Archive for November, 2008

Delivery Boys

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Today we dragged the bodywork we (hopefully) don’t need to a local scrapyard, and then took the chassis on to Tomcat.

Well organised, as you can see

Well organised, as you can see.

The rollcage should be fitted next week (we saw it when we arrived, it just needs fitting to the chassis) and the bodywork will be in by mid-December.

The loom, as removed by me. With that hammer.

The loom, as removed by me. With that hammer.

The bodywork will be taped to the frame ready for collection. Paul from Tomcat advises that we bring a sheet to prevent the body panels from blowing off on the way home. I agree.

The old body about to be taken into the scrapyard

The old body about to be taken into the scrapyard.

I’ve also picked up my first official Tomcat part – the heated windscreen! The windscreen is specially made to fit a Tomcat, and has a heating element so powerful that Paul advises you to fit a ten-minute timer, as leaving it on for too long will cause the plastic between to glass to melt!

Seat, steering wheel and pedals. All you need for `pretend car` fun.

Seat, steering wheel and pedals. All you need for 'pretend car' fun...

Time lag switches are proving rather hard to locate on the Internet. Stay tuned…
(Update – aha, here we are – a heated rear window timed relay.)

No turning back

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Well, the body is off the chassis, so there’s no turning back now. It was fairly hard, but not as bad as I thought. We removed all the cooling pipes and the main radiator, undid the UJ on the steering column, disconnected all the electrics from the engine, removed the winch and winch bumper, brake lines and ABS electronics, disconnected the gear linkage and speedometer cable, undid the mounts and lifted the whole body up with a crane. It took three of us about ten hours.

No steps? No worries.

No steps? No worries.

God only knows what you'd do if you didn't have a crane.

I don't know what you do without a handy crane...

Highlighted in red

Mounting points highlighted in red. *Toward the centre

Video showing the roof removal