You could certainly do it. Converting a ute to a tonner is pretty easy too. You'd just have to remove the roof and the panel under the rear window. The hardest bit would be the quarters where you'd have to lop off the ute roof bits in the quarter and join to the van roof at this point - you'd probably have to do the reverse of the van to ute conversion, ie cut the donor ute roof down into the van quarter, but in this case, as well as the van roof unpicked along the join to the quarter you'd have to take a donor piece below the join line to graft into the ute quarter. The other issue is the inner roof, and where it joins to the inner pillars. You have to be careful in this area especially on 1/75 onwards as there is a big support brace that runs from behind where the retractable seat belt mounts back into the inner quarter. I'm sure it can be done, but may have to be done in stages rather than as one big piece ie use 2 x van roofs as donor: one for the inner stuff off a rusty for the inner stuff and another for the outer shell. The windscreen pillar joint is normally done as a stagger joint, but if you were worried about it just do a joint along the floor to firewall join leaving the whole plenum and firewall attached to the roof.
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I like this idea, but done like a Gemini which the van is just a wagon with a bit of steel over where the seat goes - remove this and put the back seat in with flip front seats. I'd like to see this done to a HQ-WB van, but would be much easier in a HK-HG where the floor is already there, and on early ones you don't need rear seat belts.Originally Posted by playwme
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