Tedan's Tribute 250
 

Hello

I have been lurking on this site for at least three years now without plucking up courage to post about my build, but this site has given me a huge amount of invaluable information and inspiration so many thanks to Eric Holm, Jaguartvr, and everyone else that has shared their knowledge and experience here - hugely appreciated.

I am not sure that I have much useful info to add, but I always like looking at people's cars, so I plan to post a few pics from my build and then some of the (almost) finished article.

My car is a Tribute 250 based on a 2.8 Z3 from 2000.

Here - partly to see if I've understood how to post pics - is a shot of my kit, at the exciting stage before work began.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...php?albumid=88

Nice garage!!

Well, I didn't do the whole build in the TV room..

Here is a first fit of the panels. Didn't take long to get to this point but there were points to sort out about panel fit.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1708

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1709

The boot lid needed some sorting. Initially it sat low on one side and high on the other. This was the first time I wielded my angry grinder on my lovely new kit, but after much deliberation I chopped off the interior sill on one side, then using right angled plastic and hot glue I moulded it back in place.

What I did for some reason was to level the high side with the low side, which was dim of course - I ended up with both sides low. So I ended up building up the underside of the boot lid a little to bring the whole thing to the right level.

The lower edge of the boot lid initially projected over the back of the body itself. I spent some evenings staring at pics of Jaguartvr's fix, where he pushed the back of the body moulding outward, but ended up jiggling by grinding a little off the boot lid, adding filler to the body, and moving the whole boot lid forward a little, after which it all lined up.


http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1710

I wanted the bodywork to fit closely to the fuel filler cap, so made a new insert for the cap. I don't know much about cars or fibreglass, but woodwork I can understand, so the buck was a woodturning with some lumps screwed on.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1711

Then a thin moulded shell over it.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1712

Then I built up the thickness with layers of CSM on the inside, over the whole area, hoping that that way the new part was well integrated with the old.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1713

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1714

The filler cap installed.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1715

With hindsight, I'd have saved a lot of hassle if I'd put it a little higher up the wing, to face more directly downward. Where I put it left little room between the grp panel and the car itself.i had to fit in an elbow in the filler line to direct it down to the Z3's own filler, which was a struggle.

I wanted to leave all the panels removable, especially the door skins. I felt sure if I bonded them on one day, I'd knock off a door mirror or the break the handle mechanism the next. So i attached the door skins with plates fibreglassed to the inside of the door skins - 8 of them for each skin - with bolts (or at the top and bottom of the skins, sleeve nuts) welded on. The edges of the Z3 doors have holes for the bolts to pass through. It worked out neatly but the jiggling and head scratching involved was lengthy..

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1716

Nice work, looks good. The recessed filler cap is a nice touch.

You should be able to show the images inline in the thread, instead of the link to another page, by adding img tags round the image rather than the url tags:
http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1716

It may be obvious that I've got nothing to do this morning but post. Am sitting in a dive school with my diving mad ten year old, waiting for the weather to change.

The top edges of my door skins, next to the windows, were straight, I think to match the straight windows off the coupe version if the Tribute 250. But I was making the convertible and I wanted them to sit closely to the curved Z3 windows, so I could fit rubber weather seals. That meant moulding an internal ip on the top edge of the door skin, matching the curve of the window, to which i could glue and screw the weather seal. I didn't take many pictures but what I did was to put a spacer on the window with double-sided tape.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1717

Then a layer of CSM laid onto the spacer formed the curved lip that I wanted. Next I laid the door skin itself on top and put a temporary layer of glass on the outside, to attach my new lip to the skin. Pull it off, and hey presto: the lip matches the window curvature and the spacer means that it has a gap from the window, to leave room to attach my weather seal.

Then I reinforced it from the inside, and ground off the temporary layer of glass from the outside.

If that is clear as mud, I can only apologise. Should have taken more pics.

If you are wondering why my door is quite so bashed about, I found that I had to hammer it down to enable the door skin to sit against the door.

The small bonnet on my kit had a slightly different curve from the recess in the front clam that it sits in. Also I wasn't keen on the open gap around the small bonnet.

I moulded a gutter onto the front clam, around the edge of the bonnet opening. For the shape, I got glued some wood strips in place and moulded over them. The hardest part was getting the CSM to follow the shape of the wood strips - it doesn't happily sit down where it goes over a corner. After a couple of failed attempts I put a layer of tissue glass on first, then let that set, then put on layers of CSM. Even then it ended up a bit wavy in shape. No doubt there's a good solution but I'd have saved a problem by rounding the edges of the wood strips, so the glass didn't have a sharp corner to follow.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1719

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1720

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1721

To straighten out the bonnet, I secured six M8 bolts to its underside, each welded to a metal plate glasses onto the bonnet, with four at the corners and the other two half way along the edges of the bonnet. These pass through the sill. Nuts sit above the sill and below it. That way I could adjust the level of the bonnet and so persuade it into the right shape. Sorry, no pics of these bits!

To sort out gaps around the small bonnet and the boot lid I used a trick from Jaguartvr's thread, pushing a spacer into the gap and forcing fibre-reinforced filler in inside it. It works like a charm.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/foru...pictureid=1722