Aaaaand, it's on again.
We're taking a family vacation next week, and I couldn't bear the thought of driving all the way down to Florida and back without the belly panel installed. We haven't had any more snow since that freak storm in late November, and it actually got up to 50F today, which is abnormally warm for around here, so I decided to install my "version 1.2" that I had waiting in the wings.
This is the original that got damaged by the huge chunk of unavoidable ice laying in the road:
I'm thinking that the short stubby parts that were intended to cover the lower control arms are fairly susceptible to damage from large road debris like what I encountered. On version 1.2, I made it just taper slightly, so there are no stubby parts for junk to rip off. Take that, nasty road crap.
Also, I executed the access holes better. Instead of a back-up ring, I glued on a few back-up tabs with cyanoacrylate. A tang glued onto the front of each access panel supports its front edge, and a countersunk screw (into one of the back-up tabs) in the trailing edge secures it in place.
Now I gotta clean off the ping pong table so the kids can use it again.
