Body Work
Ruth's comments
The body work of the CAT is made up of GRP mouldings but the side panels are aluminium. Some people leave the sides bare, but I think it makes the car look a bit cheap. Also bare ally soon oxidises and goes dull, so you either have to keep polishing it or have it lacquered. I decided I wanted the side panels painted to match the GRP, the best way to paint them is off the car. This complicates the build a little bit but hopefully its worth it.
I fitted and drilled all the side panels ready for riveting to the chassis, but used self tapping screws to hold it in place so they could be removed and sent for painting. I had to wait until the engine was in so I could finalise the exhaust cut out position before the painting could start. My dad put me onto a painter, Paul Rhodes, Ossett, who was pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing and soon had a paint match for me. The panels were painted and oven baked for a lasting, high quality finish.
Fitting the panels after they were painted was straight forward although one or two rivet locations were tricky as now I had fitted various items that weren't there when I drilled the holes.
Scuttle: Next job up on the body work was the scuttle. Trying to position it to match the line of the side panels was impossible. In the end I decided to go with the Tiger manual recommendation (I know this sounds a daft thing to do) of 255mm from the front of the battery tray. This seemed to fit as good (or as bad) as anywhere else. Next was how to fasten it down... The manual suggested drilling through the top rail and bolting straight through to the bottom of the scuttle. I decided to go with a better engineered solution of drilling and taping the top rail and then bolting down the scuttle. This worked OK but was a bit tricky bolting down the forward most bolts under the scuttle.
Rear Body: Don't think anything on the rear body work is symmetrical!....I'll come to that later.
One panel I had left off because I couldn't think of a good way to fit it was the inner wheel arches. These have to fit into the curve of the rear wheel GRP and are shaped nothing like the shape that is required. Now I was ready to fit the rear body I needed to do this by some means. The decision was to not try and fill the curve until the GRP was on. So the inner arch was cut to follow the lines of the chassis rails so leaving a thin curved section to fill later.
I positioned the GRP into place on the chassis and marked where it came to on the spare wheel support. The spare wheel carrier was then cut off and 2 brackets fitted to support that lower body in its place. Next I decided it would be easier to cut the fuel filler hole before fitting the body work...I wish I'd left it until it was all fitted as I got the position slightly wrong (note made for next time!)
(what next time? You did not say there would be a next time). Next came cutting the notches out of the upper arch to go over the chassis. I marked one side and cut out a neat notch then (fatal mistake) thinking the GRP was symmetrical, cut a notch the opposite side using the end of the rear parcel shelf lip as a reference point....On re-fitting a found my GRP didn't fit too well. The GRP must be at least 3cm different between sides. On lengthening the notch the body work sat symmetrical, a bit of filling improved the fit... still not perfect but as good as I could get with the lest than perfect GRP. Next job was riveting the wings to the side panels. For this I got some longer rivets (12mm vs Tiger supplied 8mm) as the 8mm ones would not clamp the GRP, rubber tadpole piping and aluminium together. Once this was done at both sides I bolted down the lower rear body work to the brackets that had been fitted in place of the spare wheel carrier. This just left the inner wings to sort out. This was done by cutting a moon shaped panel out to cover the hole.
Bonnet & Nose: First job was to fit the rubber padding to the nose and scuttle where the bonnet would contact, I just riveted this in, the rivets sit deep into the rubber. Next I place the bonnet onto the scuttle & chassis and marked where the end of the bonnet came to on the top chassis rails. I made up a couple of brackets to sit on top of the chassis rails just in front of this marked point to support the top end of the nose cone. With a bit of help from the wife
(am I just "the wife" now) I trialed this position of bonnet and nose, marking the bracket positions against the nose then drilled and bolted it with some dome head bolts. Next was the lower mounting point. I did this with a couple of brackets pointing forward from the lower edge of the chassis/radiator and this bolts to the lower lip of the nose.The fit of the nose to the bonnet was a bit poor, the bulge in the bonnet is a bit higher than the buldge in the nose which slightly spoils the line. The fit of the bonnet to the scuttle needed adjustment, it wasn't square so I cut off a taper starting about 10mm in on the drivers side edge ending in the centre of the bonnet.
Cycle wings: I offered the Tiger wing supports up against the uprights and wheels and surprise surprise, they are nowhere near correct. The front support wasn't that far out, but the rear one was a country mile out. As I was squeezing 195s into a CAT E1 the fit was crucial. After much head scratching and wandering round B&Q I decided to use tubular "L" brackets (normally ladder hooks I think) going in through a hole in the side of the GRP wing and down to the cut down Tiger wing support . This allowed me to get the fit right at the GRP end first then play with the other end of the fit separate, making the job easier to get a good fit.
It worked OK, but took ages to tweek it to just the right position to cover the wheel
(and much swearing although not as much as when we tried to fit the end of the exhaust).
