..
With the dash out of the way, I moved on to the loom and a couple of hiccups, where the added wiring had been done by the 'as the crow flies' method, instead of the 'That might be a problem later'. Eventually I had a large pile of wiring gathered on the floor.
That left.the remaining fuel & brake lines to take care of. The fuel lines with their quite nasty fitting were next and mind that braid, At this point, I dropped the fuel tank, which incidentally was unprotected, out. On the old car, I had fibre glassed the underside of the tank and will do the same with this one.
The glass was a bit of an issue. Normally I call my tame windscreen fitters to remove all in glass but this time, it coincided with the start of lockdown. Time to have a go myself.
No more putting it off, it was time to get the plasma cutter out and start
cutting the roll cage out. I started with the drivers door
bars, to get some access to the rest.
No sooner said than done.
Although the plasma cutter eases the pain of getting the bulk of the cage out, it still leaves the welded in parts to cope with.
Those parts were going to need the attention of the angle grinder and a few dozen cutting discs. It doesn't help of course,
when
you snag a disc. The seat mounts were frighteningly badly welded.
Stuck was a more accurate description. I hate to think what would have happened if had been involved in an
accident.Having cleaned up the old weld, I gave everything a coat of primer as I went along.
To give myself a little break from the grinding, I moved to the rear of the car to weld in the s ll stands. With this particular mode having side skirts, I needed to work out
how much stick out I needed to reach the skirt. Having sorted that little problem, I needed to weld a plate to the tube to give it support. That done, I used the e
existing jacking point as the rear support and welded the tube in place.
Back to the grind. As I said, the cutting out of the cage was the easy bit, taking out the mounting points, a little more problematic, as you can see from the grit left from the grinding discs.
There were the odd brackets to cut off but finally it's all out and I can start getting the shell ready for the new
cage.