Apologies if this gets a little confusing as I try to explain...
Following a discovery of a monumental amount of filler and rust created by years of botched repairs by the previous owner, I have been planning ahead for replacing my front inner wings on my mk1 Jetta. For those of you that haven't seen it, the thread for it is here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/182889/1982-mk1-jetta?page=4 .
I have a front end chopped from a mk1 golf (I know the front bits will be different but I can deal with that later) which has pretty decent inner wings. The best long term option for repair is going to be to pick off the spot welds and replace the inner wings as a whole new panel from the donor front end. The quandary is that I am reluctant to drill/cut any bits off either my original car or the donor front end until I have fabricated some sort of jig for aligning them back on again. I have found a few factory as-built measures (measuring from the strut towers to the wing mounting holes etc) which seem to check out, but none seem to take into consideration vertical alignment. I would normally be a bit more relaxed about this but as the front strut towers are incorporated into the inner wings, if I botch this up the whole front geometry will be wafty.
The best idea I can come up with at present is to weld a frame that positions the top wing mounting bolts in relation to the ones on the opposite side, and the same with the strut mountings (obviously with plenty of diagonal bracing). Then pick off one wing, replace it with the donor panel using the frame to align it, then do the same for the other side. That should sort the left/right alignment out. As for making sure its at the right height, shall I just measure from the floor to the base of the strut tower and make sure the car doesn't move at all between cutting off old and fitting new?
As you may have guessed, I'm pretty new to the body repair side of things so am having to learn/improvise as I go with what I have.
Following a discovery of a monumental amount of filler and rust created by years of botched repairs by the previous owner, I have been planning ahead for replacing my front inner wings on my mk1 Jetta. For those of you that haven't seen it, the thread for it is here: retrorides.proboards.com/thread/182889/1982-mk1-jetta?page=4 .
I have a front end chopped from a mk1 golf (I know the front bits will be different but I can deal with that later) which has pretty decent inner wings. The best long term option for repair is going to be to pick off the spot welds and replace the inner wings as a whole new panel from the donor front end. The quandary is that I am reluctant to drill/cut any bits off either my original car or the donor front end until I have fabricated some sort of jig for aligning them back on again. I have found a few factory as-built measures (measuring from the strut towers to the wing mounting holes etc) which seem to check out, but none seem to take into consideration vertical alignment. I would normally be a bit more relaxed about this but as the front strut towers are incorporated into the inner wings, if I botch this up the whole front geometry will be wafty.
The best idea I can come up with at present is to weld a frame that positions the top wing mounting bolts in relation to the ones on the opposite side, and the same with the strut mountings (obviously with plenty of diagonal bracing). Then pick off one wing, replace it with the donor panel using the frame to align it, then do the same for the other side. That should sort the left/right alignment out. As for making sure its at the right height, shall I just measure from the floor to the base of the strut tower and make sure the car doesn't move at all between cutting off old and fitting new?
As you may have guessed, I'm pretty new to the body repair side of things so am having to learn/improvise as I go with what I have.