3. Body off

Next step will be to take the body off.

I have to move the Marcos in a position on the hydraulic lift to remove the rear suspension.
After that it has to be shifted forwards again as far as possible to get enough space under the "foot area" of the body. This part has to be tilted down while the back has to be rised to remove it.

Ready to take the body off...

Four friends for lifting the body and me for giving clever advises ;-)
...but the body won´t lift more than 30cm at the back - no change. We discoverd, that the firewall is still fixed to the frame. I have removed all screws I´ve seen - I swear.
Next time - Mr. Marcos mechanic - if you bond in a dashboard substructure, please, do not cover the screw behind the wiper motor with a layer of GRP !
After I freed the screw with a broach and removed it, we were able to slide the body backwords and rise it - until it gets blocked again.
Something stops the rising of the back.
After several tries, we saw the issue: the body was stopped by the exaust pipe.

Taken from the engine bay.

and from the inside of the body

The bulge in the inner side of foot area - which is there to have more room for the hot exaust manifold - stops 5cm before the floor. This small part is pushing against the exaust pipe if you want to lift the back of the body.

Question:
Is there a reason, why this bulge stops 5cm before the floor of the body?
If it will be enlarged down to the bottom of the body, the wohle body can be removed from the frame without unmounting the exaust manifold and pipe. And it will be easier to protect the body against the heat of the exaust.
--> If you have an idea, how to improve it, write it to the Marcos Sports Car Enthusiasts Forum...


So, the exaust manifold has to be unmounted...
Horror, I never seen an engine where not minimum two bolts struggle, if you want to remove them.
What should I say:
- I am glad, all bolts come out really easy !
or
- It is questionable to say, that all the bolts are come off so easy, that I think: I wonder why they don´t get lost until now.

But OK, the manifold and the pipes are off and now lets try again.

Easy. In 5 minutes we lift the back, slide the body back and it was separated from the frame.

The body in his winter camp.

The frame does not look so bad. I have scratched everywhere I saw some rust, but the most worse area is the front and the back of the lower side square tube.

 

See the fancy break lines at the reak axle...

Question:
If I see the back end of the frame - especially the fixing points of the rear trailing arms, I have to think about the stiffness of a rectangle. It can be pushed to a parallelogram very easy.
As I have learned while building my Egli ( see it here ), the most stiff connection between two points is a triangle, I think of how to realize it at the back end.
--> If you have an idea, how to improve it, write it to the Marcos Sports Car Enthusiasts Forum...


Over all it was a easy job to take the body off. The winwods are OK and the body can be carried by two men ( and me to give advise ! ).

Next step will be to clean the oily engine / gearbox / front frame parts with a water blaster or a steam-jet blower and then derust everything.
After that I have to take a very, very close look to Martyns blog, to see where he has reinforced his frame.

@ Martyn
Maybe you can send me some infos about where to add reinforcements...