My GT6, the story so far.. (part 3)

The modifications to the chassis for the engine repositioning took quite a bit of time, with careful positioning of the engine and gearbox onto the chassis to enable me to work out where I would need to cut and re-weld the chassis. The engine and gearbox must have been placed on the chassis about ten times, just to make sure I had cut and welded in the correct positions, a job made quite easy with my tractor, it having a fore end loader. After a weekend of cutting and welding, the chassis was thoroughly cleaned and painted with chip-resistant chassis paint, much better than hammerite paint, which will chip easily and let the rust start.

After finding the poor repairs on the chassis I decided to take a closer inspection of the body and the repairs that had been done. Despite having had a full respray, the welding along the outer sill to the floor pan had only been tacked every inch instead of a seam weld. To solve this I had to clean out as much paint as possible from along the join and seam weld it, whilst not over heating it, to prevent other paint from lifting. That was a really nasty job as I could not remove all the paint from the joint, so all too often I would get splattered with hot paint and the mig welder was constantly getting blocked.

The welding was not much better further round the floor pan, because it was close to the chassis, who ever tried to do the floor pans once again had not seam welded it, instead had chosen to smear some silicone around it to make it look complete, oh well, out with the welder again and dodging the hot flying silicone.

With complete welds, fresh paint on the underside of the body tub and a set of polybushes fitted to the chassis, it was time to fit the body back onto the chassis. The body is held in place by twelve bolts, some of which have aluminium spacers or rubber washers between the body and chassis, which you have to get and keep in place when lowering the body, best held in place with the use of a bit of blutac.

Fitting of the body was followed by the trial fit of the engine and gearbox so I could check for any clearance issues. The first issue was quite clear to see once the inlet manifold and carburettors were fitted, the outer face of the carburettor was right up against the clutch master cylinder. Time for another re-design me thinks.