I have the existing wiring harness from the Honda VFR750 that I will be using but coming from a motorcycle the fuse block is pretty limited, not to mention that I expect that I will be adding quite a few other circuits to the Vortex that would not be on a motorcycle.

So I made the decision that I will be installing an automotive style wiring harness rather than extending and splicing and patching onto the current motorcycle harness. I feel that down the road that I will ensure that I should not have any electrical headaches by proceeding down this path.

I ordered up some misc. wiring stuff from Summit Racing, this should round out most of the stuff that I will be needing to run the wiring harness. Locally I should be able to pick up some cable clamp/mounts for the installation or I will get them from Jameco.

The heavy battery cable is needed because the battery will be located in the front of the vehicle and power will have to be ran to the fuse box as well as all the way back to the starter in the engine compartment, ground wire is slightly lighter but should do. These cables will be ran through the side formers of the chassis so that they are hidden and make the installation as clean as possible.

The fiberglass body ground wire kit (left below) is a pretty good deal, it includes 10' of 10 gauge wire, 4 - 6 position terminal blocks and crimp ends (basically made for fiberglass bodies where there is no common ground). The main ground cable (#2 gauge) will be ran directly from the battery back to the engine subframe, then I will use the ground kit to supply common connection points in engine compartment, passenger compartment and front trunk areas, then the 16 gauge wire is ran to the individual components.

First in order is to cut off the rear canopy, use a stick and clamp it down so that you can use it as a guide. Initially I had the router speed turned down and that is probably what helped make them break, once I turned up the router to full speed it cut better.

Unfortunately this is the only cut that you can use a guide with... The remainder of the lines need to be cut holding the router free-hand, take your time and take off only about 1/8" depth at a time, so you will need to do around 4 cuts per segment. You have to move pretty slow and let the bit do it's thing if you try to push it too fast then you will probably break the bit.

Here are pictures of the canopy cut off:

Next moving onto the doors, a bit aprehensive here to see how well my hinge modification will work out... Took a while as there is a lot of 'freehand' cutting to do and then the moment of truth!

I was pretty excited as the doors work wonderfully and at least as good as I hoped that they would. I was so excited that I went back into the house and brought my wife out to see them, kinda like a little kid with a new toy! They each closed very repeatibly and back into their proper closed position even without the bear claw striker mounted yet

I worked on some of the more mundane stuff today. In the engine compartment I started to use some bondo to seal between the skin and the chassis. On one side the cut was off about 1/2" (yea I measured and probed at least 3x before I cut) so I cut off the extra to make it flush and bondo'd it. At the same time on the rear canopy where the miscut was I added on a 1/2" foam piece and glassed it on. I also had to add some material near the back of the doors around the gutter area to give the proper distance for the weather seal to door interface and got it glassed in as well.

Next I moved my attention to the rear canopy, I wanted to add some lateral support for the sides so I used some 1/2" foam and cut it to fit into the areas and then applied 2 layers of glass mat. I will finish off the inside of the foam support when I glass in the inside of the canopy.

Here is a picture of the door handles that I will be using, they are from a Ford Probe and the outside of them go flush with the surface of the door. They should look pretty nice as there is no frames/mouldings around them and all you see is the outside door pull.

I then used some masking tape on the surface of the door where I wanted to put the door handles and used a pencil to trace the outline of the handle onto the masking tape. Then using a grinder removed the outer layer of fiberglass and some of the foam in order to make a mounting surface for the handle screws. I had to remove the center section so that the latch mechanism would fit into the opening. I also removed extra foam from around the entire inside surface to give me some extra room in case later on I had to trim it up a bit for clearances, finally I glassed it in. The easiest thing to use in this small area was glass tape, and put 3 layers down where the handle will mount and 2 layers around the rest of the inside. There was some glass along the bottom edge that did not wrap properly (it sagged) so I had to grind it off as well, will fix this area later.

The picture on the left shows the door handle from the outside of the door. The picture on the right shows the inside area that was glassed.

Next I decided that it was time that the front trunk lid was cut off. Double checked my cut lines and used a 1/8" router bit to cut it off the deck.

Moving to the doors I cut two 1/4" pieces of birch plywood and shaped to fit the inside of the doors. I used some hot glue to keep it in position until I can glass it in later on. The picture on the left shows the inside of the door and the one on the right the outside. I still have to seal up the area located towards the bottom of the door handle to make it weather tight.

Then I decided that it was time to attack the door windows. I put down masking tape all around onto the face of the door, measured out where steel framework was located as well as the cut away area above the door handles and then marked out lines showing the outside location of the windows and finally I cut them out. The upper window was not cut all the way towards the front of the door, the space left will be used for mounting side view mirrors.

I put in the framework around the main windows today. It took a while to clean the back sides of the door as previously I used bondo to make myself a tapered mounting area to cement the 1/4" plywood skin onto so I used an air grinder and chisel to clean all excess away. I used some rectangular pieces of 1/2" x 1" oak that I had and did some custom fitting, glued and brad nailed them into place, these will serve to mount the windows onto The final landing for the window is about 1/2" wide and all corners are radiused. I wanted to be sure that I had some wood behind the windows to put the mounting screws into wherever possible as the window has a compound curve to it and there will be pressure to pull out the screws.

