Decision was made pretty quickly to try and fit the Revell chassis under the Fujimi body as opposed to re-working the Fujimi chassis to accept the Revell engine and running gear.
First things first.
The Revell kit has the lower sills moulded onto it whereas the Fujimi kit has the lower sills moulded onto the chassis so off they came with the help of a PE saw and cemented into place on the Revell chassis.
Next step was to transfer the Fujimi wheel hubs onto the Revell chassis.
A quick side by side revealed that both kits are extremely close to each other in terms of dimensions and more importantly, wheelbase and track.
As such, another simple saw and glue was all that was needed for the rear.
The front was slightly easier as all that was needed was to thicken the little tabs on the Fujimi hub to fit into the existing Revell wishbones. However, a quick test fit revealed that the Revell chassis sits higher up in the body that the Fujimi one does and as a result, the wheel arches needed to be trimmed in order for the chassis to fit correctly under the Fujimi chassis.
About 2mm was removed from the bottom of the wheel arch.
In doing so, I lost the locating tabs so had to replace them with my own very makeshift and not very pretty looking ones but they do the job and will not be visible when completed.
Another problem with mating the Fujimi kit with the Revell chassis is that the rear wheel arches needed to be trimmed as well to accept the Fujimi cockpit.
After much trial and error, this is what was removed for it to all fit (very) snugly.
Quick shot of how the under body parts fit together.
Here, you can see the beginnings of some putty and sheet styrene work done on the engine bay surround to make it fit the Fujimi body.
You can see the putty around the headlight surrpunds.
What you might be able to see is that the sides have been extended with sheet styrene and invisible is the lot of sanding underneath the wheel arch area to, like before, lower the whole engine bay area to make it fit.
Fitting the body over the chassis shows that it does all fit quite nicely.
There is still more work needed on the engine bay surround to fill in the gaps as well as the need to fabricate the area under the windscreen that holds the wipers and vents.
Final shot of the day.
Hood back on.
While everything is in pretty much the correct location, there is still a whole lot of little somethings wrong here and there because as it is, it doesn't hold together without some pressure.
Most of it will be to do with removing plastic to give the parts clearance. The tricky bit is finding what bits need more clearance...
More later.