I have been seriously considering the B&B 355. I was wondering if the door can be cut  to allow modification of the lower rocker panel. Possibly seperating it completely from the kit and re installing it?

This is a picture of the B&B 355 That I Modified in photoshop


Any thoughts on this? Can it be done?

I have seen that pic before... unfortunately i dont think the methood that that guy used will help me. The air intake is way to big and really takes away from the actuall 355 profile. As well, the lower rocke panel in that kit is also too "thin" looking.

So far I think I may have to cut the actuall door to get a proper look.

I think I'll have to cut the lower part of the door frame and have it welded in place on the chassis.

Well I have yet to decide if and when I'll take on my project... i am doing alot of research on the whole idea first. But it seem so siple to just cut the lower portion of the door.

Funny that someone should ask this particular question because for my F-50 kit from www.bodykitz.com I have to cut 2.5 inches off the bottom of the door.  There appears to be some work involved in reattaching the tracks for the windows, but they will still operate.  They won't go all the way down afterwards.  There are some pictures on the website of a frame with the doors cut.  This is the only issue with the F-50 kit that I am really hesitant about doing.  Thanks heavens I have a couple of sets of doors to mess with just in case.

the guy that built the red  car trimmed a small amount off the door and got a new set of doors-problem, the upper vent looks too big and the lower vent looks too small. second problem the "line from the rocker panel doesnt line up with the "ridge" on the front and rear bumpers as does the yellow car above. to get the yellow car's effect one would have to mount the door as usual and mark on the fiero door where the line for the rocker panel continues around to the inside. that amount is the height of the fake rocker on the kit's door skin. cutting there would result in the problems Ive found before. If you cut any less than the height of the fake rocker, the line won't be carried back to the rear and to the front like the yellow car.  All but the Mirage has these problems because they're not "designed" for seperate rockers.

To All;

I have cut ~1.5" off the bottom of my Ferrari 355 doors to make the sparate rocker panel.  It was not hard to do and I still retain full functionality pf my stock windows without modification.  

You cut the door panels off at the bottom just below the bottom of the window tracks and below the window stopper plate.  I had to cut about 1/4" off the bottom of the track to do this but it is an unused portion of the window track anyway.  It still makes the upper vent larger than it should be on a real 355 but only by about 1" rather the the 2-2.5" depending on which kit you have.

I can send pictures of my new rocker panel and door temp fix (I haven't welded the new bottom plate on the door yet only rivetted so far.  I wanted to set up my metal bending apparataus first to get a good clean bend on the plate before attaching permanently.

I cut the fibreglass rocker panel off the bottom of each of my side body panels and then bonded them to a new rocker panel top that I fashioned to fit the contours of the Fiero door frame and side frames.

Hope that helps everyone.  It really isn't that hard to do and turns out pretty good overall.

One of the things I did on my kit was I had to cut the upper portion of the side panels of my kit to get the body lines to match up along the side.  The body lines were attrocious until I cut and pasted every side panel to get everything lined up. A lot of work but it was worth it.  The body moldings are all in line now and parallel to the rocker panel as they should be.  The one thing that this did was to allowed me to have a shorter upper vent that might otherwise have been larger.

DKOV, If I sent a shot your way, it was not on purpose......

BTW:  I really like the roof lines of the B&B kit.  The sloping back of the top is very well done.  The reason I cut my roof off was that it was very flat and went back way too far before sloping down so it was a very poor replication of the proper lines.  Convertible is better anyway in my opinion as these are for fun and sun and a convertible is just better.....

I have a custom top and targa I have acquired as well if anyone is interestd in looking a some pics.  Look very cool with the back up and the targa off. Also folds down the same as the original with a little less height folded since you don't have the front portion folded up with it.  Still fitting it to my new convertible back end though....