'77 95 V4 van conversion by melle

3 minute(s) of a 19 minute read

October last year I started repairing the right hand side front inner wing that has been damaged in a collision. The 'new' panel is now aligned correctly, the bit between the new panel and the door is still deformed. Not the easiest piece to reshape, but the rest of the car is still perfectly straight, so it's worth the hassle.

Last week I made panels to close off the side windows. They look a bit off in the photo, that's because they're not yet attached to the car:

My initial plan was to make a CAD drawing and have the panels water jet cut. But last weekend I was caught by a rush of enthusiasm, so I just traced the original glass on a sheet of galvanised 1,5mm steel, cut the panels out and shaped them on the disc sander. My idea was to weld them in, but I changed my mind to glueing them, this will minimise the risk of deformation.

I think I'm going to keep the window behind the passenger door (that's right hand side). Might be handy there, since the mirrors are crap. I have a very cool (but still not very good) double face van mirror for the passenger side, might try how that works. These were used on Dutch postal vans in the '70's and '80's: