V8 Land Rover + Espace + a big grinder. Losing the will

Thanks for the positive replies! Good idea re the rangie air suspension. Thanks

Today was slow, I got 6 of the 14 mounts off, and removed the dash. The disco still starts though, after unplugging and snipping lots of wires. Which is a bonus.

Morning all! Long time no see.

Well moving house kind of put the brakes on this build a bit. But progress has restarted and things are moving ahead nicely now. Enough to warrant an update anyway.

As things stand, I now have two half cars. But after exhausting my supply of cutting discs, and then some, I'm edging closer to the "gluing them together" stage.

The story so far, in pictures. ....


Getting the espace to a nice height to work on. ... (I removed the engine and box a couple of weeks ago)





Off with all suspension components, axle, fuel tank, etc....





On to the land rover, it took quite a few days to undo everything and carefully butcher the body mounts to death!



Off with its head!







Now we know what we're looking at!



At this point my brother turned to me and said "who told you an espace would fit on there?!"

For a moment I wondered myself about the sanity of the whole idea. So I plugged the grinder in and then I felt OK again. ....








Let's try that...






Good, but still too high. The biggest issue with marrying the two together, is that the land rover engine sits a lot further back than the espace's did. Therefore meaning much cutting of the bulkhead. Which is about where I am now. Work finished last night when my last cutting disc shattered. A trip to charlies this morning and work can resume!

Later!

hmm, just spotted and bookmarked this

strangely enough, i've been having similar thoughts but mounting my VW T3 transporter shell on a D1 300tdi chassis, looking at your bare chassis pic i doubt it would fit.....

watching with interest!!

Utterly bonkers. Love it! Bookmarked

Yes...I have to agree with you...The sound of the cutting wheel and grinder does help drown-out the "bad voices" in my head!

There's really just two ingredients required for a build like this and it's not an espace or a disco. It's talent and balls.
You appear to have both.

Carry on.

CFD

I tryed talking barry in to putting an acclaim shell on his disco chassi but he decided to put new cills and almost a whole floor in insted.. boring git.

Love this had it bookmarked since your first post. Good luck and keep posting.

Ps don't suppose ur any where near hull and want to sell some bits off the disco shell?

Dan

Thanks very much for all the positive comments! I appreciate the encouragement a lot.

Well I was a little bit disappointed in the end last night because, despite making a lot of progress, the body is still not quite sat right on the chassis. I believe that with just a little bit more cutting though it'll be there.

This is the state of play as of 9pm last night....









Much better, almost there in fact. The whole body needs moving forward a touch, and the front is still 3 or 4 inches too high. The back is about where it will end up.  I must admit I do love the look of it... much more "stocky" than "lanky."

To get to this stage I burnt through another 8 cutting discs. Removing most of the bulkhead, some of the gearbox tunnel, and chassis leg.

The heater has had to be removed too. And for access I have had to remove all of the dash and the front carpet. This makes me sad. But then filling the hole with v8 goodness makes me happy...




It seems a shame to put a bulkhead in!



So this is where we are at. More cutting today. Also, a big tidy up!

Oh and logical. .. I'm in Shropshire, nowhere near hull. But if you wanted to make the trip you can help yourself to any bits of disco you want. It's all getting binned next week


More to come

MADNESS.. I LOVE IT.!!!