Boot lid
We probably need to file away some parts of the lip edge around the boot where the rubber sits in order to get the lid to sit flush with the body. So fit the rubber trim and mark where it needs to be relieved to get the lid to sit flush. I had to cut a fair amount away from the rear section. Be aware that where the lid protrudes it may not be right under there that the edge needs trimming. The lid can be held proud by an edge that needs filing down some inches away.
The boot lock, handle and hinges are from SandJ.
The hinges are slightly different left and right. Fit them so the upper surface of the hinge is horizontal. The surface they sit on falls away with the curve of the boot lid. Fit them nine inches either side of the centre line you have managed to work out and draw down the centre of the car.
You'll be wanting to fit the handle dead centre of the boot lid. So work out just what is dead centre and drill the hole. Open up to suit the boss at the back of the handle and make the small cutouts for the locating lugs. I bonded two nuts with washers on the inside of the lid so I didn't have to use self tap screws which may not be very robust.However if you do want to use self tap screws, you will need to grind or cut the small locating lugs off. Now you only need to drill the round hole for the handle, as close as possible so as to leave enough meat in the fibreglass to take a couple of self tap screws to hold the handle on.
There may also be a possibility to drill and tap two holes into the lock mechanism so you can insert screws all the way through and screw into solid metal but I would need to take the thing apart to check if that is viable and I'm not doing that now it is all in place. The AK preference is to cut the small lugs off and drill for self tap screws. Apparently if the bonded nuts come loose when the handle is removed for painting it causes a fair amount of angst when putting it back again.
Behind where the lock sits there is a box section built into the lid. In here we will fit the lock mechanism.
The position is dictated by the position of the square peg from the handle. Looking at the lock mechanism the square hole for the peg is offset, so it is a bit awkward to fit the bracket. It just about fits, the box could do with being slightly wider.
To make the fitting easier, I welded two nuts to the lock mechanism so I didn't have to cut the hole in the box so large as to fumble with loose nuts inside. When I do this again I'll weld the nuts to the other side of the plate which would make more sense.
If you cut the square peg to size before fitting, you won't need to drill right through the box section. After cutting down the square peg I filled in the hole ready for painting.
The catch that the arm locks into is mounted back up against the rear edge. In fact I had to cut a small section away to get it to sit back enough for the arm to properly engage.
Gas struts
I went a bit off message here. AK can supply gas struts and all the brackets to fit the bonnet and boot.
There are two reasons I went my own way on this and one of them is about doing stuff myself if I can. And as it turns out, I could. So I did. So there.
From SGS Engineering:
Two gas struts GSV6-150
Four 10mm metal ball stud T4
We need some brackets. For the bottom brackets I made a wire template to get the shape of the bracket which fits under the rim of the rain channel.
The resulting bracket looks a lot like this.
Two holes drilled for the screws that will attach through the rain gutter, and one 8mm hole for the lower ball joint.
Fix in place by bonding with P38 and two screws. I was going to pop rivet but the nose of my new expensive rivet gun was too wide to get into the rain channel.
The brackets are made from 1.6mm thick stainless polished to give a brushed metal look. For positioning follow the guidelines from Jon's video in the member's area on the AK web site. So from the front edge of the boot, measure longitudinally back 16 and a half inches and mark this across on the left and right edges of the boot. Line up the middle of the bracket and fix in place with the P38 and rivets/screws.
For the top bracket I tried a number of solutions and ended up with this:
The bracket is in two pieces which are welded together. An 8mm hole is drilled for the 10mm ball joint and two small holes for self tap screws to go into the rib on the underside of the boot lid. I was going to bind this as well with P38 but the fit was so solid I left it with just the two screws. Not sure if the spray shop will want to remove them when they spray the inside of the lid.
Mark on the body the centre line of the bottom bracket. Shut the lid and measure 10 inches back and mark the lid. Open the lid and fit the bracket so the centre line of the bracket is on the mark. If you have made the bracket correctly it should be a tight fit on the rib of the lid. Secure with two self tap screws and fit the strut
As before, the bracket is polished to a brushed metal look.
