The alignment between the doors, windscreen frame and roof was out. I could make adjustments to the windscreen frame angle to allow the roof to sit flat but then it would be at the wrong angle to match the door, adjusting the door created a gap to the tub and on it went. Although the rest of the jeep had been resprayed, poorly!, the hard top was still original paint and I couldn't see any reason for this being part of the problem. At this stage I was weighing up the following options for the restore,
Sell the top and doors and restore her as a scrambler with scrambler half top, curved doors and tail gate. Rebuild the 304,(converted back to petrol only,TF919 and Dana 300. Appealing but the only options were to ship everything required from the US and with the Aussie dollar having fallen some 30% in the last few years this was going to be prohibitively expensive.
Replace the entire drive line with a pre 95 XJ drive line including engine, again options for a suitable donor were limited and even the ones I could find were silly money and with upwards of 250,000 miles I would still be looking at an engine rebuild.
Small block Chevy crate engine, transmission upgrade and transfer refresh, probably the easiest and with new crate engines available for less than the 304 rebuild probably the most sensible. Before anyone comments about the LS option this is not really possible due to state laws etc and even if it could be done it would require sign off by an automotive engineer at every stage of the build including upgrading diffs, brakes etc etc not impossible but I didn't want to get stuck in that financial rabbit warren!
So with the most promising options researched I chose.... None of the above and decided to go in a completely different direction!