First big job, removal of the tail lift.
This is one of those things that was going to be easy, but took a lot longer than expected. I think I will be saying that a few times during this build.
After having some fun riding up and down with the kids, the decommissioning phase started.
The tail lift has big fat 12v supply from under the drivers seat on a 250A fuse, disconnected that, being very careful not to ground that accidentally!
There was a junction box at the back inside where the button controls all connect to, labelled up the colours and removed the cables.
Unfortunately the external buttons made a bit of a mess of the paintwork, there was a seal around them but it looks like water got in and sat regardless, and the holes were just self tapped and not painted or caulked.
I've just put some sellotape on it for now while I decide what to do. Any tips in this regard would be welcome. I'm thinking I'll sand it back, patch it from behind and touch it up so it doesn't rust further and then cover it with a decal of some description.
The tail lift system has a few cabin controls, a switch to turn off the control power to stop people playing with it, and a little light to warn you you're driving around with the tail lift down scooping up pedestrians at every corner.
After wrestling a bit with the trim, the cables were free from under the drivers footwell, got some nice holes next to the steering wheel. Maybe I'll put some siwtches in or find a way to cap them off.
Another little surpise job was the fact that the tail lift installers had cut the cable for the number plate light
Luckily they had left enough length on the plug tail that this was easy enough to undo by finding the old wire and rejoining with two crimps and taping it up.
With all that electrics sorted out it was now time to get mechanical. Had a good look underneath and gave all the relevant nuts and bolts a spray of plusgas.
Seeing as this thing it significantly heavier than me a convenient starting point would be to split it into smaller pieces.
There is a big shaft that acts as the platform hinge, this itself is stopped from sliding out by an allen bolt, so just need to remove this bolt and the pin can slide out.
...Not a chance
I hit it with the impact gun for about a minute and it showed no signs of moving, it was eventually just going to round out so gave up on that. Tried to hammer out the big pin which is about the diameter of a large broomhandle, cut the plastic bit off a dumbell handle to make a big drift, that wouldn't budge either. Gave up on removing the platform, it wasn't a showstopper, but the removal process would have been a lot easier if I had got the platform off.
The rest of the story was similar, a lot of the bolts were very tight indeed. Some I could get manually, some I could get moving with the impact driver. Had to get out the big mains one.
Two or three of them had to be ground off.
After much clanging the tail lift was finally free.
As you can see the bumper has a big slice missing, so that's the next job.
