That looks fantastic
Nice picture too
....When grief kicks it really does throw you and affects your thinking/thought processes, don't be too hard on yourself for initally gutting that set and putting a modern chassis inside, and like you said if the original chassis had all those problems and then caught fire, I don't blame you for getting drastic with it. What you've done with it now is great, there's nothing like making a modification that works so well.
Cheers Glen