H360, a sister company of Hutchinson Engineering has teamed up with Taxi Bus Conversions, Northern Ireland’s leading specialist vehicle convertors, to fully convert their latest mobility vehicle.
Working with Taxi Bus Conversions, H360 has taken a new Ford Transit Connect and fully converted it for mobility purposes. The contract will see the first vehicle, a fully-converted bare shell being shipped to England for ‘pull testing’ on all structural H360 designed elements.
Ian Ferguson, senior design engineer at H360, explained: “The Ford Transit Connect conversion follows already established design techniques but is an extensive redesign of the rear area of the vehicle, involving sloping floor pan, structural rear crossmember, structural front crossmember, re designed seat brackets and ancillary brackets to support re designed exhaust and fuel tank unit.
"The vehicle is also fitted with a well established ramp system that marries in to our design. This meant that whilst we had points of reference for the conversion, everything that has been designed is unique to the Connect vehicle but meets industry design criteria both structurally and dimensionally.”
David Donnell, managing director at Taxi Bus Conversions, explained: “Being a Northern Irish company that exports throughout the UK, it is great to be able to have the service produced by a like minded company in Northern Ireland. We were attracted to Hutchinson Engineering and H360 as they had both the design and manufacturing capability in house. This ensured a very speedy result."
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