I’ve returned to the UK and have started working on the Marcos GT. The first task was to strip the car and remove the fibre glass body from the chassis to enable repairs to be made to the rusty sections. This turned out to be much harder than expected as 50% of the screws holding the body in place were rusted in place. After several hours of hammering, chiselling and using an impact screwdriver the screws were removed.
The final items to be removed were the radius rod bolts that go through the boot sides. This turned out to be much harder than expected. After several hours I managed to remove the nuts from the four bolts however I was only able to remove the upper two bolts! The lower two bolts were ceased solid in the bush. The next plan of attack was to grind the top off the bolts inside the boot enabling the bolt to be punch out of the bushing. Once the top of the bolt was removed no amount of hitting the bolt would persuade them to come free of the bushing! The final plan of attack was to try and drill the bolts out. As the bolts are hardened steel this was quite difficult but eventually enough was drilled to enable the body to come free at the rear. The remaining part of the bolt will be removed once the fibre glass body has been removed.
Even though all the bolts have been removed I am still unable to get the body to come free. To try and persuade it to come free a piece of wood was placed across the rear of the fibre glass body. Upward pressure was then placed on the wood by using a trolley jack. This seemed to be working well to start with but the body still does not want to come free where the seat belt mounting points are. To try and help this happen I put a bit more pressure on the trolley jack. This did not have the desired effect as all it did was crack the fiber glass body at the rear wheel arch on the driver’s side! Having been firmly beaten I decided to give up for the day before causing any more damage.
The plan for tomorrow is to perform a quick repair to the crack which will get some strength back into the body and then have another go.