Lawson's 818C

  • Bodywork
    • With some help from a friend, several hours were spent working on getting the front half of the body put on. So much fiddling with alignment! Pretty much every mounting location moves and each of the body panels is asymmetrical enough to make you scratch your head a bit. Slowly but surely, we worked to line up the front fenders so that the A-pillar, front bumper, and hood all lined up as best as possible. A little bit more fine tuning and possibly another mounting hole at the top of the fenders and everything should be good! I also have to install the front+rear hood pins and hardtop mounting brackets. But this weekend was good enough to roll it out in the sun for some pictures and it’s really starting to look like a complete car 🙂
      • A couple notes from this:
        •  The fenders are definitely asymmetrical, but with some trimming of the extra material at the a-pillar they seem to fit ok.
        • Using the hood and front bumper to check everything is definitely a must. It’s a fit, adjust, stare blankly, adjust again, fit, stare, scratch head, measure, stare again process.
        • The rear portion of the fender requires trimming to fit the door at the bottom. Which I learned after I already drilled the second mounting hole back there…so a little patching work for me later since I have to move the holes.
    • Right now, the overall goal with the bodywork is to get this thing only what it needs to be road-legal. After I get the paperwork in process I will take all the panels back off to work on sanding the rough edges, filling voids, etc. So the work is far from over but I think it should not be too long before all the panels are fully attached. I’m not looking forward to doing the doors but they are almost next on the list of things needed for inspection.
  • Headlights
    • These are a pain! In addition to the strange modifications needed for the projector install. The bucket fitment and install is quite difficult. I had initially planned to rethink the install to make this all work better but with time being fairly short right now I went ahead and did it by-the-book. Maybe I’ll revisit it later. I’ve now fully installed the passenger side headlight and mostly installed the driver side but I ran out of time to finish.


  • Passenger headlight installed


  • Seats are over-rated. As are attached doors.


  • Beauty shot!


  • I think the rear needs a wing or something


  • Fender fitment begins


  • Mounting the fenders


  • Fender mounts and brackets installed


  • Driver-side top to bumper gap needs work


  • Trimming around my G37 brake reservoir


  • Fixing the turn signal I broke


  • Headlight buckets finished


  • Painting the lens border black


  • Working on the much-maligned A-pillar area