I may need to build up the mounting area as right now it is about 5/16" deep (before glassing), will call local glass house to get actual thickness of the tinted polycarbonate that I will end up using and if need be use some bondo. Brad nailing through fiberglass is a bit tricky as the glass tends to push the brads sideways and then out, what I found is that if you remove the brad and put a second one in the initial hole that it made it works pretty well.

I needed some more fiberglassing supplies, John Sweet went into retirement and sold off the business to David Hearn and now it's called Sweet Composites. They carry the same product lines and are just as fast delivery and pleasant to work with, good luck Dave & Jennifer!

The flat laminated glass can be gotten in either clear, grey or green tint. As to the side windows there seems to be only two choices: lexan and plexiglass. Lexan comes in two varieties LX10 and MR10. LX10 only comes in clear and is NOT very scratch resistant, while MR10 can be tinted and is more scratch resistant. Both come in 3/16" and 1/4" thickness. Typically the local hardware stores only seem to carry the LX10 variety.

If the glass shop is not willing to try the lexan then I might be attempting this myself, I really don't want to use plexiglass unless I absolutely have to.

Shep responded with the fact that he will be using a tinted 4.5mm (.177") ACRYLITE FF from Cyro Industries in Rockaway, NJ (their color is 103-2). And he states that no heat should be necessary and that using a urethane glass sealant will hold it in place practically without any screws.

Alex also came back stating that he had used 0.085" plexiglass on his vehicle and said that with that thickness it has a 'drum-skin' quality to it and would recommend using a thicker plastic. In addition he says that all plastics will be prone to scratching but you can get products to not only remove the scratches but add a protective coating as well.

Acording to both Shep and Alex using 1/4" lexan should not be a problem and will conform to the curvature of the door. I am probably obsessing about this too much...

I shifted my attention to the rear canopy and placed it back onto the vehicle. Had to do a bunch of grinding on the area that I had to add 1/2" of foam for miscut, it was hitting the vehicle. This are will need additional work as there is more re-shaping that I will need to do for it to fit back on properly.

Then I used two layers of 2oz cloth and one layer of 4oz cloth into the gutter area. I opted to use the lighter weight cloth so that it will seat into the gutter better than using heavier cloth, of course this means more layers but happy with results.

You want to be sure to use a razor blade and clean out any extra cloth BEFORE it gets completely hardended. Otherwise you will be doing a lot more grinding down the road, and believe me you will quickly get sick of it, this is one way to dramatically reduce the grinding that you have to do. Here is pictures of one that was trimmed with only a razor blade and only very minor grinding was necessary!!

I was only working on the gutter area, the inside door frames will be glassed when I remove them later on.

Next I cut up some aluminum angle into flat pieces to make the mounts for the rear louvers. The front ones are pretty simple to make but the rear ones had to be custom made to fit the contours of the back of the louver. I simply marked out the lines, put the parts into a vise and using a board and hammer bent them until satisfied. Here is a shot of the rear mounts ready to insert. You will notice large holes drilled out the reason for them is so that the fiberglass mat/cloth can be put under them, and through the holes for rigidity, and a smaller hole for the wood screw to temporarily hold it into place.

The front ones were bolted onto the louver, put into place then I used some bondo to temporarily attach them. Then the rear ones put in and the entire inside area glassed in. I had to clamp some small pieces of 2x4 so that the mat/cloth would lay flat against the front mounts. I used a piece of plastic between the parts and the 2x4 so that they would not stick. Here are a couple inside shots showing the front and rear mounts. Lots of mat was used around the rear mounts.

Moving back to the doors I again used bondo to put in a radius and then glassed in the lower window gutter area. I used three layers of 2oz glass figuring that the windows are much smaller and I did not need the additional layer of 4oz glass. Here is a picture with the excess trimmed off.

I finalized how I was going to make the mechanisms for operating the latch and lock. I took a length of 1-1/2" aluminum angle and drilled a hole for mounting levers at each end, various levers and spacers. Here are the individual components:

The base has a bunch of 1/2" diameter holes, the reason is to let the mat and resin extend through it for a stronger hold. In doing some experimentation, initially I was going to use 2 smaller base plates but I realized that the door latch mechanism put quite a torque on the base so I decided to use as long a base as possible, that way the pressure is distributed across the entire length. In the end the single base made installation a lot easier as well! I still have to make up the linkages and realize that the one for the exterior keyed lock will need to be slotted, this way the inside manual door lock can be engaged/disengaged properly. I will also use a slotted linkage for the exterior latch so when you release it from the inside the outside handle will not move (that would look wierd). Here are a couple of pictures showing the assembled mechanisms:

I glassed the inside of the front trunk lid using two layers of 6oz cloth. Once done I finally started to grind off the reinforcements that I had put on the lid to help retain the shape. Lots of additional grinding to do here to remove all the reminants of the reinforcements and will split up all the grinding to multiple days - it's real messy work...