rear doors

[hotrod]

Well I'm trying to find out the legalities involved with deleting the rear doors and making it one solid panel.
Contacted dept of transport and was told may not be allowed for safety reasons as may be considered an exit point.
They them put me onto a engineer, who won't answer his friggen phone.
has anyone done this, did they need approval etc etc
any help appreciated
Cheers Pat

[Bedfordcrazy]

Hey hotrod, also in qld, and yes i have closed up my doors, and have never had a problem, but i did have my cargo door in place. To my knowledge if the cargo door is useable, then loose the rears. Check out my gallery, there are a lot more pics.

george

[Sweet Shock]

Im in the procces, of getting mine engineered and roadworthy and no one has said anything, It passes the engineer but need to do a few things for rwc, Nothen on the list about mine  But im in vic  pete

[BusyKiwi]

Would only be an exit if you had half seats in the back - seats not going right across
If they argue, just say what about station wagons ... they dont have inside door handles

[ben]

i have a van here with back filled in.. came from qld. and he didnt sell it to me cause he was put off the road cause of his lack of back doors!

ben

[Bedfordcrazy]

I have not looked at the rules since about 98 or so when i got mine done, but the rule then [no change to my knowledge] was, so long as you were not building a coffin, ie: removing all escape doors in the case of a crash. As i said above, i still had an operational cargo door, right next to my 3rd seat. When my engineer approved my 3rd seat and seat belt, he was happy that every occupant had a door to exit from, as i said as far as i know that rule has not changed, so you should be ok to do your modification. In our case we welded the original doors into the opening, so we still had all the ribbing and bracing, i would suggest that whatever method you use, that you make sure you have a structually sound enclosure in  case of a crash. Hope this helps.
As for the qld trans, & engineers not making a decision one way or another, in the last 12months i have found that a lot, these dropkicks are the law enforcers, but they are to scared to commit in case they screw up, in the end i use common sense and in some cases over engineer to cover my butt. lol 

george.

[hotrod]

Righto
Engineer said I don't see a problem with it and there is no code for this type of modification.
So I am now sending off an application for modification approval to the Dept of Transport stating that I wish to weld up the rear cargo doors, leaving the two front doors and the side cargo door intact and not at all impacting on points of exit as the van only has two seats.
According to the engineer they should write back to me saying that this is fine and does not require any approval, but at least then I have it in writing for any officious little prick who wants to interfere and will be covered re insurance (as long as I put it on my policy of course) 

[BusyKiwi]

Do you guys have to get approval before you can do modifications?

I guess then my van would never be approved over there

[Bedfordcrazy]

if the vehicle is regoed, you can get away with something like this, if it had to go over the pits, it would depend on the inspector, if he got some the night b4 and so on. You will find that these days you will find that they look at and goafter guys in holdens and fords, with loud exhausts, lowered, tyres and engine mods. They dont really care about other things, but as i have found, if you ring and ask them can i do this, they will um and ah and just wont commit to a yes or no. If a car is registered as a hotrod then the rules are more lapsed, but the conditions are out there.

george

[ShaneJ]

Ring Keith at KCF Rallysport located in KippaRing. He's an expert when it comes to Bedfords and engineering.