[Mickldo]

I don't have any pics of my F55 at the moment but next Saturday I'm hiring a car trailer to transport it from my mates place out of town where it is currently stored to my house in town where I can start work on it.

The cab is very rusty around the gutters but one of the boilermakers from work said that he would cut it out for me in exchange for some mechanical work on his V6 Prado. Body work is not one of my favourite jobs so it is good to be able to offload that job to somebody else. The roof and gutters are that bad that it will probably be easier to replace the whole roof section. As the Ute cab is a bit tight on interior room I'm toying with the idea of converting it to an extra cab and using a cutdown SWB hardtop for the roof. I guess that will depend on how keen the boilermaker from work is. At least I've got a few more boilys to chose from if I scare this one off, I'm the foreman at a fabrication workshop.

As I hate doing bodywork I plan on fitting an exo to try and lessen the carnage later on down the track. As the rules I'm going to have to comply with require an internal cage and I want to keep the weight down I"m going to have to be careful with my exo design. I'm thinking a four point internal cage to meet the specs with a full tube rear tray/cage. The front end will have a small tube bar to house the winch (hopefully PTO if I go with the LT230 L/R T/C) and side rails/scrub bars leading down to the rock sliders. The cab protection I'm thinking I'll make from slightly smaller tube than the rest and make it bolt on to make it removeable. The tubes will come forward from the tray headbord/front hoop along the gutters to the "A" pillar and then down to the side rails/scrub bars. Cross bars at top and bottom of the windscreen will complete the cab protection.