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.
Now that the welding is complete on the bottom of the VW bug frame, I can flip it back over. This is a scary move, I have to keep the rear strut mount from crashing into the concrete. Carefully I flipped it back over upright.
The bottom of the VW bug’s frame has now been welded at every seam. I have ground down flat all of the welds that will be against the lower plate so that everything fits snugly. I will now flip the frame back over upright and continue.
Before I can flip the VW bug’s frame back over upright, I need to add a couple of front torsion mount stiffening brackets. When I had the frame all put together before I noticed a slight bit of deflection when trying to turn the front wheels. These brackets should stiffen things up well.