Minitubbing the Turd's chassis pan
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Since this project will incorporate a working trunk lid and fully detailed contents there of, the first thing that needed to be done was to create the room needed for the MT 315/60R15 drag radials from Fireball Modelworks...the Turd actually uses a 28x10.5 MT tire, but I was unable to locate any, so I ordered a pair each of impressively high quality MT275s, MT315s, and front runners...as I was waiting for my tires to be delivered, I sourced some extra chassis and interior pans from Evilbay...
It would have been super easy to order a resin cast "Pro Touring" style chassis pan, but the "drum" style wheel wells would have been visually incorrect...so, once my tires arrived, I began the process of minitubbing a chassis pan...
1) On one of the extra chassis pans, I cut along the floor, effectively giving me a pair of "factory style", wider inner wheel houses...(at this point, I also removed the complete front subframe from this chassis pan, for use later)...
2) Then, on a second chassis pan, similar to minitubbing a real car, I located the point where the "outer" wheel house slopes down to meet the quarter panel, and cut front to rear along that line...then I located the outside of the rear frame rails, and intending to use them as the guide to locate the inside of the wheel houses cut out previously...I discovered that, as molded, they get thicker as they get closer to the floor of the chassis pan...I took the time to correct their profile, and (just like doing it on a 1:1 Nova) also narrowed the rear portion of the frame rail itself (to more closely match the wheelhouse contour)...
3) The inner wheel houses were removed from the second chassis pan, cutting (front to rear) along the line where they begin to curve down to meet the trunk floor, and along the trunk floor...
4) The "new" inner wheel houses were trimmed and fit to their new locations...in the pics you can see a comparison of a "stock" wheel well and the "minitubbed" wheel well...
5) The next surgery involved removing the stock gas tank and filling the resulting hole...the Turd carries a 10-gallon aluminum fuel cell in the trunk...you can see a little of that process here...