The gas rams need some gas bleeding out, quite a lot actually but do it equally on both struts and open the grub screw for a second at a time. It needs quite a push to get the strut to move so don't let too much out. Fit the struts and then fine tune it by letting gas out half a second at a time until the lid will close with a push. When the lid opens, you may find one strut reaches full extension before the other. So you may need to slightly adjust the position of one of them so they both reach full extension together.
If you do go too soft, return the strut to SGS and they will refill for around half the price of a new one.
Bonnet
I've gone a bit alternative with this. Gas rams on a bonnet? How very ostentatious.
As with the boot lid we need to fit the rubber surround and work out where to relieve the edge so the bonnet fits flush all round. I did this with the bonnet attached to the hinge that comes with the body so I could understand the final placement of the bonnet. Take notice of the front edge of the bonnet as you open and close. It may come close to or actually interfere with the body. The hinge is adjustable for location and it is obvious to move it rearward to increase the front gap if necessary. But there is more to it. The hinge can also be made to vary its location vertically, the holes it locates in are quite large and allow for a fair bit of movement. Moving the hinge vertically alters the profile of curve the bonnet will describe as it opens. So moving it up will increase the amount of vertical movement before it starts to move forward on its journey around the curve. This will help it clear the body in the first few inches of opening.
Bonnet locks. First decide what lock cams you want to use. There are two types. One long, the other short.
The short one means you will need to fit a bracket that extends a little way into the engine bay as the lock has to be set in a certain position through the rib in the bonnet. That being so, the short cam isn't long enough to reach under the rain gully.
I used the long version. But if you do, note that there is a possibility that if the bonnet happens to be shut with the locks in the 'engaged' position, they could mark the paintwork on the body.
To avoid that I found I could position the handles far enough back so the cams just close down inside the body, but still protrude far enough to locate themselves under the rain gully.
So. mark and drill the holes for the handles, open up and cut the small cutouts for the locating pegs.
Be careful to get the square peg appearing through the ribbed section under the bonnet so you have room enough to set the fixing screws with nuts.
On one side the hole for the screw was on the edge of the curved rib so I had to shape the nut to fit the curve and then tighten the screw from above while holding the nut in place. But the finish looks ok.
Fit the locking cams and trim the square peg to size.
The position is dictated by the position of the square peg from the handle. Looking at the lock mechanism the square hole for the peg is offset, so it is a bit awkward to fit the bracket. It just about fits, the box could do with being slightly wider.
To make the fitting easier, I welded two nuts to the lock mechanism so I didn't have to cut the hole in the box so large as to fumble with loose nuts inside. When I do this again I'll weld the nuts to the other side of the plate which would make more sense.
Gas struts
I went a bit off message here. AK can supply gas struts and all the brackets to fit the bonnet and boot.
There are two reasons I went my own way on this and one of them is about doing stuff myself if I can. And as it turns out, I could. So I did. So there.
From SGS Engineering:
Two gas struts GSV6-150
Four 10mm metal ball stud T4
We need some brackets. For the bottom brackets I made a wire template to get the shape of the bracket which fits under the rim of the rain channel.
The resulting bracket looks a lot like this.
Two holes drilled for the screws that will attach through the rain gutter, and one 8mm hole for the lower ball joint.
Fix in place by bonding with P38 and two screws. I was going to pop rivet but the nose of my new expensive rivet gun was too wide to get into the rain channel.
The brackets are made from 1.6mm thick stainless polished to give a brushed metal look. For positioning follow the guidelines from Jon's video in the member's area on the AK web site. So from the front edge of the boot, measure longitudinally back 16 and a half inches and mark this across on the left and right edges of the boot. Line up the middle of the bracket and fix in place with the P38 and rivets/screws.
For the top bracket I tried a number of solutions and ended up with this:
The bracket is in two pieces which are welded together. An 8mm hole is drilled for the 10mm ball joint and two small holes for self tap screws to go into the rib on the underside of the boot lid. I was going to bind this as well with P38 but the fit was so solid I left it with just the two screws. Not sure if the spray shop will want to remove them when they spray the inside of the lid.
Mark on the body the centre line of the bottom bracket. Shut the lid and measure 10 inches back and mark the lid. Open the lid and fit the bracket so the centre line of the bracket is on the mark. If you have made the bracket correctly it should be a tight fit on the rib of the lid. Secure with two self tap screws and fit the strut
As before, the bracket is polished to a brushed metal look.
