hi guys, the girly bought some van rear doors off of ebay, and we don't have a van at the moment, so she is thinking of doing a van rear on a normal round nose. now, considering we have neither at home at the moment, i am wondering if someone can set out the main differences between the bum's of both cars. i know that the van is straight down and so on, but i guess i am more intrested in width diferences etc... and help would be great...

or...

do you konw of a van that has been in a front end write off??? so i can steal its bum

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Vans (and Estates for that matter) are longer. The panels from the B pillar (trailing edge of the door) are completely different, as is the roof. Early UK vans had smooth roofs, all others had strengthening ribs pressed into them. The interior is obviously different, with a flat floor (and seats in the Estates). Vans also had longer rear trumpets, but for little gain and standard ones can be used I believe.

While you could put a van back on a saloon, the effort would be huge and you would be left with a mongrel that took you ages, cost you heaps and (assuming it was done right) looked like a van.

The upshot is that it is hard to see why you would do it. Oh, fuel tanks are different too.

I agree with the above.

Possible? Anythings possible, but worth it? Vans are not yet rare enough to bother.

Keep looking for a van shell. Often they pop up and often have a rusted out floor. Much easier to replace the floor pan than convert a sedan.

Just to give you an idea, you can see how they used the normal floorpan and extened it about 4" in this photo. In the bottom left, see where the jack point in located, and see where the ribs end.



Well from that point forward the floor pan is the same as a sedan.

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sorry, i obviously didn't word it well enough. we are just looking at adding the vans rear doors to a standard round nose hatch.

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anyone???

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I don't really get what you have in mind

The van doors swing close to a vertical axis if you were to try and add then to a non van mini with out adding at least some of the van rear end you would have to have them tilting forward at the top Doing this might be possible but would involve MAJOR modifications IMO and I fail to see the point if you wanted different type doors to a non van mini I would be trying to do the hatch back style as Ringo's mini was but I think there is major work in this as well and it needs to be engineered AFAIK.

This is a lot of work any way I look at it IMO if you want a van find a van if you want a hatch back you will have a fair bit of work ahead of you.

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Roads need more corners
A Deluxe(CG13DE), 2 Clubbies(998 and 1275) and 2 Morris 1100Ss

see, theres the prob... everyone is afraid of a bit of work. if you want something different to others, you need to put in the hard yards. where would we be if darrel macbeath said " you know what, thats just too hard" we wouldn't have half the top street machines around that we do....


shame shame shame.... i thought we were car builders

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i think i understand what you are trying to do smc, but as fuzzy says, to install straight doors in a curved rear end you either have to curve the doors ala hatchback or straighten the rear of the body.

either way its a lot of custom work, and a hatch conversion would look a lot better than what would amount to short van if you did not graft a whole van rear body shell on.

if you want to do something new and interesting at the back, make a hatch conversion where the boot lid still hinges down and the window hinges up.

if you still want a pair of doors hinged to open horizontally, you would be better to make them from scratch rather than convert van doors.

look in the gallery for rear photos of vans and saloons and you will get an idea of what we are talking about.

michael

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i can picture the differences without a prob, but what i'm after is the difference in width etc...

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