Rear sub frame for seatbelt mounts

After going back to the certifer and asking about the seat belts I got a different story. I was told that I couldnt stay with lap belts that were in the car, Last time I went in I was told, No I needed full three point tension belts and a drive shaft hoop. Sigh.

This is a real pain as I had already got the engineer to weld in the rear cross member. But now that will need to be removed and I had to add in another.

I tried main different way of trying to use the old / new cross member, but at the end of the dat it was going to be easier to do the whole thing again.

The plus side is that getting the steel for this was easy, and it only cost $88 for 8m of 25mmx50mm3mm tubing.

So the first step was to remove the old / new rear cross member.

Old cross member cut out, Since it was welded in really well it was a to remove.

Now I was told that I needed two cross members, and that they needed to to tied together. So here I'm spacing them out. The rear cross member is where the belts will bolt into, and the front is for strength to the rear with the use of additional diagonal cross braces and also I positioned it so I can mount the drive shaft hoop off it.

The making of the two diagonal cross members to join the two new cross members

Tac welded before and after many test fits

Final welds and sitting in position, I kicked up the rear to give more clearance to the drive shaft.

Since I kicked up the rear I need to remove that from the extra floor plate I have glued on to the base of the floor. So after sitting the body back on the frame and marking where it need to be trimmed it was out with the hammer and chisel to remove the floor.

Once I had it removed I used the angle grinder with a sanding disk to tidy it all up.

All done

Made bit of a mess

Next steps is to weld the new cross member in place and double check all clearances.

So that was the long weekends work, two steps back one forward, I'll call it progress.