build diary

February 5, 2004: The floor is on!
I'm now officially Making Progress. It took about 4 hours of measuring, drilling and rivetting to get the panel in place and I was having fun the whole time although the drilling is a bit of a test of endurance. The aluminum floor panel saves about 20 lbs over a welded steel one. There are almost 300 rivets holding it on to the frame. Attention to detail really paid off with a nice clean final result. The cleco fasteners made a huge difference, eliminating any chance of the floor shifting on me and causing headaches - thank you Bill for the loan of the tools! The floor wasn't a perfect fit with about a 1/4" shift from side to side but it wasn't enough to cause any problems. The photos tell the story of how I put the floor on.

CMC has put some time-lapse video of the GRM build on their website. It's the closest thing I have to an instruction manual at the moment and it's also quite entertaining. I particularly like the video of mounting the front control arms. Where is everyone? Is it lunchtime? One guy is working while others stop by to play with the suspension parts once in a while...

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