Afternoon Ladies and Gents
Time for a quick update, I've got cliff ready for paint just waiting for the rain to let up so i can get down the paint shop ! fingers crossed for Thursday as it's supposed to be dry.
the body is all prepared now - I've spent the best part of 12 hours getting everything sorted !
good news is that the car is still nice and solid 
bad news is that the same doesn't go for the back bumper 
gave it a goo going over with a screw driver and sand paper and it looked much worse than it really is (sorry for the poor pic)
i'll give it another blast over then fill the seam with auto-lube as to stop any nasties coming up - it'll be hidden by the bumper so no one will ever notice, even me and my picky eye 
things look much brighter for the wings/arches and sills
everything is nice and flat and feathered in so it was time to test the arches but i changed my mind on the W&P's - they are just the complete wrong shape for the car ! no joke, the arch was way too tall like it had been squashed from either end 
so i had a week or so away from the car to mull things over and i have decided to re-fit some new rover special arches but with a P strip arch to body rubber seal and use some black rubber sill finishers as the plastic ones were for ever falling off in the sun when they expanded !
i'm using some Ø3.9mm x 3/8th's A2 stainless button head self tappers to fix the arches to the body as i'm not a fan of pop rivets...these have a Ø7.5mm head so they won't nic the paint like the first time 
i also ordered the next size up Ø4.2mm x 3/8th's incase some of the holes were too big but so far the 3.9's have worked a treat
i also plan to keep the arches natural finish black although i may go over them with a rattle can hammerite or stone chip if all the little scratches and imperfections bug me.... Before i get shot down for not putting them back to standard body colour, i feel that with the black P chanel and rubber sill trim the red spats will look odd. the black plastic look works on my clubby (where the inspiration came from) and i think it'll look better this way. Plus there is no worries about damaging the paint when final fit comes.
Hey, if it doesn't look right i can always get them colour coded anyway.
I will admit there is another reason why no go for the W&P's, my suspension is a little low and widening the track won't go so well, here's the cause of my concern
and those are tyres that are pretty near min tread depth So you can see there's no scope to go wider really and the W&P's would make the car look over arched which is my biggest pet hate in the mini scene 
So there we are up to date after many an hour sanding, filing and thinking (in that order )
Next step os get it up the paint shop and take out the side repeaters, rear quarter windows and headlamps.
until then, the arches will stay on so that they can stretch and will help them comply when being fitted for the last time, hopefully !
Cheers
Rhys
) but other than that still looks like the day he was rebuilt 