The gas rams need some gas bleeding out, quite a lot actually but do it equally on both struts and open the grub screw for a second at a time. It needs quite a push to get the strut to move so don't let too much out. Fit the struts and then fine tune it by letting gas out half a second at a time until the lid will close with a push. When the lid opens, you may find one strut reaches full extension before the other. So you may need to slightly adjust the position of one of them so they both reach full extension together.If you do go too soft, return the strut to SGS and they will refill for around half the price of a new one.
Bonnet
I've gone a bit alternative with this. Gas rams on a bonnet? How very ostentatious.
As with the boot lid we need to fit the rubber surround and work out where to relieve the edge so the bonnet fits flush all round. I did this with the bonnet attached to the hinge that comes with the body so I could understand the final placement of the bonnet. Take notice of the front edge of the bonnet as you open and close. It may come close to or actually interfere with the body. The hinge is adjustable for location and it is obvious to move it rearward to increase the front gap if necessary. But there is more to it. The hinge can also be made to vary its location vertically, the holes it locates in are quite large and allow for a fair bit of movement. Moving the hinge vertically alters the profile of curve the bonnet will describe as it opens. So moving it up will increase the amount of vertical movement before it starts to move forward on its journey around the curve. This will help it clear the body in the first few inches of opening.
Bonnet locks. First decide what lock cams you want to use. There are two types. One long, the other short.
The short one means you will need to fit a bracket that extends a little way into the engine bay as the lock has to be set in a certain position through the rib in the bonnet. That being so, the short cam isn't long enough to reach under the rain gully.
I used the long version. But if you do, note that there is a possibility that if the bonnet happens to be shut with the locks in the 'engaged' position, they could mark the paintwork on the body.To avoid that I found I could position the handles far enough back so the cams just close down inside the body, but still protrude far enough to locate themselves under the rain gully.
So. mark and drill the holes for the handles, open up and cut the small cutouts for the locating pegs.
Be careful to get the square peg appearing through the ribbed section under the bonnet so you have room enough to set the fixing screws with nuts.
On one side the hole for the screw was on the edge of the curved rib so I had to shape the nut to fit the curve and then tighten the screw from above while holding the nut in place. But the finish looks ok.Fit the locking cams and trim the square peg to size.
You need to know however that as with the boot lock, the AK preference is to use self tap screws into the surface of the bonnet having cut the small locating lugs away so as to leave enough area to drill a small hole to fit the self tap screws. Again, you need to decide how robust that is going to be. The issue with drilling through to the inner rib, as I have, is that if you tighten the nuts too much, the upper surface of the bonnet will be pulled in and will distort. To counter that one can fit small spacers between the inner rib and the underside of the surface so as to provide support when tightening the nut.
Since the cams now reach quite happily under the rain gully we don't need big brackets extending out into the bay area. But we can't leave the cams to constantly rub on the fibre glass as they open and close so make up some curved stainless steel covers and bond them into place with plenty of P38
Finish off by painting them engine bay colour. Black in my case.
And here's how it looks
Gas struts
Well, there aren't any.
If you do fit them know that they will tend to push the bonnet out of place when shut, so you need to have them fitted when figuring out the fit of the bonnet. You also need them installed when the car goes to the paint shop.
I have a different solution to raising the bonnet and ensuring it stays up when it is raised. I was going to write it up but as I have not seen the same solution anywhere else I thought I would keep it as my own little USP.
Since the cams now reach quite happily under the rain gully we don't need big brackets extending out into the bay area. But we can't leave the cams to constantly rub on the fibre glass as they open and close so make up some curved stainless steel covers and bond them into place with plenty of P38
Finish off by painting them engine bay colour. Black in my case.
And here's how it looks
Gas struts
Well, there aren't any.
If you do fit them know that they will tend to push the bonnet out of place when shut, so you need to have them fitted when figuring out the fit of the bonnet. You also need them installed when the car goes to the paint shop.
I have a different solution to raising the bonnet and ensuring it stays up when it is raised. I was going to write it up but as I have not seen the same solution anywhere else I thought I would keep it as my own little USP.
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