Painted the back side of it with a 2000 degree heat paint.. just because I had it on hand and I really wanted to get this particular project done..

I had planned to rig up some way to make this shield removable, but in the end I didn’t bother, again just wanting it done tbh. Here it is fully installed…

Some time back I cut open the area where the front sway bar mounts so that I could add an internal reinforcement (for the bar), then got sidetracked. So I’ve finally gotten back to it… the situation is a little different tho in that I’ll be using a 19mm H&H sway bar at the front instead of a stock bar. Also, I’ve decided to used the external reinforcement pieces from ‘Maddog’ because it’ll also help reinforce the seam where this car has had a doner front end attached at the wheel wells (two birds, one stone). But with that being the case, I still needed to add a capture nut down in the holes I’d made a while back, because of the funky way the H&H brackets mount. Here’s a shot of that:

And here’s where I closed it up, done the same on both sides obviously:

Here’s the Maddog frt sway reinforcements, with a coating I’ve added to the inside before attaching:

Unfortunately on the PS, there is a hole left by whoever did the crash repair - that I need to address before attaching the reinforcement. Can you believe anyone would just leave that and call it done?

Looking good !

Been slowed down by rain - remember all this is being done outdoors , but was able to get out and patch up the hole (highlighted above ^ )

.. done

Welded in the passenger side sway bar reinforcement…

..and the driver’s side.. also you can see in this pic, the seam in the wheel well where the donor section was added. Whoever did that repair used an over lap procedure - not my choice but it is solid. In the pic You can see I’ve knocked the high spots off their welds and roughed the surface for some fiberglass filler top dressing to make it all less “Frankenstein “ and more water proof ..

Jumped to the back to add rear sway bar mounting brackets. This is more of a specific type of install because the rear sway bar I’m using on this car is not OEM 914 equipment.. I think the bar is made by H&H and is definitely a slightly thicker than stock (this car will eventually have a flat 6 of some type, probably Subaru). Anyway, the real difference in the mounting of this bar vs the stock bar comes down to the spacing of the mounts. The stock mounts are approx 39” apart (iirc) and these needed to be spaced 32-5/8” apart because of the difference in the bar’s shape. Here’s a pic showing where I drilled my initial hole for starters;

Then I had to basically custom shape the holes to fit the weld pooling from the attachment of the capture nut on the back of the bracket.

Here’s one set in place waiting to be welded, I actually leveled it out a bit better by bending the end a little where it mounts under the heat shield:

.. before welding I notched the end where the hole is on the brackets to give more surface area for welding (yea I should have installed this before reattaching the heat shield):

.. checked that I had a gap of a couple millimeters at least, between the bar and trans mounts before welding the brackets in:

And finally welded it all together:

If anyone installs one of these bars, again the bracket spacing is narrower than stock - I got 32-5/8” but essentially they get installed just inside of the outer most heat shield mounts (stock is well outside of the heat shield feet).

I got these trailing arm mount brackets sometime back, forgot I even had them til I stumbled on them the other day… got them during a Maddog sale and figured they’d pair well with a set of boxed trailing arms that I have.

Ready for welding:

Passenger side installed .. I swear I gotta quit going back to “improve” the weld

Driver Side before shaping the piece to fit:

..and driver side welding complete:

Went back and installed the rear sway bar reinforcement plates inside to trunk space. Again, this is a nonstandard rear sway bar and so it was necessary to weld the plates in a slightly different location compared to stock. In this picture the plate sitting on the left side is the stock placement (just there for illustration purposes) and the one one the right is where mine needed to be welded. This illustrates the difference in bracket placement widths that I’d mentioned earlier:

Before making the welds though, I needed to weld the circular “factory access caps” so that they would not shift under hard cornering (the brackets I welded underneath are welded over the seam slightly), and not create a crack in the mount’s attachment welds. Highlighted with purple arrow:

Passenger side installed:

Driver’s side too..

Clutch cable tube forward of the shifter area is next. Remember I’ve already dealt with the other two possible failure areas regarding this tube, so mine was broken in all three spots. Started off by measuring up 3.5” and marking where the internal bracket is and also the area I’ll be using for access:

..access area cut. Note I purposely cut it to hinge on the opposite from any other time I’ve seen this repair done - why? because the throttle cables mount sort of attaches to the top of the other side and I didn’t want to cut though it.:

Here’s what I found inside, the tube was completely pulled away from the retaining bracket :

Getting a good ground was a challenge (access port too small mostly) but I was able to get it firmly welded. A big ‘ol screw driver passes thru the tube with no obstruction:

The top of the original bracket was easily accessed from my port but I needed to drill a couple holes and plug weld the bottom from the outside:

..repair complete and closed up :

Weld 'er up! Fun stuff, getting in all those fiddly areas, huh?
You're getting it done - way to keep at it.

Thanks tygaboy !

This is next:

I cleaned the metal up real good, and primed the metal after laying tape at the weld spots.. and then welded on the seat adjuster bracket holder that I saved from the old cross-member. I finished welding this new unit in place but it got too dark for a good pic:

Cross-member installed:

Parking Brake mount went back on today. It was in good enough condition that I recycled it. I sprayed a protective coating on the backside and on the inner long side too:

.. welding process:

After that I slapped back on the original cable cover after coating both sides with a protective coat:

done with that:

Finally, I replaced the lid to the factory access hole, welding it - just ‘cause

Time for installing seat brackets and hinges to the floor. Here again I’m reusing the old hinges, all except one which was too rusted. There was more prep to getting these ready for welding than I assumed. So it took a couple days and both times I finished near dark.. therefor the welds were a bit chunky but the brackets ain’t going nowhere!

Drivers side done. Had to install the brackets to the bottom of the Large seat rail assembly, then fit the middle adjuster in place to get the correct placement of the floor brackets before welding (as advised).

Passenger Side prepared for brackets:

Note: I believe you could measure 11” from the crossmember back to the middle of the pivot pin on the floor hinge and get a proper placement, but YMMV
..and, done:

Great! Glad it worked out for you.

My stock jack points both needed a little work, neither were really all that bad but the outer shells both had some rusted out areas. Here’s where I cut away the bad area on the passenger side:

The metal was pitted so I found a convenient piece of left over sheet metal to overlay and hopefully prolong the life of this area:

Welded it in and smoothed it out a little :