Recently in my last post we transported the chassis to where I could work more easily with other family and friends, it has been obvious from the start of the project that the top front chassis rail (where normal Marcos 3.0 Litre cars have radiator brackets mounted) needs replacement as a number of brackets etc have been welded and subsequently ground off in turn.
The car has has an odd stance where it used to stand, I was sure it was fine, but on looking at the chassis when the body was off it looked as though there was a bending effect on the drivers side, I initially put this down to it 'not being on a level surface' as the floor of my shed slopes down toward the front door.
Since transport and the chassis being placed on the axle stands on a level surface, it appears that the Drivers side top and bottom rails are bent and that a packing job has been done on the base rail of the passenger side rail also so common sense would be to replace all of them to ensure that weaknesses dont occurr further down the line and due to the fact I'm galvanising this chassis you cannot easily weld and maintain a good treatment to the chassis once it is galvanised.
Below are some pictures of the chassis some work already done to the front top rail replacement.
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| Cuts made with an angle grinder cutting disc |
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| Front end minus the modified top rail the residual chassis section on either side will be chopped out to tidy the re-welding area. |
As mentioned above, the chassis rails were shown to be bent downwards, the new chassis steel we have bought is completely straight, this was offered up as a guide and proves that the drivers side is amiss.
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| view from the interior of the chassis |
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| Rail viewed from the outside of the chassis |
Below is a picture showing the passenger side rail:
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| Straight chassis rails, note the metal plate welded to the top side of the bottom rail just behind the upright. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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I made a trip over to Marcos Heritage spares this afternoon to ask Rory's advice on how we should proceed Rory strongly advised that if a problem exists then every effort should be made to correct the issue particularly as I intend to galvanise this chassis. The advise was also to use the fron bulkhead chassis rail as the point to work from replace the top and the top front chassis rail then work from these on the base rails and this should then correct the issues with my front end.
Well as usual, there will be further updates on this as and when we make the changes to the chassis.
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