Thread: Bebops Floor Fender + shocks

Tweet

Well there may be little interest in this but Bob and Brian have been very helpful so this is to show the scene here regarding the fit of the coilover shocks to the Bebops floor-flender pan. I also chatted with Pete at the Bebops factory and he commented that the cutout/blister should be rectangular so I went ahead and started sawing. I am well aware of the need to measure and think carefully before sawing based on my own personal track record with unrecoverable errors but at my age my motto now is "just do it!". Anyway I had gone ahead and bought a fiberglass kit with cloth and resin thinking to make an inverted bowl as Brian suggested but actually the shape will have to be different so here is what I have so far. It turns out that if I ever want to replace the shocks in the future the long upper bolt has to be extracted 5 1/2" just to get it out. I found this out when I tried to turn the shock 180 degrees so the adjustment knob would be more accessible toward the middle of the car. In the picture you can see the knob in the "wrong" position where I would not have been able to adjust it. After removing the bolt and sawing out a notch for future removal, the knob now is on the inside of the coil where I can easily adjust it. I am thinking over the next step with the idea of glassing in a box of walls around the rectangular hole and leaving the top open for a metal plate to be screwed down so I will be able to replace the shocks at some future time. This plate and it's screws will be under the ends of the tank and while I may have to remove the deck lid to change shocks I don't want to have to take out the tank as well. Well it looks like we may have an ice storm tomorrow so we may lose power and/or freeze in the garage if I work on this soon but that gives me time to think it over. As far as "looks" go, both these boxed holes with covers will be hidden under the tank and the only concern is to keep water out to prevent moldy carpets in the rumble seat area. I may put some inner tube rubber gaskets under the plates to help seal out the water problem. Thanks to Bob and Brian for their help.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder