Frankensteins GQ Resurection

[OLY]

OLY, I haven't read your whole thread but I’m interested in the black & silver Patrol you’ve got, are the 2 front doors any good I would be interested in buying them off you if they are.
Cheers
Peter.

sorry peter, at this stage i'm going to wait until i finish the build before i start selling bits and pieces, never know what will be needed down the track

[OLY]

well it has been a fair while since i have updated this so i guess i better post up some more, after all this thread is pretty much my "how to" for reassembly when the time comes.

i was procrastinating over doing much for a couple of days and, although i'm pretty sure i won't be using it, i decided to notch the gearbox crossmember because apparently the front tail shaft hit's with lifted patrols. so i took to a little bit of grinding and welding and splashed on some paint.

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and after all that i'm pretty sure i didn't take enough out of it i'd say if i don't end up using the setup i have planned and actually use this crossmember i'll cut it again and take a little more off closer to the gearbox mount

[OLY]

I finished painting the rest of the chassis

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fitted the bolt in rear dropout cones and the coil tower brace top plate

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then i though I might get a little creative for a second and pop in a hard line for a rear diff breather while everything is out of the way, i used a spare 5/16 fuel return line and just drilled and tapped holes to mount in place

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i'll just put a propper breather block on the firewall and plug the on here for the gearbox and everything aswell

[OLY]

next i turned to the cab and removed all the doors, pannels and glass, all the dash, wiring, heater and air con (which the cores were full of 23 years of dirt and junk)
What was left of the factory sound deadener was brittle as and useless and just fell apart as I was taking the heater core out, i just pulled the few bit out that did manage to stay in place

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and pulled all the excess junk out of the engine bay

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[OLY]

there wasn't much else to unbolt so i wheeled it into the shed and lifted the cab up. i'm sure there would have been a much better way of doing this even without a hoist

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the underside needed a good clean, i degreased it a few times and hit it with the pressure washer but it wouldn't get all the crap off and had to resort to a bucket of sugar soap and warm water and a sponge then a wipe with some thinners and i could spray the underside with the urethane rust proofing under coat and a chassis coater of the top

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[OLY]

there was six cracks in the lower side of the front clip so I ran through them with a cutting disc and welded them up while i could easily get at them and also ran some weld down the sides where the patrols have a habbit of breaking the spot welds and pulling away from the firewall

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i made some 20mm polyurethane spacer blocks for the body mounts, pulled the tube washer off and cut the little fluted parts off the top of the factory mounts, coated everything with sikaflex and pushed the tube washer back through the two rubbers, i noticed that moisture and rocks had been getting under the factory mounts on the chassis so i sikaflexed them to the chassis as well to keep all moisture out and stop any rust starting there, after cutting the bit off the factory part of the rubbers i'm left with just under 15mm of body lift to clear the fuel lines and things where i added the rear tower bracing

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then gently lowered the cab in place

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[OLY]

time to make some longer rear upper arms now that I can see how much clearance i have around the body so I cut the old mount off....

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had a bit of a measure and cut up the arms i have to put in it

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I bolted the arms to the mount that i had cut out to hold it in its new position and then made some joining pieces out of thickwall steampipe bends and thickwall tube then braced the corners with 6mm flat bar cut at angles and tack welded it into place

i'm not 100 % sold on the way i have made the upper mount so i have been pondering a better way and procrastinating over it

so that's where i'm currently up to

[blocko05]

what a great thread. looking forward to the rest of your build. What a great rig that you will end up with

[DaveGQ]

Loving this thread. Great progress and some amazing achievements. Keep it coming!

[OLY]

So I got a little enthusiastic today and lifted the cab back off the chassis and welded in the rear upper control arm mount and gave it a paint, I'm 110% sure it'll be strong enough as i added extra gussets and fish plates across the welds but it just doesn't look very pretty oh well not much else i can do to have the extra length and still clear everything.

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I doubled up on the rear cab support to compensate for the body lift...

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