I took a week of vacation to work full time on the bodywork. My hope was to get the body filled and in primer back to the rear quarter panels. So after a week how was the progress? Almost zero progress. I spent almost the entire time working on the front fender pieces that mount to the chassis just ahead of the doors. The good news is that I decided to stop and cut my losses and rethink these parts because the pieces are poorly formed and there is just no way forward using the pieces I received.

If you recall, the wheelbase on my car is 1.5″ longer than the stock 037. I mounted the front suspension slightly forward to allow a 17″ wheel in the front to match the rear. This required moving the wheel arch forward (pretty easy) and also sectioning the small body extension pieces and widening them by 1.5″. Widening these pieces is time consuming because they are essentially small boxes and laying up inner and outer filler sections of glass mat has to be done in stages. If only I had tried fitting them before spending all the time widening them.

After widening these pieces I faced the more difficult problem of matching them up to the body, door and hood clam shell. They don’t match. The biggest problem is that the pieces are different side to side—3/4″ or more on several critical outward facing surfaces. Also the actual shape of the pieces where they wrap under the chassis is very different. Okay so you don’t see both sides of the car at the same time so maybe it’s okay if they are different. Except that they are so different that there are fit and interference problems with the doors. Move them forward to avoid door interference and they don’t match the hood clam shell. Moving them outwards solves the problem somewhat except that the doors only open about 20 degrees before there is interference. Not enough to exit the car.

I looked at photos of production 037 cars and the relief clearance at the door is much larger than possible with the pieces I received without extensive modification and even if I spent time modifying the pieces, I’m left with the differences between the two sides. In some pictures of 037 competition cars using the evo II bodywork you can see the poor fit of the race bodywork so maybe what I have is par for the later race cars but it’s unacceptable to me and I won’t just throw things together to get it done. I’ve got some ideas of how I might move forwards by shaping a male pattern of these pieces using polyurethane foam blocks and covering the pieces with fiberglass, but I’ve got to give it some thought.

Somewhere here the 037 styling is clawing to get out. For now it will have to wait.