Building custom cars in my backyard

I now have everything important lined up on my plywood firewall. Both the clutch and brake master-cylinders are in their final locations and the steering column has been installed. I will now transfer all of the markings onto my steel and proceed from there.

2 New slide shows see page: MR2 VW bug pics page 6. MR2 VW bug pics page 6

I now have the VW bug front firewall constructed out of steel. I traced the outline from my foam-board template. I will strengthen the firewall with a piece of 2x2 angle iron and then I will attempt to place the MR2 pedals.

Before I reinstall the newly painted VW bug dash-board/steering-column support members, I need to create the foward fire-wall. I will mount all of the pedals and various other things to this plate. It appears that I can just bolt the fire-wall plate to some of the existing sheet-metal from the original VW firewall.

With the VW bug dash panel cut and fit, I must now remove all the support pieces and paint everything. I am pouring some of the rust bullet down inside the rear part of the fender wells. There is some rust down in there and I hope to convert it all with this rust converter. [...]

I cut the steel dash-board stiffing plate from 18 ga. steel. This plate will be screwed on with 9 screws, 4 on the top holdin it to the original VW bug sheet-metal and 5 holding it to the new steering column support. This plate should add a lot of strength to the entire assembly.

I am now building a re-enforcement plate for the dash board. This plate will help stiffen up the dash-board/steering-column support. I will first build a template from poster board and then transfer the profile to steel. I will cut the steel and fit it in place.

The VW bug's hood is now on and it closes OK. Once I drilled out the hinges, I mounted the hood on the car and slowly ground down both the dash support and the hinges themselves until they fit just right. They seem to be plenty strong and for now everything clears fine.

With the dash-board/steering-column support constructed, I need to insure that the VW bug hood will close. I have constructed new hood hinges and also cut a bit of the dash support out for everything to clear. All I need to do now is finish drilling out the mount holes and test fit the hood.

With everything aligned on the VW bug's dash-board/steering-column support I can tack it all in place. Once I had a few tack welds holding it all together, I removed everything from the car and finished welding the barckets and all of the nuts on.