Starting The Tub

Finally some work that I can document!

The jackable sills/rock sliders should arrive next week, and in order to fit them, the rear tub will have to be in place. It’ll only be resting in place while I fit the sills, but before i can use it for aligning the sills (and bulkhead, which still needs alignement before tightening up), I need to do all the repair and alteration work, just to ensure that there are no dimension changes after setting the other parts.

To this end, I need to repair the tub floor, which is a little bent and hase some corrosion holes where the steel braces have reacted with the ali floor. The steel braces are all coming off for treatment, and will be refitted with a generous application of Tiger Seal between them and the floor to prevent further reactions. The floor itself will be straightened up as much as possible before fitting a second 5mm ali sheet on top of the existing, to give a stronger, flatter and hole free floor.

Now, here comes the tricky bit. I currently have a pair of Trakkers’ Froward Folding rear seats. Though their quality is fine, they are not very supportive when cornering, and I have doubts over their crash-safety, so I’ll be replacing them with another pair of Defender front seats, to match those already fitted up front (all may be re-trimmed with black G4 vinyl if funds permit). In order to have enough space to squeeze between the seats when entering from the rear door, these seats will have to be fitted as far outboard as possible. Of course, this would mean that the front end of the wheel box would impinge on the pasengers ideal foot space.

So, the floor is moving outboard, with mods to the wheel box ahead of the wheel arch apperture. Being me, even this is being complicated by another issue: that space was occupied by the MoD 110 jerrycan lockers. Since I am fitting twin forward tanks, in addition to the already fitted rear tank, concealed stroage for 4 jerrycans is not entirely neccessary, so the lockers are being slimmed down to hold one per side. This meanns a little trimming and welding of the internal frames, as you’ll see in the pics on the next post. I have also had to trim off the bottom edge of the apperture frame (where it sat over the std sill) in order for the frame to fit over the jackable sill. The pics of the trial fit show how much the forward end of the load space will be widened.