ordered my 22b arches today from a-b-w

had a look around a plastic company today as they had quite a bit of this ms polymer stuff instock, some of the tubes were claiming 20% flexibility even when hard.

spoke to darren at abw and he says the best stuff is a 2pack epoxy, so i`m thinking that around the join in the c pillar i will use something araldite and the rest i will use the white ms polymer adhesive (the only place i dont want it to flex a little is the join, the rest i`m not bothered about)

 

Done some more today...

Started to tidy up the inner rear wheel arch area on both sides..





Got both rear wings sorted also..
As the fibreglass panels can be a bit 'wobbly' (official technical term ), the best way to sort it is get some stopper on it..





Then put a guide coat on it,and get rubbin'...

 

really enjoying watching this unfold, keep up the good work

 

A few shots of the petrol flap area..





Also, one of the things I don't like about these type of rear arch conversions, is the loss of the door shut line.

But, one of the thngs I like about the 05 STi, are the little extra arch lips, so I got some fibreglass ones from Chargespeed, like this..





I plan on bonding them on, and simply cutting through where the door shut line is, to give the illusion of the rear arch line..

Well that's what I'm hoping anyway..

 

Do they fit on standard bodys mate

 

They do m8...

 

looking good m8 , nice to see someone else up to their knees in filler dust lol

 

Small update...

Got both rear wings into first coats of primer this week..










Also dragged the car outside to give the underside a good pressure wash off to get rid of any cr@p ready for the next stage of shell preparation, which I'm not looking forward to....removing all the existing underseal

 

LOL, cheers m8

 

The whole thing looks factory as soon as you get some primer on it

Really Impressed the way its coming together.

 

Neil... now I know why you took so long repairing my car ....you were working on yr own

 

OOPs sorry m8...

Which car was that...?

 

Hi Mike...

 

Got a bit more done yesterday..

The rear doors now have the arch extensions well and truly bonded on, and I have started to mock up the side skirt arrangement..





The arch kit doesn't come with any side skirts, as it is designed to use the existing WRX/STi skirts.
As I don't have either, I am thinking about using these Chargespeed T1 skirts. (Which helps, as I currently have these in stock )

They need a bit of modification, but once the rear arch lips are on, I think/hope they will look OK..

 

Looking good Neil, I do like wide arch with the fender flare on it. Still thinking of this wide arch myself, but................

S!

 

But what.................

All you need is to live on beans and toast, have no holidays, no beer, never go out at all for a year or so, and hey presto, enough cash to at least make a start...

 

... alot of work required and its my daily driver

just if those 6 numbers came up then it would be fine! lol

S!

 

looks awsome mate where do i get that arch kit...

 

think you should start a donation fund so we can see it completed by the end of this week
great thread and your doing a top job
keep it coming

 

Donations are more then welcome..

The arch kit can be got from here.. autobodyworks Subaru Bodywork

 

lo Neil

great work on the thread by the way

 

Not too keen on the way the side skirts look at the moment, maybe blend the lines of the front and rear of the skirts to follow the arch extensions... if you get what I mean?

Would match up the skirts properly then and they will look like they were part of the kit.

 

Looking good Neil . Not sure about the side skirts though m8 . Are you going for a wrc look or your own version

 

Not going for the out and out WRC look..

I am having a re-think on the side skirts at the moment, due to popular (un) demand...

Anyway, got some more done yesterday, and i will get some pics up later...

 

Nice one mate , i don't know how you find the time . mines still in pieces in the yard

 

That's a good thing Darren, it means you are busy earning money..

 

Managed to get the rear doors all sorted today..

Now that the arch extensions are bonded onto the original rear doors, the next job is to blend them in...

I've used a mix of fibreglass and filler (furry bog) to fill the gap initially.

The reasoning behind this, is that filler on its own has not got much actual strength, and is rather heavy. The fibreglass on the other hand has got its own strength, and is lighter than filler, so this mix will hopefully fill the gap, and not crack and fall out..





You can also see some masking tape on the doors in these pics...

The reason for this, is that I wanted the arch extensions blended into the doors, but with a definate line to show the change in body shape.

So I plotted an imaginary line, and masked it out.

I then applied filler over the whole arch extension upto this edge, and after a bit of sanding, ended up with this..





The next problem was the swage line that runs along the door.

Now if you look at a few of the previous pics, you can see that the swage line in the arch extensions does not quite match the one in the doors..

To cut a long, boring, time consuming, and stressful story short, I ended up actually cutting the existing swage line in the arch extension out, and fibreglassing a new one in, using a template that I made to ensure that the line contour was even..

After initial primer, I ended up with this result..





A lot better than before, and once this is blocked down several times, I'm pretty confident it will look like factory-ish..

Anyway, after seeing the car in so many bits for a while, I needed a bit of motivation, and needed to assess and inspect the final fit and gaps of all the kit...






Getting there..

Should hopefully get the car painted this week...

 

its nice comparing these two

awesome work

 

Good comparisons there m8..

Should have done that myself...


Cheers for the comments, odd as it may sound, good comments do tend to spur you on...

 

All I'm thinking is, I'm pleased that soebody isn't going to have to pay for this as the time it takes to do the stuff you never think of is quite extensive.

Hat off to you for having the patients.