Fitting My New Seats

[Enoch]

Got my seats all measured up, there was no way they were going to fit without some serious modification to the chassis as stupid me had made it far too tight. Not a problem though, I have an angle grinder, I have an electric reciprocating saw and I have a big hammer. I didn't need the hammer as the other 2 tools proved adequate and within an hour or so the whole of my tunnel had been removed.


I had to measure everything very carefully as I wanted to make sure all IVA critical dimensions eg height from set base to upper belt mounts, height of seats, forward visibility were all ok. I also wanted to make sure that I had some adjustability in the seats for practical purposes.

Having sorted out my dimensions I made the bottom part of the tunnel frame, I had to use different methods to when I built the car in the first place as now I could not use a build table. I clamped pieces of wood across the lower chassis rails to give me a height datum to work to, it worked out pretty well.
The rails were not straight forward as I had to drill large holes in them and weld in inserts for the seat mounting bolts. Once made all 4 pieces were welded in place.



No real strength in that yet but it gave me enough to test fit the seats and to make sure there is enough room for the prop and other fairly important bits and pieces.


They fit perfectly, I can now finalise the top tunnel tubes, get em cut up and glued in to place. I will have much more room now, when I was trial fitting them it became apparent that my initial design would have not worked anyway. I had not allowed enough room for my left leg, this has given me the opportunity to make things a whole lot better.
There aint a lot of space for the prop but as the diff is a fixed point and the gearbox mount only allows a very small amount of movement it does not need a lot of clearance.
It might not look it but there is plenty of room.

That's it for today, hope to get another day on it later in the week and get the upper tunnel rails done.

[CTWV50]

Looks like you're having a lot of fun with your new build.