Lyka Kit #23 Bodywork Panels Part 1

Its time to start working on the floor panels. The main floor panel has a few cut-outs to allow access to the battery switches and fuel tank. These areas are reinforced with sheet metal and also provides a lip to allow the placement of some wood pieces to cover the holes. We got the battery door, but the round fuel access was not sent in this kit. The only trick here is to place the sheetmetal carefully so that when you drill the pilot holes for the screws they are equidistant from the edges making the exposed lip/ledge consistent.

All of this will be removed for painting later. Next I placed the two support boards on the chassis frame to see how they line up. I notice that a few hex head bolts and some of my wiring gets in the way. I adjust the wiring eyelets, but the hex head bolts are causing an interference with the board laying down. This requires slotting the board a bit deeper at each slot.

Now the slotted board lays flat across the cross member. 

I measure the distances between the two supporting boards on the frame and transfer these dimensions to the underside of the floor board for drilling and fixing the boards.

All assembled and test fitted on the frame as shown below. 

The Next task is to get the top boards to fit between the two side boards. This requires removal from the angled edges some material. I utilize an orbital sander with 120 and 220 sand paper. This is a trial and error process until the boards slip in-between the two side panels.

The all fitted, now it is time to sand, prime and paint.

Final sanding is done with 220 grit sandpaper. 

The next image shows the use of some body filler to fill in the flat head screws and other little chips etc. Once cured all will be sanded down smooth and painted. I put two coats of primer on with sanding between coats.

For the top panels, Steam Traction World instructs that we need to locate and drill our own mounting holes. They provided brass flat head screws that can be counter sunk and made flush with the top of the boards. This method will be good for the panel that sits below the front seat, however I'm going to deviate from the recommendation and use for the rear top board some brass slotted pan head screws. I will polish the heads bright. Also Steam Traction World supplied wing nuts to use, my thinking is to drill and tap the top frame members and forget about the wing nuts. Below are images showing my approach.

I discovered that the weldment below was causing the top board to lift up. A little grinding and some black touch-up paint solved that issue.

As a note to any other Lykamobile builders, the recommended dimensions for laying out the above holes I modified to suit what I thought would be best, I did note that one dimension they recommended would have placed the hole very close to the edge of the cross frame member. They had a 240 mm dimension, I used 250 mm.

Part 2 will cover the final assembly for Lyka Kit 23.