Formula F Conversion: Side Pods

Since the chassis was a different shape (wider in the back) before Eric's changes, the old belly pan was also wider and the sidepods had a triangular section cut out of them in order to follow the shape of the belly pan.

So, I needed to fill that in. the bottom of the sidepods is made out of 1/4" plywood with fiberglass over it so I went to Home Depot and got a small piece of 1/4" plywood. The idea was to glue the cut piece to the sidepod with loctite power grab (construction adhesive) and then put a piece of aluminum on the bottom side and also use adhesive to secure it as well as wood screws. But first I hand to sand the edges so that there is good material to adhere too.

Here is the piece after securing it with adhesive and aluminum on the bottom side.

The shortest screws that I could find at Home Depot were a 1/2" so I used those and then ground down the points.

I then smoothed the junction area out a little bit with short strand fiberglass (the green stuff in the pics) and on this particular sidepod I actually had to use it to build up some of the plywood because of the plywood being saturated with oil which caused me to sand it down further than I wanted. I then fiberglassed over the area with some thin cloth.

It was now time to mount the side pods on the lip of the belly pan that extends from the frame. Unfortunately, this is when I realized that I had forgotten about the small 1" or so lip that is on the outside edge of the sidepods. I still mounted the side pods and then traced the outside edge of the belly pan onto the sidepod bottoms.

I used a cut off wheel to trim off the outside edge of the aluminum. Of course I also had to remove a bunch of screws and put a few more in. I went through the same process of grinding off the pointy ends and fiberglassing over them. I also put a layer of resin over the now exposed plywood.