First Chassis Spine Removable Cover

With the Framehead repairs complete it's time to move on to the underside of the chassis spine. As a reminder, I had cut two sections of thsi panel out; one at the rear due to the original panel being distorted due to jacking the car in the past and the other due to the need to remove rust from inside the chassis spine. A byproduct of this process is that I can route pipework and locate components within the chassis spine easily during the rest of the build. Whilst this process does affect the torsional strength of the chassis, as this is a race car the cage that is to be fitted later will put the needed strength, and more back.

Starting with the longer of the two holes, the edges were trimmed and neatened.



Here we have the two panel pieces removed from the original spine section and also a second, almost complete spine section panel that I caferully removed from another chassis. You can see all the spot welds along the edges of this panel that were drilled out to remove it!



Next the appropriate section was cut from the donor panel, leaving sufficient spare length at each end to allow for accurate trimming later.

The panel was then cleaned up using a wire brush on an angle grinder and laid in place to ensure it was right.