A short update from last Saturday. We had a great day on the car - John had done some work on Friday arvo to remove the B pillar here was what greeted us on Sat morning.
The fuel filler neck and door on the drivers side add a bit of a challenge. As this adds a lot of complexity we decided to leave the Vento one in place and cut around it. here's a couple of shots pre the final trim.
We then hung the door to check measurements before proceeding with mocking up the Golf sides. Note in this pic the guard is only resting in place and is not lined up.
We then lined up the side of the Golf on the body and scribed out the cut lines. Then it was a matter of removing the side again and cutting out the correct shape, flanging the panels and refitting. Sounds easy in practice but there's a good chunk of work in getting it right. The key is loads of measurements and aside from a small 3mm trim on the bottom sill it all dropped into place beautifully.
The on to the welding, welding, and more welding - but after pushing hard to get as much of it done as possible we ended the day with 90% of the welding done and the drivers side essentially on as per below.
Getting this far has really been an awesome feeling. Sure there is loads of hard stuff to come, most notably recreating the C pillar area, but are going better than we thought we would and from my perspective it's been fantastic fun to be involved with the build. I've learned an absolute sh/tload of new stuff already.
Rear window glass though is looking like it'll be nearly impossible to get made in NZ. We are investigating the lexan options. Not ideal but kind of goes with the street racer theme. Plus gives us loads of scope for spare "glass" and coming up with whatever shape works best. So we'll see how we go.
Next steps after that are investigate the roll cage options, work on getting the roof done, start fitting the dash, finish the body work (and the endless list of other little things to do
Woooohooooooooo - bring it on!)
