Roll Hoops

I have the three legged hoops from AK and love the look of them. They are a bit of a pig to get into the pre-drilled holes in the body though. I’m pretty nervous about installing them after the paint job!

I’m getting ahead of myself. First up, trial fit the hoops and tighten the brackets up completely! I didn’t the first time I went through this and turns out on the final few turns of the socket the bracket angled back slightly and pulled the whole hoop back a few mm! Very annoying.

You’ll need a set of bezels to smarten up the finish of the holes, you can get them from Finishline or as I did from S&J (I used 4 oval and 2 circular). Some of the bezels might need bending to suit the shape of the body. To do this I used a conveniently shaped log to manipulate the bezel.

Carefully place the bezels onto the legs of the hoops being careful not to mark the chrome on the hoops and fix out of the way with some masking tape. Lower the hoop legs through the holes and into the brackets. Once the hoops are in the brackets and the brackets are fixed properly to the chassis, mark any parts of the body that are touching the hoops, remove the hoops and sand that part of the body. Repeat until the hoops no longer touch the body. I had to fill in a bit of two of the holes too with some P40.

Once you’re happy that they sit nicely in the holes in the body with the brackets properly tightened, lower the bezels and position so the hoops sit comfortably in the middle without rubbing. Mark the position of the holes for the bezel fixing and remove the lot. Drill the fixing positions and then put the lot back together and fix with M5 countersunk allen head machine screws, washers and nyloc nuts. When you do the final fixing after paint, seal any gaps between the hoop and the body with black flexible sealant prior to fixing the bezels.

Pics to follow…