel.

We have now got the rear panel in place, and this picture shows the side quarter panels going in. The live axle version of the Westie has these panels going on the inside of the frame, but the IRS version has them on the outside. We had to trim the panels, cut holes for the trailing arm bolts and seat belt mount, and then bend 25mm from the rear at 90 degrees to mount against the rear. So all in all, quite a lot of modification needed for this item.

This is another shot of the rear panel with the quarter panels in place. The rear and passenger side quarter panels have been bonded and rivetted, and the driver's side quarter panel is held in place by cleco pins. Once again, I am amazed at how useful these things are. I only wish we had a pneumatic or power rivet gun! Anyway, it is looking quite finished now. We still need to get rubber grommets or seals to cover the holes cut for the trailing arm bolts, which intrude into the cockpit about 5mm.