Well so far everythings is coming along to my half a*** plan.
It is actually happening way too easily so something is going to come up to make me think.
Priced the steel up to build the rear reinforcement bars and sheet it in and it come in no where near as expensive as thought. ALso visited someone and reminded them that they owe me some cash and I would like some steel in exchange for said monies. All sorted. I just need to arrange to order it and pick it up.
Have now sourced a rear window and from thanks to Bradley4567 so will make a time to whip out to his place and remove it. Rumour has it I need a compass , a packed lunch and a safari rifle to head out there as it is meant to be just past the middle of no where. Actually need to check directions , I forget if it is turn right , left or straight ahead once i get to the middle of no where.........
So it definately now a case of when it gets done not a case of if!
I would really love to have it finished and painted to look respectable so we can leave from our wedding in it. It would be an awesome laugh!

Will get some pics up later but Me , the Mav and the grinder had a threesome today!
No turning back now....................

Thats the s**t!

Çan't wait to see some pics though, I'd like to do this to my MQ wags, they have a fairly similar body on them.

As for the 240's, you need some 55W HID goodness!

Well yesterday morning when I opened the truck up it was like this in the rear.



Nice little set of drawers that held the tools and camping gear , fridge slide , compressor and air tank , sub woofer and cargo barrier. Everything had its place and was pretty functional and tidy.

Well after a couple of hours I had this......................



A little bit after that I had the following followed by repeated calls to myself of "Oh dear , what have I done..........."

cool,are you going to leave it a dual cab ute or make it a tray back ?? i reckon the dual cab ute would look good how it is with falcon ute style tailgate...

phill

It will be staying a dual cab ute. I reckon it looks much better then the total chop people do and go the tray back.
Basically the profile of it will be as it is but tidied up.
I am leaving the old barn door style gate on it. The side opening will make it easier to get into the fridge and such as you can just climb into the back of it off the rear step.
Both the rear barn doors are hinged at the bottom and that is where the weight is taken so I cannot see any problems there.

So today after me and my brother went to the Fords in the park show , we popped into Pick and Scab more at Blacktown to see what was available for a rear window as the Falcon ute one i have is too wide.
I wanted a window that was reasonably flat , easy to get in the future , it had to follow the lines of the truck pretty well , be marked as approved tuffened glass for the enginner and I wanted a rear window demister in it.
Not a lot to ask is it.

After a bit of walking around we found a D21 Nissan Navara. We popped the window out , and checked it against a GQ pootrol that was a couple of rows over and we decided that was going to be close enough. Fingers crossed that is one drama off the list.

So when I got home I managed to spend an hour or so on it.
As you can see the first pics is the ridge in the rear quarter that the rear window rubber locks into.


What I have done is cut that ridge off in sections leaving both the inner and outer quarters seperated. A bit of panel beating to take the curvature out of the plates and make the steel overlap , a quick weld with the mig and here is what we get.


After a bit of grinding it will be a fairly tidy top edge for a ute tray.
Once I pick up my sheet of 1.2mm steel , I will cut a strip to go across the top as a double skin , plug weld it on top and seam weld it down the sides. This will both add strength , tidy it up for painting and also stop the risk of any cracked welds taking strength away from the body eventually.
Fingers crossed the old boy will be available one afternoon this week and the steel shop is open late enough so we can pop down in his one tonner and pick it all up. I really want to have the steel here so I can play over easter while the missus is at work.

haha, this is awesome, I saw a gu done like this the other day, look really well done, looked absolutely awesome,(although I only saw it as it drove past.)

Had a load of steel delivered yesterday , so fingers crossed by the end of the weekend I should have a vehicle that has a rear wall in it and can be secured.
There will still be a lot of tweeking an dfine tuning and cleaning it up to look right , but hopefully the basics will be there.
Wont get anything done on it tomorrow as I will be down at WSID having some fun!

Well I havent updated this much as I didnt think there was much interest in it , but I have had a couple of PM's asking how it is going and for me to put some pics up so here goes.
Am well behind schedule but s**t happens.
Had a good but busy easter and on the Monday copped a bad welding flash which left me with 4 burns in my eye and it being oulserated. So that slowed me up somewhat and I didnt get to have another crack at it until yesterday.

Here is some of the rear bracing fitted.


I am sort of following roll cage technology to an extent with using fish plates to spread the load where the bracing meets the body and diagonal cross bars for strength.

Filled in the middle of the lower panel. I now have to make some templates up to make up the side fill plates. Very time consuming drilling 7mm holes in the plate over the cross bracing to plug weld it all. Once again for strength. On the inside I will use structural sikaflex from all the edges of the bracing to the fill in panels. It wont go anywhere once done!


I have one more cross brace to go across the roof and two to run down the sides connected to the pillars which will tie the roof brace and the rear cross section in together. Unfortunately I run out of steel so got the old boy to come down in the 1 tonner to grab some more. Even more unfortunately by the time we finished smoking durries and talking s**t and actually got down to the steel joint they had shut..................oh well get it arranged one arvo during theweek. No rush on this project. When it happen it happens.

Here is the side view of the C pillar.


It may not look like it but that pillar actually tilts forward the slightest bit from factory. Fitting the side brace at 90 degrees straight up and down looked real dodgy and DIY. So I stuffed around and cut the brace and laid it in the few degrees so the rear line followed the front line to make it look tidier. Sounds easy hey..................Bzzzt wrong answer. More then a couple of hours were lost setting the place in the correct position after a lot of cutting and trimming. The I had to back up and do it to the other side and make it line up with the original side. A few choice words were muttered............ I thought I would get away with trimming one brace and then mirror imaging it for the other side. Well Mr Nissanmura when he built this decided to make it a right a*** pain for anyone to play with the later by making slight changes so each side is not symetrical. Everything has to be cut individually.
The rear of the blue tube you can see will be the rear body line of the truck. When I skinthe rear I have to wrap it around the side and join it on the brace.
This is just a quick and bad pic of the truck from the side. It sort of shows a rough line of what the truck will look like when it is finished.

Have to fold some sheet up as a return for the window rubber to fit into.
Bit difficult to explain but I will take plenty of happy snaps when I am doing that bit.
WIll be fiddly and time consuming but fairly easy.

Yep definately fiddly. It seems like a lot of rooting around for minimal gain at the moment but it will work out. when i get the s**t with ill just walk away for a bit and look at something else

Oh dear, haven't even got my Mav yet and this is already giving me ideas
Top work so far bloke, I'm looking forward to more updates on the progress (although the mrs isn't).

When i first heard you were going to hack the crap outta ur Mav to turn it into a ute, i thought, that would be handy. After seeing everything you had in the back, i dont see the point now. Where is the fridge and stuff going, if it is indeed, going to be used as a ute??

If ur getting rid of the rear seats to make way for it all, then fair enuff.

I bet you wont be tack welding blindly in the future?? I have never had a flash, and you dont have to be a rocket scientist to work out how, well, those that know me wouldn't. Sunnies are your friend.....

Keep at it old son.....lol

Daz