Hmm, not according to plan!

But does it ever?

I managed to spend most of the day working on the car today and got a lot of the bolts undone (well, if cutting them off with an angle grinder counts as "undoing" :D )

The ones I have so far removed are the "turret" bolts, both front footwells, both of those behind rear seats and the rearmost. Also have removed the seatbelt mountings and seat mounting bolts. Not sure if I need to remove the front bumper as I want the whole front of car off too. Rad etc etc is all long gone. The rear seat backrest mounts are proving tiresome as are the rear bumper items. I'll have another go probably on Saturday, but rather than undo, I'll remove rear wheels and get to back of bolts with grinder and cut them off; they're surplus to requirements anyway.

Steering column didn't need cutting just a hammer which I hadn't used previously as it was usually quite late and not wanting to upset neighbours.

I got the hoover out and have saved a third of a bucket - of rust!!! Still, as Colin Chapman said - add lightness.

As the resto etc is probably going to be a long drawn out process, I'm going to make an engine cradle on wheels so a) it can be moved around easily and b) I can wire it up to start it every now and again, so that's happen in next few weeks.

Back from the sun..

.. in France, and now a week at home where hopefully I'll be removing the body from the chassis.

I need to do a bit of re-organising first as there is a lot of stuff piled high on the roof of the Scimitar - mostly glass which I would rather didn't get broken as I've already broke the windscreen.

First thing I need to do after that will be to cut the steering column as the splined joint that I've loosened just will not separate, then it'll be onto removing chassis/body bolts.

Pics/updates to follow

Crane!

No, not the type that flies, but the one that'll be doing the lifting in my garage.

It's very nearly finished, but need to paint it and get the correct size bolts to mount the v groove steel wheels as I need them to be able to slide on the bolt to give me that "floating" bearing kind of effect as there is about 3mm difference between the parallelness(!) of the runner tracks and they currently have inserts in the bearings which fall out.

Anyway, here's some pics, hopefully you'll get the drift.

Sloooowwwwllllyyy does it!

No rush hey!

I'm trying to get the "2D" lift sorted out in the garage. Most of the metalwork is done - the uprights are bolted to garage walls - but the cross piece for the front of the garage is too long by about 10mm so I'll trim that tomorrow and join up the angle iron runners ready to be welded to cross pieces.

I'd originally looked at some v groove bearings and had tried ordering them, but thought they were a bit expensive. Fortunately the website I was ordering from had issues which is their loss and my gain. Anyway, looked at v groove steel wheels and got some of those for about a third of the price; just waiting for them to arrive (Weds/Thurs this week).

I am really hoping to get the "crane" as I'm now going to call it sorted by Friday evening as I have some holiday coming up and it'd be very nice if I could split the body and chassis during that holiday.

Nothing to report on the car at the moment due to the aforementioned distraction, but hopefully lots of progress one crane sorted and I've split the body/chassis and maybe I'll have some pictures to show.

Cheers for now.