Body off - what have I missed

[Lozza74]

Hi all,

In the ongoing restoration of my excel I have got to the stage where I want to separate the body from the chassis - in fact today was the day!

I have:
Detached the battery negative cable from the chassis
Pulled the fuel pipe out of the boot through so it is under the car
Removed the steering column
undone the bolts holding the handbrake lever down, and undone the cable clamps - so the lever is very loose
Removed all 12 body mounting bolts

So what have I forgotten?

When I lift the body the front wheels drop and the chassis sits about 1 inch below the body. At the rear there were some shocking repairs to the rear body fixing, so after hacking away the excess fibreglass I can now see daylight between body and chassis.

However the body will not separate from the chassis. It appears to be stuck somewhere around the middle of the car - around the handbrake.
Have I missed any mounts?

If I try to force the two apart I get a sound that could be fibreglass cracking, or it could be glue unsticking itself.
Is the body likely to have been glued to the chassis?

Thanks!
Richard

[Pete Boole]

Inboard seatbelt anchors - they bolt into the chassis.

Pete

[Lozza74]

Driver and passenger seat belts? That sounds very likely.

It doesn't have rear belts so it's not those.

Thanks - I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow afternoon

[Pete Boole]

Yep - driver and passenger seat belts.

Pete

[Lozza74]

Thanks Pete, that was the answer.
I got back to the car this afternoon, and after removing the seatbelt mounts tried to lift the body again.
Everything went very smoothly this time, and the result is the body suspended from some steels, and the rolling chassis on the floor.



Thanks for the guidance

[Pete Boole]

Well done! Major resto project - excellent!

Pete

[Lotus-e-Clan]

I all looks very clean already!

What process did you use to raise the body like that?

[Lozza74]

Hi Peter,

You can just make out that the chassis is sitting over my scissor lift. As luck has it the lifting platforms sit under the floors of the body shell, and not under the chassis - so raising the body off was simply a case of hitting the 'up' button on the lift .

That is, once I had removed all the fixings.

Edit - I cant post pictures from this machine - but there are some in this thread viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11978

Regards,
Richard