Door and boot mods for touring (Broadband recommended!)

[gingerpaul]

Hi all. I posted this in the Dax forum yesterday but though it's probably just as applicable over here so I've popped it over here too. Hopefully it helps someone out!

I just thought I'd do a little write up for the modifications I've made to my boot and doors to create enough space for 2 people to go camping round Europe for 2 weeks. I also wanted to be able to take the doors off when we weren't on the motorways so we could make the most of the unique driving experience that a 7 style car offers.

The doors are big, cumbersome things that are a pain to store when I'm in my garage, let alone 1500 miles from home and continually on the move. I wanted to make them fit in the boot somehow. The problem is that as standard they are both too long and too wide to fit in the boot. They needed to be reduced in size, but not in a way that made them bulky and used up what little space there is in a Rush.

My solution was to have 2 folding sections. I have hinged the doors right along the window/door join with large stainless piano hinges from CBS. I then chopped the end off the window and put a 6mm bolt through the top to provide a pivot for the window to fold open and closed.









A further bonus of the pivoting section is that it provides airflow when driving around with the roof up if you want it, but without letting almost any rain in. There must be some clever aerodynamics going on that I lucked into. When closed the cabin is completely sealed.









A couple of other tricks I used to get the car water tight were done earlier but I'll briefly run over them.

I filled the aluminium strip on the roof that mounts on the top of the windscreen with Wurth, put cling wrap on the windscreen and frame and shut the roof. This put a decent seal in between the windscreen frame and roof that is completely waterproof.

The doors have rubber trim all the way around them so they completely seal against the bodywork. The front and bottom edge trim also has the bonus of being very flexible and so avoids any damage to the paintwork in those areas.

The boot always struck me as being pretty inefficient in terms of space usage and you sacrifice quite a lot around the sides and at the back with the standard fibreglass boot box. I reckoned you'd could probably double the volume by panelling it out to the sides of the rear tub.

After lots of measuring I came up with a decent use of space and created as large a boot as you could sensibly get away with without getting in the way of the fuel tank, diff and suspension. You'll notice that I've created a box around the outside of the filler hose. You'll also see the wiring for the rear lights. Rewiring those was on my to do list anyway and so relocating them will be part of that job now.





Something I noticed when measuring is that there was quite a lot of wasted space between the boot tub, fog lights and the rear of the fuel tank. It looked big enough to fit my car tool kit in, and it was! I made a little enclosed box for it to fit in and now my tools take up no space in the boot at all. There's even room for a tin of Mr Gasket Instant Gasket and some WD40!







Finally you will notice that there is a hinge on the boot floor for no apparent reason. This is a partition to allow me to fit the doors in the boot and to be able to separate them from the luggage so they don't get damaged by whatever's in there and can't rattle around when the boot is empty.









The boot is going to get carpeted at some point so it doesn't look quite so bad, but functionally it is an excellent set up.

This boot was big enough to carry enough stuff for 2 people for 2 weeks. The camping gear wouldn't fit in there too though so this was ratchet strapped to the roll bar. The bag was small enough that the roof could be put up and taken down without having to take the bag off the roll bar, which was a bonus for the times that it started raining with no warning!

I hope that's of some use to some of you. If anyone wants any more information I'd be happy to go into more detail, although hopefully most of it is self-explanatory.

[Hairy Santa]

Very well thought out, that was well worth doing

look forward to seeing it in the flesh

[gingerpaul]

I'll try to make a Bristol meet some time this year. It'd be good to put some more names to faces.

[Richard]

Good idea smartly executed.

Do come along some time in the summer and let's hope that M4 is an uneventful run this time.

['The Gaffer']

Excellent work!! Its surprising that the suppliers dont think ahead like you. Maybe they will when the see your posts

Look forward to catching up with you again in the summer.

[paintman]

Someones been busy!

[gingerpaul]

...and let's hope that M4 is an uneventful run this time.

[Bulldog Bri]

Very smart.  Will be keeping that in mind for the Locost (when it's on the road  )