A naked Marcos

Last Sunday was a great day. Hard work but really productive. With the help of my friend, local ex-Marcos owner Derek Atkins and my son Dan we got the body off after about one and a half hours of effort.

20160911_143246

While the body was clearly no longer attached to the chassis it wasn’t at all easy to move.  It would shift about 30mm upwards then go no further. My first guess was the foam rubber strips were preventing the movement. Jacking the car up from the seat pans caused some alarming creaking but little extra movement.

Derek noticed the problem, the foot-well speaker enclosures, which I thought had been fully removed, still had enough remaining GRP and plywood to foul the chassis on the near side. The Dremel made quick work of that and the body was able to move.

Once free it was quite simple to lift the rear and pull it away. The bonded rear screen certainly helps keep the whole body construction in one piece. Without that we would have needed a couple more helpers.

Is that all there is?

I’ve always known what a Marcos chassis looks like, but to see it exposed like this was quite a shock. It just seems so insubstantial! A roll over bar may be a priority, but nothing could be done for side impact. I’m told that it’s not particularly stiff for a sports car chassis so there’s definitely some improvements to be made on that front.

20160911_190114
A naked Mantula

I would remove the engine next, but I have nowhere to put it right now. First I have to get the body tub safely out of the way. Then the chassis strip-down can start. While the chassis is away I’ll work on the engine.

After I took these photos I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the dirty chassis rails and removing  lot of the flaking old powder-coat. It’s really not as bad as it looks considering the powder coat was flaking off almost as soon as I started the original build 32 years ago.

From my first checks every chassis tube looks sound, with only light pitting in the worst places.

20160911_163433

20160911_190230

20160911_190215

20160911_190206

20160911_190147

Thanks team!

Thanks for your help Derek
Thanks for your help Derek!
Thanks Dan
Thanks to Dan too.