With the VW bug’s floor plate tacked in place, I need to start installing the fuel cell. I know that it must sit as far back as possible to accommodate the seats. I will build a box around this tank later, for now I will tack in the front lower support.
With everything lined up, the VW bug body and the custom frame with the bottom floor plate sand-witched in between, I can tack weld the plate to the frame. As I tack the plate to the frame I need to insure that the frame members and the plate are in contact with each other. I am placing my bottle jack under the platform and lifting the entire assembly off the ground, just a bit, to accomplish this. Each tack location will be lifted separately one at a time.
With the body and frame as one, I can begin to try and fit everything into the VW bug’s interior. I am temporarily positioning the seats and the steering wheel just to determine where everything is going to be. I will have to replace the lock-set because the steering column came without keys. All and all it looks like everything will fit “whew”.
With all the VW bug sheet-metal trimming done, I can now fit the body back over the frame. Everything seems to fit fine so now I can continue with the trial fitting of the seats and steering wheel. Let the fun begin.
I am now at the stage where I need to fit the VW bug body back over the custom frame. I will need to cut the body sheetmetal out in a few places to get it all to fit. The clearance for the front interior nose of the body needs to be 28″, so I will notch both channels to get it over the frame.
With the VW bug’s floor plate cut and drilled to match the plywood platform, I can now position it under the frame and on top of the platform. I will carefully line it up and then drop the body back on top of the frame and the plate. Once everything is where it is suppose to be I will tack the plate to the frame.
Finish cutting out the floor plate and drilling out the mount holes in the VW bug’s bottom floor board. After cutting out the plate using the plywood platform as a template I again used the template to locate and drill out the mount holes.
I am cutting the VW bug’s bottom plate to match the wooden platform. I have drawn the outline of the platform on the steel and will use the platform as a cuting guide. I moved the platform away from the line about 1/4″ so that the plasma cutting tip would line up with the markings.
Again this video shows the positioning of the VW bug front sway bar. This is giving me a good idea as to where the sway bar will cross the bottom of the frame so I can position the mounts. I rework the sway bar a little later on in the build. As for now it fits fairly well. The bottom floor plate has also come in so I will cut and fit it to match the bottom plywood platform.
I have a few more things to do before I can finish the frame. One of the things is positioning the anti-sway bar. The drop links that were sent with the struts are too long and I cut them down to size later. In this vid I am attempting to get the sway bar mount locations. I redo this later down the line. So this is not the final positioning.