Seats and front end cut

Today I mounted some skanky Toyota seats a friend gave me, why put skanky seats in my bug? Well the bug seats were pretty skanky too, but they don't really recline, so its an upgrade to reclining skanky seats and who cares once they are covered. Reclining seats make the drive-inn more fun anyway :)

So we start with this seat:

I have to cut the sliding mechanism off so I can mount the seat to the stock VW stuff, as you'll see:

Here we are after the tracks got the angle grinder treatment

Now its time to destroy the original seat to get to the needed part, I only want just the very bottom which I will then weld onto the Toyota seat


I won't go into details on how I ripped it apart, its pretty self explanatory. This is what I'm left with from the original seat.
Here it is positioned and partially welded in place, you get the idea on how it will mount, just like stock. It turns out they are a few inches higher which gets in the way of the steering wheel, I had planned on a body lift anyway so its ok. If after that I don't like them then it will be time for other seats, its like Lego, don't like what you made, pull it apart and put it back together again differently.

Now on to the front end cut. If you read the link to the one day baja build you'll have an idea of how the front can be cut instead of buying a baja kit. I decided to go with this approach as an experiment, again if I don't like it I can just redo it. A real baja kit would require to remove even more of the car so that always remains an easy option. My version is a bit more radical than the one day baja guy, I really want to get the nose out of the way. Here we see the nose marked off with tape to get the initial cut line.



Here is is after the cut, I still have a working trunk, but the spare can no longer go in the stock location. I also will reshape the piece I cut off and weld it back in so that I have a trunk floor again. Right now its open to the world except for some duct tape to keep the the cats out. So thats next weekends project. I'll clean up the edges then at that time. I'll also reshape the front the rear fenders once I have my tire package mounted.