Naked Chassis
Dropped the differential and prop, removed the spare wheel supports. Unbolted the windscreen and supports, the supports have suffered badly from corrosion and the powder coat has come off in some places. They should be ok once bea blasted and re-coated though. Tried to take the scuttle off but it's been thoroughly stuck on with sealant. The only way to get it off without damaging it looks like it's going to be to hack the bodywork with an angle grinder, then pick the bits of GRP off bit by bit. Finally managed to remove the handbrake cable without cutting it, after realising that he collars that it goes through have a gap in them, just big enough for the wire to fit through. D'Oh!
With the majority of the loom now unpicked and the rest of the mechanicals out ready for clean-up the next step looks to be to get the engine and gearbox out so I can make some space.
Decided that now was the time to attack the scuttle. Just like the tiger it's held on by 4 bolts, unlike the tiger Westfield had used a lot of sealant between it and the chassis. Simply prising it wasn't enough and was going to do some serious damage. In the end I took an angle grinder to the side panels, freeing up the sides of the scuttle but just the sealant along the front edge was still a significant force. An hour later, after cutting with a stanley knife and chisseling it I finally had it free, 45 mins after that I managed to remove the pieces of side panel that I'd cut off. There's some damage to it in places and it'll take a fair amount of cleaning up but even thats going to be a lot easier than starting from scratch.
Angle grinder removes scuttle
Removed the battery tray and all the wiring from the dash, pulling through thr ECU loom at the same time. Then proceeded to remove the main car-side loom as well. My what a lot of connectors!
Moved onto some of the side panels, to give me access to the gearbox. Westfield claimed it would be extremely difficult to remove them, in reality it's one of the easiest bits so far. In some cases I'll reuse them, saving me much trimming, in others I'll just use them as templates for drilling/cutting the new ones. Ended up removing the scuttle panel and the 3 gearbox access panels. With the access to the gearbox I sprayed a load of Jizzer in there. Within seconds the 5mm of crud was falling off. I've no idea what they put in that stuff but boy is it effective, far more so than Gunk. So I now have an at least partly clean gearbox and a mainly stripped car. Only big jobs left now are to remove the engine/gearbox, whats left of ali panels, then go round connecting all the fasteners/clips and hose runs.
Removed the seat-back panel and the ones from the tunnel, rivets galore. The screw-fix "jobber" bits really are made of toffee, managing about 25 rivets per bit before breaking. On the up side they're dirt cheap and with their fragility you can be sure that they're always sharp.
Nice clean gearbox
Cleaned up the panels I removed previously and put them to one side and had a bit of a tidy-up to make space to remove the engine. The easiest way I found to clean them was to use a bit of Jizzer and a wire brush if they were oily. Otherwise to remove glue, sealant and other assorted muck a squirt of WD40 and a going over with the wire brush attachment on the drill worked very well.
Unbolted the engine and hooked up the hoist (Thanks Tim!), on the cossie there don't seem to be any specfic lifting points so I went through the manifold and down to the mounts, which seemed secure enough. Tried to lift and realised that the fuel hoses were still connected, more annoyingly the return is one long piece of hose all the way to the back of the car. Undid the fuel hoses and we're away. Only we're not because there isn't enough clearance for the gearbox/bellhousing to come out in one through the tunnel. Started off grinding the chassis bracing away to make room then realised I needed it split anyway to put on the engine stand. Anyway to cut a long story short the engine is on the stand and the gearbox is on the floor.
Removed the final plates from the tunnel, leaving just the floors and sides in place. I don't think I'm going to bother with them because there's nothing terribly clever about the shaping. Removed the scoop for the intercooler, cracked down the side, so thats another bit to make up from new.
With the help of two cans of Gunk managed to clean up the diff and gearbox, the latter is now sparkling but the webbing on the diff, combined with the sheer ground-in-ness of the grime thwarted me from making it sparkle. I was planning to paint it but I don't think it's really necesary.
Even cleaner gearbox
Clean differential
Cleaned up some more panels, notably those from the drivers footwell, the GRP one with the footrest grafted was cleaned up and the ali plate bonded back in neatly with some silicone sealant - no need for the strength of sikaflex here. The footwell end panel had, at some point, had an air vent grafted in, although the vent was very neatly manufactured, the hole in the panel wasn't. I'm guessing it was done post-build when the access was pretty poor. I used a hole cutter to neaten the hole up, then made up a sandwich plate, with a hole in it the exact size of the vent. With that rivetted in place there was only the smallest of gaps to seal up.
Tidied up the garage a bit so there's a little more space to work in. I don't think there's a spare bit of shelving, roofing or anywhere else in the garage that doesn't have a bit of westfield secreted in it. Finding all the bits again might be interesting!
Removed the floor panels and a last couple of useful brackets off the chassis. Cleaned up the floor panels and put them into the roof-space with the rest of them ready for when I needed them. With Catherines help loaded up the chassis into the van that I've hired and cleaned out all the assorted muck from the carpet in the garage. Cleaned the surface rust off the trestles that I've borrowed from Jim (thanks again), and painted them so they don't go the same way in future.
Tomorrow I'm collecting the new chassis from westfield in exchange for the old one. Because I'm getting the to build it onto the same chassis number they need to be able to tell the DVLA honestly that the old one has been destroyed. The useful upside is that I don't have to dispose of a pile of old GRP and metalwork. Starting tomorrow we'll be onto the build, which you can read about over here
As you'll have read if you went to the rebuild diary I don't as yet have a chassis due to a cock up by westfield. So we're back here again and I'm using the extra time to finish sorting out the parts from the old car.
I've ended up with a complete set of new wings and many other bits I wasn't expecting so a lot of reconditioning has been saved and some wasted. Today I hung the main tub (its the type approved version that wraps all the way round) from the roof of the garage, out of the way. I also managed to negotiate temporary lodging for the rest of the bodywork in the house.
Sanded down, cleaned up and repainted the propshaft, anti-roll bar and petrol filter mount. Sorted out 2 more boxes of bits: one to go back to westfield because i already have the parts and one of bits that I don't need any more but want to hang onto, just in case. The latter box I'm cleaning up most of the parts, just so they're in a known ok and easy to handle state prior to storing them away. Far better to have a box of nicely painted and prepped spares than rusty, dirty, oily ones. Cleaned up indicators, which I probably won't use after all, various bits that located the battery and some other minor parts that currently slip my mind.
Cleaning up more parts including starter, alternator, various bracketry and the ARB mounts. After my initial elation at finding the ARB to be sound I;ve now found that one of the rod ends had got lightly mangled. At least that shouldn't be too expensive to replace.
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