Seats welded together, to a degree where it's possible to start putting the
bodywork together around them. Also it turns out that there may be enough
room at the front for Lilyana's child seat to fit in the front (it's
rear-facing) and also have Mum sitting directly opposite.
Showing the steering wheel and steering column in place, which helped verify
that the seats are in the right place. Good job, too. It would be a bit
awkward at this stage of the build for there not to be room (in a line) for
feet, seats and generator at the back, eh?
Finally starting on the main body, which is the exciting and unusual bit.
These supports (marked in purple) are where the generator will go. Eight
inches in front of them is the back of the rear seat. Marked in green is
where the next bits will go, leading up to the roof.
Roof support verticals gone in, just holding up the rear window support, there.
Would like to get the rear section at least done, because it's the easiest
part.
Showing the rear vertical roof supports from a different angle. Rear window
supports go across (green). Yes that's correct, they will go across *not* to
the corners. The lights and numberplate will go in a line just under that
horizontal bar, and under that is a huge airgap. Good job I modelled this
in cardboard first, then CAD/CAM, then in polystyrene, eh?
Thought it might be worthwhile showing the original two models - cardboard
on the right, polystyrene on the left. The cardboard one took a month,
and the polystyrene one took two hours. It can be seen clearly that there
is a massive undercut all the way round the car on the lower half, and just
visible at the front of the polystyrene model a fake bonnet can be seen.
The rear wing extends, again, to the full width of what would be an ordinary
car, making the whole thing "look" at first glance like it is truly taking
up 4ft8 of space. Annoyingly the Suzuki's suspension is going to occupy
a lot of what should be clear air-gaps, which tells me that it's necessary
to pick something like double wishbone suspension for the front and single
central coilover "buggy" style suspension, with a fixed rear axle, for the
rear. This is what prototypes are for...
Another view from the rear showing how, if the cardboard wasn't drooping so
much, it would be clear that there are large air-gaps down the sides but
only in the lower half of the body. To scale, the rear section is only
8in wide, then two 18-in air gaps, then rear wheels.