Hi guys, I removed the body from my Coupe today, but I struggled with the bolts with go into the sills but luckily my sills were quite rusty and are being replaced so with a few strategic access holes I managed to get them undone.

Apart from one..... the bolt closest to the rear wheel, is this supposed to be accessible from the access holes inside the cabin?

Thanks
James

It is supposed to be accessible, but?? the hole is small and to get a spanner or socket and ratchet is not easy, throw in many years of road dirt and rust you may have to cut it off with a Dremmel mini grinder or something similar, I mad my access holes bigger and triangular shaped to be able to get hands and tools inside a bit easier.
John

I managed to get to the two but could not see or feel the third at all from inside the access panel, hmmmm

they are hard to remove and tricky to fit, maybe the former owner only fitted 2?? much easier with a larger hole
John

In the end I used an angle grinder and cutting disc to cut through the fibreglass and the bolt head then I repaired the GRP when I had full access.

The third bolt on mine is right under the inner wheel arch so you have to remove some fibreglass from the arch if you ever need access.

Neil

Yes exactly that!!

This is what I was trying to explain, mine was the same.
How did you refix your body Neil? Did you have the bolt head on show, fiberglass over it? Or just secure it with two bolts?

James

I cut a window in the inner arch to gain space for the bolt to be removed.

I use all three bolts.

Then glassed in the window tight to the bolt head and sealed with pu sealant, then seam sealer over the lot.

It has been fairly successful I have had a small leak from the wheel arch in the past and it seemed to be coming from here, so a full glass in may be a better option.

I am considering moulding up a wheel arch liner to help with this. As a rotating tyre with water is like a jet wash against this area and it will find the smallest hole.

Neil

Awesome, thanks Neil, its good to know that im not the only one who's experienced this problem!

My son and I have just removed body from pan, the 2 bolts you can just see were not that easy to get out but with a lot of WD 40 we managed, mind both middle bolts for whatever reason snapped, the 3 bolt closest to rear can be accessed from both sides looking in where rear wheel arch is formed and between 1" box section you can get a extended ratchet in, it helps if somebody is inside with a torch with directions and to be quite honest was the easiest to remove, we at present for some reason cannot up load pics, it is easy of course if engine is out, like ours is, hopefully Nicky can up load pics. We found it very easy to remove the body, no flexing, no swearing as a matter of fact it was easy. The pan is now stripped ready to be transported Mon 31st Oct for shot blasting, prime and gloss black finish. Hopefully we can get the pics issue sorted, there is a lot of them.