Hi all,
I have found pictures of some of the work I have done to my chassis. My Vitesse chassis had corrosion troubles. The siderails, ouriggers and rear cross member, suffered from it. Strangely enough the mains were very good however.
The problem offcourse is the rear cross member. I thought it could only be replaced. For that particular part restauration was no option any more.
A spitfire chassis is quite common, cheap and easy to buy. I found out that the rear of both of the chassis' is practically the same. The mains are different. Not only in length, but also in shape. But if you cut a chassis just in the right place, the rears are interchangable.
So I bought a spitfire chassis for about 50 pounds, which had a perfect rear cross member. I made a mould to make two exactly the same cuts. On my chassis and on the salvage rear. After that I lined them out with a laser and welded them together. I bought the outriggers at the rear new and welded them to the rear cross member.
I have lined out the car when it was on his wheels, and found no troubles at all.
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For the outriggers and siderails, I took another approach. In Holland we also need to keep the chassis original to keep the original registration. First I bought the outriggers and siderails new to replace them. But these parts were so terrible thin and flimsy, that I decided to do it differently. Basically I boxed in the old ones with 2 mm steel sheet. The result is a very strong structure that carries originality within, so no issues there. For the side rails I used a strong U-profile. They went just over the original side rails.
I ended up with a strong and rigid chassis, that is original underneath. After this it is important to rustproven it because of the potential hazard of the inner outriggers suffer from corrosion that would infect the boxed metal. Later more about that.
another objective of this solution was to acquire a flat chassis surface (underneath), with gives new options for the bottomstructure under the seats.
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Cheers, Michiel