Cutting off the leech on a jib basically flatten it, move draft aft and open the leech. It will not be a good sail afterwards, quite the opposite. Re-cutting an overlapping jib in this way to fit to a selftacker is a bad idea in my opinion (I tried this on an old style Tornado overlapping jib, and it was just as poor as a 4 year old dacron jib with lots of use. Poor pointing, poor power and little acceleration).

A selftacking jib doesn't need to be smaller than an overlapping jib. You get to add some cloth at the bottom of the sail, so the sailarea can very well be the same. You also get a higher aspect ratio (less drag) with a selftacker due to the longer luff and leech. Unfortunately, the area you add is low down where there is less wind and more disturbance/turbulence.

If you are low on money, most of this can be buildt at home. We buildt our own alu snuffer (the best we have tried so far) and sock. I now have a better sewing machine and method for bending the pipe, so it would look better if I buildt a new one.
[img]http://www.catsailor.com/forums/download.php?Number=48738[/img]

The same for the track, you can either build it in carbon or bend a straight alu track. It would be a good idea to get a short wagon to run on the track if you decide to bend it yourself. Our track has been done this way, and instead of combining alu with stainless screws we buildt the fittings to the mainbeam with glassfibres and epoxy.