Having all the box-tube passing thru to the interior of the car was certainly required when the old chassis (the rusty rails & floor) was cut out, but now that the basic chassis is complete , it can support itself nicely as a single unit. So now I should only need to bolt the rotisserie to the rear bumper mounting bolt holes.
The first thing to do was to put the shell up on blocks (again!!) to take wight off the space-frame as seen below.
From there is was just a matter of cutting the box-tube away and making an inverted A-frame on the rear rotisserie to support the jig that's bolted to the rear bumper mount holes. I used 2mm wall thickness box-tube for these new pieces as the lengths are quite short.
Now I have an uncluttered interior again that will let me install the sub-frame connectors, floor, seat foundations, firewall, etc.
Something to note is that as the front frame-rail (the area under the original battery) is still yet to have its rust hole repaired, I can't bolt a jig up to it and so the space-frame remains at the front of the car. But what does remain is not in my way for making repairs and in fact will be used as a solid base to form a jig that correctly locates the front shock-towers for - when I put in my hidden shock-tower supports. I need to create a custom shock-tower brace as the OEM bracet will very likely get in the way of the big-block's induction setup.
So now its a matter of completing the shell in preparation for installing all the "bolt-on bits". Those bits being the suspension, fuel tank & lines, brakes, wiring, seats, etc.
Completion of the shell will be my next blogg entry as there is significant work to do. But thankfully (in this updated post) "day light saving" has started so i'll have more time to spend on this project over summer.
