The skeleton (chassis) is slowly disappearing under its skin again, only this time a lot of panels are being riveted (semi-permanently) in place. I think I installed about 500 rivets yesterday.

The cowl section was the first piece of body work made originally so it was the first to go back on. It's the only exterior body panel that gets riveted semi-permanently to the chassis. All the other exterior body pieces (sub-assemblies) will be attached with bolts, screws, quarter turn fasteners, etc, so they can come off (at varying degrees of ease) for cleaning and servicing the chassis and other mechanical parts of the car.

The transmission tunnel is kind of large and square for a reason. I wanted a really stiff chassis AND I wanted the engine as far back in the chassis as I could get it (The front of the engine sits well behind the front axle center-line and the driver's and passenger's feet are up alongside the engine). Riveting panels directly to the chassis tubes, rather than making a more organically shaped console, saves a little space. I plan to cover the tunnel, sills and rear bulkhead with diamond stitched, pleated leather or vinyl and hopefully that will dress it up a little. The engine is also offset about 2 inches to the right in the chassis, for two reasons. It gives the driver more foot room to operate the pedals comfortably and this way the drive-shaft, which is only about a foot long, has a straight run to the offset pinion shaft in the differential. This worked out rather conveniently. If I had built a right hand drive car, the pinion offset would have worked against me and that's funny because the Salisbury diff is made in England.

No I'm not preparing to run over the remaining panels in the photos. It was just a convenient place to temporarily spread them out without having to worry about someone (like me) stepping on one while I installed one panel at a time.