Ever want a body kit, but didn't like the ones they sell for the tercel. Make your own with body kits from other cars. Here is how.
Supplies
Construction items
-Fiberglass sheets
-Fiberglass Resin
-Fiberglass Hardener
-Disposable Paint Brushes
-Bondo
-Jig saw (or any kind of saw)
-Dremel
-Sand Paper
-Block Sander(makes life easier)
or better yet an electric sander(not required)
-Saftey glasses or safety goggles
-Face mask (nothing expensive, just to keep stuff from coming into your mouth and your nose, Find something at the $1 store)
-Rubber gloves
-Drill and some screws.
-Bricks
-Sharpie marker OR painters tape
Body kits that take less modifications[
-For side skirts, use 1992-1995 Honda Civic Side skirts
-For Front Bumper, Use a 1998 Integra Bumper
-For Rear bumper... is the tricky part. I mixed parts of a rear bumper to my stock Tercel Bumper. Reason is because the Civic rear bumper that I thought would fit, just didn’t. But if you find a used 1992-1995 Civic rear bumper, it should mesh depending on how you use your body work skills.
Body Work
First off for those who don’t know how to use some of the supplies listed, let me give you a quick teach to the best of my ability to teach, and type. To use fiberglass, you need to know what it is first.
Fiberglass: A type of fabric made from woven glass fibers and plastic reinforced by glass fibers. Fibreglass is used on the bodies of boats, cars, equipment, etc. and to make materials such as insulation.
How to use it is the next step. In general to use fiberglass, you need the fiberglass, Fiberglass resin, Fiberglass hardener, and your paint brushes. You can put your goggles and face mask on… but your not sanding anything yet… so I wouldn’t worry about it if you do this outside. Put some gloves on also, fiberglass resin can stick to your hands for a while if you don’t have gloves. First you take the fiberglass sheets, and place it where you want to fiberglass. Next up is you take the Fiberglass resin and some hardener (you don’t need too much hardener, just read the directions on how much is enough) and put it into a paper cup or something you can throw away but can hold liquids. Make sure that there is HARDENER BECAUSE IT’S A HORRIBLE SITE IF THERE WAS NONE… Take the paint brush and stir it, mix it until you think the hardener spread throughout the whole cup of resin. After that, you need to brush your fiberglass sheet with the mixed resin and hardener. You can put more than one layer of fiberglass sheets if you want it to be stronger, (that’s some fake body kits break easily, because there aren’t as many sheets of fiberglass than the Real expensive ones). Let the fiberglass dry up for about an hour or two. If your weather is cold, sorry you might have to wait all night. After it dries up just sand it, or if it is just being used to add strength to something and is hidden on the inside of a body kit (like if its inside the bumper not outside, and you cant see it…) just leave it. No one knows but you right. That’s the best I could come up with with less reading.
Making the body kit
Side skirts
1.) Take the side skirt and put it on the side of your tercel, put it where you want to mount your side skirts. Yes it wont fit perfect, that’s why you have your saw.
2.) I don’t remember if it was bigger or shorter than the side of the tercel (I did my tercel body kit over 2 years ago…). Either way what you want to do is, Cut the side skirts into 3 pieces. To cut it into three pieces, cut in the center of the body kit, and make 2 cuts that are about 3 inches apart from each other. Like this:
3.) After you cut the skirts, take the center piece out and just use the other two long pieces and hold them like you wanted to put your body kit on already. They should still NOT be flush with the fenders and behind the door. What you want to do is, hold one sides of the skirt and hold it where you want it, and mark the skirt where it needs to be cut. Mark it where you want to cut it like this:
4.) When you’ve done these to both sides of the ONE skirt, you then take the 2 sides and put them together by holding them like you were going to put them on your car. Hold them to where they look like they are going to go on… but all you need to do now is fill up the center piece. How you fill up the center piece it can take long, or it can be quick. Ive done a lot of these custom body kits so I don’t remember if it was shorter or bigger so I’ll tell you both ways.
*If the center piece is bigger than what you need* Let me explain what I mean first.. After you have the side skirt where you want it, and you still have that gap, and the center piece that was cut earlier ended up bigger than what you actually need. Like this:
It is much easier to deal with. Just cut it up to the size you do need. Example… Like this:
*If the center Piece is SMALLER than what you need. You might have to do a little more work than the bigger center piece. Example of what I’m talking about
How to fix this, is take the side pieces and the center piece, put them together to where there are the 2 gaps that make the skirt fit the car. Like this…
And then Fiberglass them. After you fiberglass under the skirt, let it dry, and just put some bondo and sand it to where it looks like nothing was ever wrong.
