Just a quick one folks:

Couple of projects on the go now - one is an off roader. It'd be much cheaper to chop up the existing donor chassis and rebuild to my new dimensions than it would be to fab one from scratch - all suspension mounts, etc could be carried over plus will save me a fortune on steel.

From an IVA/SVA perspective is there any difference between using a mix of old chassis rails and new steel vs making one from all new steel? Or do the inspectors simply view it as a 'custom' chassis regardless of where the steel came from? I'd like to be completely open and honest with them.

Cheers.

Unless your trying to carry over a chassis number or something you'd declaring it a new, amateur built I can't see they'd know or care where the metal came from. The car/chassis would be inspected on its merits at the time of the test?

Thanks pal.

No definitely not trying to carry over the number - it'd just serve as a source of steel and prefabricated brackets/suspension mountings.

Will make life a hell of a lot easier than fabbing up from scratch.

The chassis would end up being about 75% donor, 25% new steel but as long as it is categorised the same as if I'd built it up from scratch then I'll have no worries. Car will hopefully have an age-related plate but this will come from the suspension, axles and steering of the donor.

To be honest, parts of my metalwork have the rusty look of old metal!!

I would expect you would clean your chassis up and paint it before IVA so they won't even know what was old and new metal.

[Edited on 25/8/14 by Slimy38]

Look at MG heritage shells, they just cut out the chassis plates and a couple of inches of metal

So if you are chopping a land rover chassis for example plenty of 100" range rovers going around chopped down to 93.7" or 88", 86" or 80" depending on what body is dropped on. The chassis is still the same and you keep the registration without bothering with SVA. "grabs coat and runs away"!
Regards Mark

[Edited on 25/8/14 by mark chandler]