A GT40 build is a little different than that of a Cobra. The cobra comes in one body piece and the doors, hood, trunk fit into their respective holes – or at least the fit is close enough you can sort it out.

The GT40 body comes in seven different pieces, all related to each other and their location dependent on the frame. One is quick to want to start putting pieces together till you realize each components location is dependent upon another and all it dependent upon the wheelbase.

The RCR instructions are pretty basic, they cover the essentials, but some items are left out. Not intentionally but probably because they were written by someone who had done it a number of times and took some items for granted. Like the rocker panels.

My car was shipped with the rockers taped to the frame. I could see there was a definite RH and LH. I knew the front wheel wells are so tight that only certain size tires would fit and there had been numerous comments that it is not uncommon for the fiberglass to be trimmed all the way off in certain areas to clear the tire when turning. My problems began when I took for granted the rockers were placed on the correct side. A couple phone calls to RCR and it still wasn’t working out. More details on how this got resolved in the Rocker section.

I complicated this by deciding to make a more period-correct front and rear frame for mounting the clips. But what comes first, the chicken or the egg? I needed the clip in place to determine the correct pivot points for the clip, but I needed the frame in place to determine where the clip goes. The key to whole puzzle is the wheel location.

The original builds spec’d a 95″ wheelbase, 26.8″ diameter rear tire and a 25.2″ diameter front tire. There may have been deviation from this as the frames where built or the suspension aligned. Fran tells us the kit was splashed from GT40P/1008. And he builds the frames to a 94-1/2″ wheelbase, claiming that is what that car was built to. Kind of hard to figure out what is correct, but if you try to build to a 95″ wheelbase, you’re going to be very frustrated.

I mounted the suspension and wheels, set the ride height and rough alignment so I would know where the wheels would be located. With that in place, then placing the panels

1. Rocker panel is centered between the wheels, biased to the rear to give me as much room as possible for the wheel to turn left and right.
2. Put the front clip in place, aligning the wheel opening.
3. Put the rear clip in place, again aligning the wheel opening
4. Place the spider matching the panel lines and openings.

All of a sudden, the puzzle pieces where beginning to align. And the dimensions from my build were within  tolerance of those shown on the RCR build pages.

• Front cowl radius area to front of clip: RCR calls for approximately 35mm. Mine was 32mm
• Front frame wheelwell edge to front of B-Pillar, they say 43″ Mine was 43″
• Frame hinge pocket to front of rocker panel about 6″, mine is 6″
• Rocker Width, mine is 66″, they say 65-1/2″ +/- 1/2″

Again, the key to the whole thing is putting the wheels in their correct position and using that to determine panel locations.