Car now straight, and Big Thanks to Ben Harder...

[rapieper at yahoo.com (Ron Pieper)]

...who came over Monday night and spent several hours doing reinforcement welds to Victor Jr. my
MkI.  Ben patiently and diligently worked while Don Walter (in from WI - thanks for coming down!),
Daun Yeagley, and a local new MkI owner shot the breeze and gave me grief.

You might recall that I found unibody damage when changing over to power steering.  It seems that
the car had suffered a "underneath" hit - I reckon that at some point the engine/tranny had been
shoved back into the firewall, rotating the tranny mount/PS bracket up and to the rear.  To
straighten it out, I did a combination of bending and beating.  Bending from the outside by
attaching a 2' piece of angle iron to the tranny mount and standing on it, and beating from the
inside of the car, which required cutting the floor out beneath the pedals (hollow section) and
hammering.  My my father-in-law jumped up and down on the angle iron while I hammered.  I kept the
manual steering rack attached through this whole procedure and it fell back into place perfectly
(I stopped and measure the best I could about a dozen times).  Anyhow, I don't know if I can get
it much straighter.  Ben welded the seams inside and out and also put a new floor in for me - he
even provided the sheetmetal!  What I guy - I can't thank him enough.


Anyhow, here's a good before/after photo:
http://scirocco.dhs.org/cheapassron/misc/Bent_Firewall/comparison.jpg
Here's the directory:
http://scirocco.dhs.org/cheapassron/misc/Bent_Firewall/

Enjoy!

Ron


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