Hey folks,
From my last update In June I mentioned a dilemma I had come across with the new seats I had purchased.
The seats fitted in perfectly but when I sat in the buggy to test them out, my knees were touching the
steering wheel. The tunnel was stopping the seats from moving back as you can see from the pics below…..
There was enough space for the seat to move back at least another 8 inches….but how???
So I decided the best option would be to modify the tunnel somehow….
After taking a few measurements I marked up the tunnel on both sides to the shape I wanted to cut out….
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Both sides cut out and just making sure they are both a mirror image of each other….
Before I could weld new plates in I had to push the tubes that hold the handbrake cables further in towards
the centre of the tunnel as they were in the way, at the same time I needed to make sure they were clear
of the gear linkage rod…
3mm steel plates were then cut to size and welded in to form the right shape….
Now the seats fitted in perfectly, moved further back and I gained the necessary legroom I was lacking before….
But now I stumbled across another problem, this time it was my arms now….
With the seat further back, sitting very comfortably, plenty of space between my legs and the steering wheel….
my arm at full stretch could just about reach the gear stick, to change gears with ease I would need to lean
forward abit everytime…. This was not good at all….
The gear stick had to be moved further back to, but to get it into the right position meant having to chop most
of the hand brake off… or move the hand brake back aswell….
So I marked up the new position of the handbrake, making sure it doesn’t obstruct the chassis number. This
would now sit 6 inches further back…
The handbrake lever plate was cut out from its original place and welded into its new position…
This now gave me enough clearance for the gear stick to move back by 5 – 6 inches…..
I cut a section of the tunnel out and had to reshape this area to accommodate the bump so that when I
cut the actual gear mount from the tunnel, it would fit perfectly….
Once welded into place new steel pieces were welded in to cover the voids….
Today I managed to grind all the welds down, a quick coat of two pack primer on the bare metal so that I
could look for any areas of the tunnel that look uneven…will require a little bit of filler to get all the curves
looking perfect again….
Hopefully once prepped, primed and painted the tunnel will look like it was never modified at all….
Topic: Predator Beach Buggy Build (Read 105158 times)
