When cutting along the sills and around the bulkhead, accuracy will make life easier later on. The following points should be noted.
Sills -
Rear of floor -
Inner wings -
During the removal of the body, any useful looking parts such as nuts, bolts, grommets, etc. were collected and saved for possible future use.
The metalwork cut off the car was weighed in at the local scrap metal yard, and most
of the un-
Once the body had been removed, the chassis was inspected , cleaned and painted. Luckily, no repairs were needed to the chassis. Whilst easily acessible, new brake lines were fitted, and the exhaust was modified ready for the new body. A couple of small repairs were needed to the bulkhead, but with the body removed these were easily tackled.
Fitting the new body.
When the new body arrived, it was lifted into place by hand, we managed this with just four people, six would be better as it is heavy! However, it only took about 30 minutes to place it on the chassis. It was achieved by backing the chassis upto the trailer, then sliding the new body from the trailer, over the rear tyres and into place on the body mounts.
The initial fit was surprisingly good, reflecting the tolerance to which the kit is built. It was nessacery to pack up the mountings at the rear of the sills by 4mm. As the original body mounting bolts were a bit scabby, I replaced them with new M10 ones. Once I was happy with the fit of the body, it was bolted up, and the rear body mouning holes were drilled and bolted up.
You can see from the photo the enourmous gain in wheel to arch clearance.
The next task was to dry build the car, and make any nessacary modifications before painting could commence. As I used a 200tdi as a donor, There is a difference in the bukhead where it meets the windscreen. Because of this I had to fabricate closing panels for the bulkhead to meet the bottom of the windscreen.
N.C.F. SAHARA
Build. (2)
