Bodywork & rear lights

Some interesting developments recently, including another slight change of plan in terms of bodywork.

Originally the plan was to go for a bright orange gel-coat body and order it in about 6 months’ time (depending on progress) and then allow for a 3 months lead time. About a year ago FSC’s fibreglass supplier had to change but unfortunately the new supplier has had some gel-coat colour match issues. 

Anyway to cut a long story short a body has come up that isn’t orange and has these colour match issues but is a standard body with doors and Le Mans bonnet. At the right price this means I can afford to have the rear lights ‘frenched in’ and the bodywork painted – and possibly even in the colour I’m really looking for plus the advantages of a painted rather than gel-coat finish (more than a co-incidence I’d say…).

So on the basis there is now a body and the rear lights are to be ‘frenched in’ the need to sort out the rear lights came to the forefront.

The main objectives for the rear lights are as follows:

·         LED technology

·         a minimalist look – including reflectors

·         fog and reverse lights incorporated as opposed to ‘stuck on’

·         minimal number of light clusters (two per side preferably)

·         close placement of light clusters to ensure styling, especially when ‘frenched in’

After a lot of rummaging around the main problem I was finding was meeting the IVA minimum spacing requirement between the O/S stop light and the O/S fog light, i.e. 100mm minimum, whilst still looking good.

All the light assemblies I could find resulted in either huge spacing between light clusters or a separate ‘stuck on’ fog light solution being needed. That was until I looked again at the Hella LED mix and match solution.

With this I realised the following arrangement was possible and gives a spacing of approx. 60mm between the cluster pairs (with a hope that a smaller spacing is possible based on seeing the physical design of the illuminated area of the lights themselves):

	N/S outer cluster	N/S inner cluster		O/S inner cluster	O/S outer cluster
Outer ring	Indicator	Reflector		Reflector	Indicator
Centre	Stop/Tail	Reverse		Fog	Stop/Tail

 
Anyway more to follow once the lights are ordered and can be checked etc.