Aligning body onto new chassis
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 8:26 am
After a long search in the forums I couldn't find an answer to this, so this is my dilemma.
We lowered the body of my 1965 built Elan Coupe onto a new rolling chassis and the alignment was pretty good, so I thought. The next step was marking the holes out for the new chassis.
When I inspected the front crossmember/rack plate for the hole position was right on the forward end of the plate, which didn't look at all right. The old rusty chassis had holes approx 20mm further back on the plate. See below:
Old chassis:
New chassis:
Simple, just move the chassis forwards - not quite! The rear suspension turrets are hard against the bodywork and even with the slightest tweaking I might get 5mm forwards movement, but not 20mm. The rack plate dimensions match in length between the two chassis, but I haven't checked the rear turret to plate length yet.
A bit of head scratching occured at this point. I could move the bobbins at the front crossmember but I thought I'd ask here first.
Has anyone else had experienced of this alignment issue?
We lowered the body of my 1965 built Elan Coupe onto a new rolling chassis and the alignment was pretty good, so I thought. The next step was marking the holes out for the new chassis.
When I inspected the front crossmember/rack plate for the hole position was right on the forward end of the plate, which didn't look at all right. The old rusty chassis had holes approx 20mm further back on the plate. See below:
Old chassis:
New chassis:
Simple, just move the chassis forwards - not quite! The rear suspension turrets are hard against the bodywork and even with the slightest tweaking I might get 5mm forwards movement, but not 20mm. The rack plate dimensions match in length between the two chassis, but I haven't checked the rear turret to plate length yet.
A bit of head scratching occured at this point. I could move the bobbins at the front crossmember but I thought I'd ask here first.
Has anyone else had experienced of this alignment issue?