At last the day has arrived, after months of waiting and preparing I can finally get my hands on the kit and start work. Just the small matter of collecting it from Peterborough. The day was cold but bright & mercifully dry. The folks at the factory were their usual friendly and helpful selves and after a quick look at the new Gen III kit. Jon took me through my kit list and the guys loaded up the van.
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| Collection! |
And here it is! Unloading wasn't so easy, it was half six before my helpers could get here, by that time it was dark and very cold the job of unloading was much harder. The challenge is not so much the weight but having to lift the body up and over the chassis before it can be unloaded. Massive thanks to Leon, Tom, Rob and of course Denise for sorting the food.
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| Chassis ready |
I spent Saturday afternoon getting everything squared away and checked over. The body is now all tucked up out of the way on a wooden deck (the boot box has to be supported from underneath) and the chassis is up on stands and leveled up. BTW before separating the body & chassis I made sure to mark up the position of the exposed chassis rails in the engine bay as suggested in the manual.
Sunday started later than I'd planned, not least due to the Burns night celebration the night before. After a bit more sorting and tidying, Rob and I set about getting the diff installed. It's not the first thing in the manual but the diff and hubs are taking up a lot of space so I figured I could clear the decks a bit.
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| Diff installed |
The diff is a heavy lump but with two of us and jack we got it lined up. This turned out to be more of fight than I though it would be, the bracket on the chassis that takes the two bolts at the top rear of the diff was fouling it and stopping the bolts from going through. I had grind a few mm off the bracket, but now it's all sorted and torqued up, feels good to actually get the first job done
