help with engine swap to 8BA engine

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Jason Linders

Does anyone think its a bad idea to try and repair the chassis

The word "bad" doesn't quite cover it Jason. "Sheer lunacy" goes a bit closer!

If you're prepared to do that kind of work there's a far better option, namely shorten a F60S or F60L chassis, which are easy to find. That would simply mean removing the midsection and joining the end sections together. You only have one side rail weld to worry about, and if done properly the chassis will be stronger than the original FGT chassis, which is only single skin. By "properly" I mean cutting the inner and outer skins in different locations, as far apart as possible to maximize chassis strength. That shouldn't be too difficult, because the inner skin is only stitch welded to the outer one.

This mod is sometimes seen in the wild, done crudely to repair a broken F60L chassis, and the PMG did the reverse mod to lengthen the F15A chassis. In your case it may be preferable to using the F15 chassis, as the crossmembers are already in place. Conveniently the FGT midsection crossmember uses a spacer, which can simply be omitted to accommodate the double skin.