The Chassis Spine- Decisions

Here's the chassis I'll be using. Underneath is the lower closing panel removed (re. spot welds drilled out) from the other chassis.

As you can see I cut out a section at the rear. This is because the chassis must have been jacked up using this point at some time and was pushed in. I thought I might be able to remove the smaller dents and pop it back out but it was going to be easier to make a repair panel out of the donor chassis. Once I'd got this section cut out it was apparent that the majority of the closing panel was quite rusted. Whilst not to the point it would need scrapping, I didn't want any rust left so I needed to come up with a way to access this panel all the way along from inside the tunnel.

To do this I thought about removing the whole lower section of the chassis and replacing it complete but, having taken this panel from the donor, it was impractical. The donor chassis had lost a massive amount of torsional rigidity and doing this to the chassis I was going to use was likely to cause misalignment issues later on.

I decided instead to removed another section and then make removable covers for both holes that were left. This would give me enough torsional rigidity whilst I was working on the car, and any lost would eventually be replaced as the car is to get a full race cage. It would also enable me to easily replace any necessary pipes in the tunnel and locate some component there later on.

Second panel marked out...

...and cut.