February 2023

With Christmas out of the way and the usual New Year resolution in place - to make extensive progress on the Ultima.
I need to bite the bullet and securely mount the side pods and centre body section.

To shim out the rear side pod to chassis mounting, I draw up a simple rectangle in Fusion360, I then 3D print this in various thicknesses.
With some experimentation I eventually identify two that position the rear of the side pods where I need them.

After some final checks I commit to riveting the side pods in place.

Once the pods are secured I have no real excuses not to secure the centre tub.

The original builder had made a bit of a pigs ear of securing the tub, unevenly spaced and most in the wrong place, once I had added my holes to correctly secure the centre tub I was left with a bit of a mess along the front edges.
With some patience I filled these holes and a couple of large chips with gel coat. I used plasticine to form little cups so that the gel-coat was proud and then used cling film to cover the gel-coat to allow it to cure fully.
Once cured I sanded down with progressively finer wet and dry paper and then polished with Farecla cutting compound.

From the paper labels attached to many of the fibreglass panels I believe the colour is LR Golden Yellow (PCP3754) which I obtained from
MB Fibreglass Moulding & Casting Supplies. The match is perfect see below.