With the seats in their final locations I can now try and fit the pedals and steering column. I am starting to cut away the internal sheetmetal around the firewall to give me room to position everything. It looks like I can fit the new firewall straight up from the original.
With both of the VW bug seat brackets cut, drilled, bolted and welded I can finish the installation of the seats. Everything lined up well and the seats are extremely stable. Now I can start the steering column and foot box.
With the rear seat bracket in place, I need to position the front bracket. I am using the same fastening system as for the rear only a bit smaller. I will bolt and weld the brackets together and then weld the assembly to the frame.
It’s been a while since I posted any pics. I now have 4 new slide shows on the new “MR2 VW Bug pics page 6” page. MR2 VW bug pics page 6
Now that I have the VW bug seats in the right location, I need to go ahead and attach them to the frame. I must attach the seat brackets so that they can be removable. Once carefully placed I will need to create a mount system. I am using 4 separate brackets to both weld and bolt them to the frame.
I now have the entire seat assembly fit into the VW bug’s passenger compartment. I fits really well and there will be plenty of room for the pedals and footbox. The seats are pushed back as far as I can get them and still fit the fuel cell. The shoulder location when sitting in the seats is at the widest location of the bug’s interior, it’s still a snug fit.
I now have both seat mounting brackets built and bolted to the Vw bug seats. I carefully measured everything to make sure that the seats were in the correct locations as well as square. I can now re-fit the assembly back into the passenger compartment.
I am finishing up the mounting location brackets for the VW bug’s fuel cell. I have also fine tuned the seat locations and taken the critical measurments so I can start building the seat mounting brackets. After the brackets are bolted to the seats I can fit the entire assembly back in the car to fine tune their locations.
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.