'77 95 V4 van conversion by melle

3 minute(s) of a 19 minute read

It's pretty solid over all, but the amount of welding required is still bigger than I initially hoped for. I think I've done all the tricky bits now, apart from the air intake below the windscreen. Suspension towers are in great condition, hope the rear spoiler will appear to be solid as well. I've also welded up over a 100 screw holes in the floor and the car has a couple more holes that shouldn't be there... I'll be taking the wheels and suspension off later, but it's handiest to keep it rolling as long as possible, because I love doing all non-welding work outside on a tarpaulin.

I'm in no hurry at all, but I'm looking forward to having the welding done as it's not really one of my hobbies. That'll take another couple of years though I'm afraid...

1-28-2014

Ace! Where did you find that one? Is that a Norwegian number plate?

I've scheduled a couple of days welding next week, hope to make some progress. I start to hate this being a long distance project and it looks like I'm moving even further away from my workshop later this year...

2-15-2014

Not sure if this qualifies as progress but at least I had a couple days of fun with the welder. Bought an automatic welding mask, flippin' amazing gadget!

Air box and firewall were in pretty bad nick under 1/4" filler (vent cover didn't fit anymore), although I've seen worse:

So I drilled the spot welds and cut some tin out:

Fresh metal in place:

And cleaned up:

One piece on the firewall left but I had to leave that until next time. I have a very uncomfortable spinal disc herniation and working in a bent position definitely doesn't help...

I had a donor air box that cleaned up pretty OK but however still needed some patching with pieces from the original box:

Sorry for the crappy pic. The window channel will get some fresh metal next time.

I've taken all front suspension and steering parts off the car, the rear axle with wheels and the hand brake cables are the last bits left at the moment. Also did a bit of under seal scraping because I'm not looking forward to doing it all in one go once the fun jobs are done.