G'day,
Fitted the chrome plastic trim that goes along the sills and around the wheel arches today and it all went pretty good after I read the various suggestions on this forum.
I didn't use a heat gun but did leave the trims out in the hot sun for a few days, gradually straightening them out before fitting.

What I have found out though is that the seams themselves are not all that smooth and while I haven't got any major kinks, I have got numerous minor bumps in the trim as it follows the imperfections in the seams. Before fitting the trims, I didn't think the imperfections would show up in the trims but as they area fairly tight push on fit, whatever bumps are in the seams tend to show up in the trims.

No big dramas and most people won't even notice but as a tip for fellow members, if I was doing another rebuild, I'd spent a bit of time on the seams before I painted the car and get them as smooth as possible - maybe even a light skim of filler on them - so that the plastic trim sat nice and flat on them. I didn't attempt to work on the seams today as I've found it's quite often better to leave well enough alone instead of risking a crack or chip in the paint.

Cheers, Rocky

Were you fitting the standard mini moulding or the S style?
The standard pattern seems easier to fit but the S style looks a bit more classy although harder to fit, especially with flares.
Also, there seems to be parts from different suppliers and some are very poor quality. Even slight irregularities show up as bumps and kinks.
I had a very thin S set that kinked permanently on the tight bends and had to be discarded. The original strips were more forgiving.

G'day Bill,

The trim I used is the GZF107MS from Minisport. It's pretty much all I could get at the time due to stock shortages. The trim itself is very thin - about half of the original.
What I noticed when putting the trim on was all the raised bits from each of the spot welds along the seams. I didn't take that much notice of them when I was doing the body but 5 mins with a file or a sander before painting would have knocked these down flat. These have left little raised lines along the top of the wheel arches. Not all that noticeable but when you do things yourself, you do see them.
The bigger issue was the metal around the radius bits before the wheel arches each end of the sill. The rears in particular are not all that smooth and the seams themselves have a few kinks in them. The trim then follows these kinks and looks like the trim is kinked when in fact it's the metal behind it. A few minutes with a hammer and dolly, and maybe a skim of filler, before painting would have smoothed things out a bit.

Rocky