Evening all,
How easy is it to convert a left hand drive to a right hand drive?.
What legal requirements are there if the vehicle is already iva cleared??
Thanks for your time,

Ade

I do this in reverse, convert kit cars to LHD for the French and German market. I always find the steering column and pedal box is the most awkward to realign, something always clashes, exhaust manifold/pipe, oil filter etc. worth doing a dry run seeing whats going to hinder your progress. Dashboard and wiring are the next and finding something to attach the column to isn't always there. I take my time and it takes me two weeks. If you need any pointers give me a u2u. good luck.

Well that is an interesting question.

First, it depends what you are talking about, if it is a vehicle that has been designed to be either then it might not be too bad a job. If it is a kit car and worse still a home built from scratch Locost then the work involved would probably be significant. Knowing that mine was going to be RHD from day one then I positioned things accordingly. Getting a steering column and pedal box into the LHS would mean major relocation of just about everything else (battery, heater, fuse box etc.) but it could be done.

The question then would be, would that make it a radically altered vehicle or not? Does putting a few holes in the footwell panel constitute a chassis modification, debatable on a spaceframe chassis. What if they were already there at SVA/IVA. If your dash instruments etc were in the middle it could be as simple as bolting on a LHD rack, and moving the steering column and pedal box across. Or vice versa for LHD to RHD.

[Edited on 10/1/16 by Brook_lands]

I did this with a Tr8. Used RHD parts from a scrapper to convert. Dead easy the only hard bit was the wiring loom I decided to modify the existing and it took ages - the mech bits were straightforward..

Having said that I was doing a bare metal respray and had stripped the chassis completely - might be a tad more difficult if the engine/box was still in

Cheers!

Interesting. I was wondering what the legal situation was with this after looking at LHD Alfas the other day. The actual job seems pretty straightforward assuming the RHD dash, steering gear etc. are available.

Just get a MOT in the usual way - it was 10 years ago I did it though dunno if requirements have changed.

Cheers!

I'd imagine most cars start as LHD and have to be built RHD for sale in the UK. By that token converting shouldn't be too difficult to do.

My guess is the internal changes would be the hardest work - swapping dashboards and peddles would be hours of faff!