So there was an unfortunate incident involving some undulating terrain last weekend:
http://youtu.be/Sq6VerqTEpUThose of you with elephantine memories (or who've started on page one of this thread) may remember that this thread started with a mod-trialler that was butchered up when I got my grubby mitts on the silly little SJ. One of the items that was salvaged from that was a ROPS frame.
Now, say what you will about horses and stable doors, we've decided to get the frame on the SJ now (there are a few months with no trials), so last night we started by straightening out some of the damage you can see here:
The fold in front of the nearside windscreen was pushed out using a bottle jack on a sleeper block in the footwell. The hinges have been removed, as they'd both sheared in the roll. We're going to need a porta-power pack to square the screen frame up and then the main pillars are also seriously p*ssed and will need the same attention.
Once this fold was pushed out we measured up and cut holes for the front hoop and test fitted:
Fits in there nice and tight. Next on this we need to remove the speaker boxes Suzuki put in the footwells, handily in the path of the descending frame.
Here's the ROPS frame, mid-preparation:
I've removed the nasty tin roof, cut out the box section that had been gobbed in the back of the roof area (no idea why). Next up is to remove a couple of the rear bars, cut and notch them appropriately and weld them back into the vertical frame as a proper X. Obviously there will be harness bars put across the X, too.
When that's done, there are some holes to cut to the rear body, to fit the cage down to it.
After that we need to fabricate up front hoop mounts on the chassis outriggers. Oh and then make up mounts for the harnesses and fit up the second shell seat for the
victi passengers.
Should keep me busy this winter then.