REAR (EXHAUST) COVER

Fitting the rear deck lid looks like quite a simple job but time needs to be spent on trying to get the panel gaps as equal all round as you can (they will never be perfect so forget trying to be exact). I did find that the deck looked too small in width for the aperture at first but it soon became apparent that the two sides needed to be pulled 'out' with quite some force to meet the body correctly. It is for this reason that the front mounting plates especially need to be pretty stout, and also that they are affixed to the deck properly. I decided to fibreglass them in with P40 as anything else just won't be strong enough. You could get a bit of leeway with the rear mounts as theres no real force on them but seeing as I was glassing the fronts in I did the rears too.

For the front I drilled down into the chassis rails either side and thought I'd try tapping them 6mm. I say 'try' because theres not an awful lot of metal there to tap, but if it doesn't work properly I'll just drill out to say 7mm and just use a nut and bolt. To date they have been fine, I guess because theres no real 'pull' on the bolts, only a sideways one.

The rear mountings were fairly straightfoward. Once the front is located properly hold the rear of the lid up where it should be and offer up (I used 4) right angle brackets to it and the rear chassis rail that runs horizontally accross the back end. To hold them in place until being glassed in I used a spot of glue from a hot glue gun and once all 4 were in the correct place I removed the lid and glassed them all in properly. With the two front mounts and the four rear, the lid really is on there quite strongly which it needs to be as the bloody great rear spoiler gets mounted to it.

The picture below is the fully-finished article. You can see the 4 rear brackets that are used to support the rear edge of the cover. There are also 2 further brackets on the front edge which you can just about make out, either side of the central 'dip'. These 6 brackets are in addition to the two main ones at the front corners which bolts to the chassis. I decided to insulate the panel as the exhaust system is directly underneath it. The heatproof barrier is fairly expensive but is undoubtable cheaper than having to re-paint the lid if it all went wrong. I'm not sure if the heatproofing is really necessary but at least this way I don't have to worry about it.

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