5.) Now that you have your pieces ready to be molded together, just fiberglass the INSIDE of the side skirt. I would do maybe 2 sheets worth (how to fiberglass is on the top of thread). After you have fiberglassed the inside, bondo a little on the outside of the side skirt where the cracks are from the cutting of the center piece. Do this after the fiberglass dries up.
6.) Now you have to mount your side skirt. Just take a drill and drill a whole near the top corners of the side skirts. And also drill the wholes on your body of your car. You can first drill some wholes on your side skirts, then put the side skirt on your car, and take a pen or something that can mark the whole… and then drill it. Wholes on the skirts are Like this:
That should be it for the side skirts. If you want those side flaps that go inside your wheel well, take the flaps that you cut off, and cut JUST the flap, and fiberglass it back on.. you can figure out away because by now you should know how to fiberglass and use your saw. Here is the pic of what I’m talking about
Front Bumper
1.) The front bumper might even be one of the easiest parts. It’s only easy because all you have to do is chop some parts off and fiberglass some holes (ie, the integra headlight circle wholes). The only hard part is the damn mounting of the bumper.
Take off your front wheels, and put your car on jack stands or something. Then take out your front bumper, your headlights, your corner lights, and your grill.
2.) Take the Integra bumper and CUT off all of the headlight section on the bumper. Like around this much
3.) After the wholes are cut off, then there should be enough room to mount it on to your tercel. After its on there, take a few bricks or something that can go under the bumper, and put the bricks to where it holds the bumper as if the bumper is already connected to the car.
4.) After the bricks are in place, and bumper looks like its on the car, take a Sharpie or Painters tape and on the edges of the bumper, look at the wheel well, sharpie or tape an outline of where the bumper needs to be cut. To make sense of this… here is a picture
I for one prefer to use painters tape because if the outline of the wheel well doesn’t look right, I just move the tape to where it does look right, and then sharpie it.
5.) After the mark for the wheel well is outlined, CUT IT WITH A SAW!! Yes, cut out that outline of yours. I’m sure you don’t need pictures for that one.
6.) After the cut has been made on both wheel wells on both edges of the bumper… moving on to the Headlights on the bumper. Make sure that when the bricks are under the bumper, and the wheel well is flush now, make sure that the top of the bumper can sit on top of the stock bumper mount… like this… (this is MY tercel before I got it painted and sold it.)
7.) Now that you SHOULD know how to fiberglass already, you need to take the bumper and flip it to where f the bumper is upside down. If your sTuPiD and don’t get what I mean… here…
Cut up some fiberglass and put it where the Headlight Wholes were. (integra circle lights) and put some of the fiberglass over it. Do the hardener process, and then let it dry. After it dries take some of the BONDO and mix it, and put it on the TOP of the bumper where the fiberglass was holding. Like this
8.) After the bondo drys, sand it down to where it feels very smooth and the way you want it. Flush with the bumper… Trust me it will look better when you paint it.
It was this…
To this…
9.) Now for mounting this shit…
Here are 2 pictures of sorta Instructions… Look at these FIRST
No w/ that said, all those things on there, that should help you figure out how to mount the bumper on your Tercel.
FINALLY! The rear Bumper
1.) I did a Buddy Club rear bumper, WHICH WAS HARD AS HELL!! I took the rear bumper off a Civic that my friend broke. I figured I’ll try to use it. I only used the BOTTOM portion of the bumper. Before I start I would recommend just buying one that already works for the tercel, like the Evo rear. I would of, but I didn't.
I cut off only the good parts of the bumper. On the bottom where there are FINS, I took that and pretty much Fiberglassed it on to my stock Rear bumper. How to do this, Is take your stock rear bumper OFF, and then take the bottom portion of the body kit rear that you are going to use.
Take the bumper portion, and cut it into 3 Pieces and do the same method as the Civic side skirts method. (I haven’t tried this but maybe if you use an integra rear bumper, it may be easier…).
Put both the bottom portion and the bumper on some kind of chair, stand, whatever you can to get it laying together as if it looks like it’s a full bumper already.
2.) Take some fiberglass, and fiberglass the section at which the bumper and the bottom portion piece meet, and fiberglass it. Do like 2 sheets of fiberglass, and a lot of resin. Do like 2-3 layers of resin. As in after it dries, do it AGAIN, then again. Now for the Ichy part, sand it down to where you could get it the smoothest.. and then Bondo the imperfections. From there, you can mount it up still with your stock bumper so no custom mounting required.
That’s all I can think of for doing a body kit on a tercel… hope it helps you guys out
-Tercelica
**My tercel** a.k.a Tercelica
Discussion area for Tercel, Paseo, Starlet, and Sera
Linear Mode
