Changing Rear Firewall.

[zosyn]

I am going to replace the rear firewall behind the seats. I have a reproduction panel. I plan to remove the factory spot welds and weld the repo panel in place .


My question is if I remove the panel is there a chance that the car will flex or distort?. If this is a possibility how do I prevent it. Currently the car is straight and does not sag.

[Alfred1]

I don't know beans about autobody repair but I'm going to guess and say that it won't be a problem especially if you support the car evenly with jackstands etc. If you really need a fixture for the car, Celette makes one.

[BigD9146gt]

Hey there zosyn,
I got your back on this one. The only numbers that are going to help you for what your doing are the diagonal distances for the rear window.



O. Diagonal distance across rear window:
1280mm (50 13/32")
Measured between corners of window seating surface

P. Vertical opening in rear window frame
243mm (9 9/16")
Measured through vehicle center between upper and lower edges of window sealing surfaces

EDIT: ***DO NOT USE JACK STANDS*** Leave the car on all 4 wheels. Only if you have a frame rack and can keep the car perfectly flat would you want to do any body work not onthe wheel. Granted these cars flex alot, you don't want to change it from factory. I don't think that removing the firewall will allow the car to flex front to rear because its the frame tubes that run under the doors and the B pillars that give the car its strenght front to rear. The fire wall gives the B pillars the side to side strenght. I will also get you some pics of the cross demensions just for extra measure.

[Conrad W Peden]

This is what i had before cutting:



This is what i cut out:


This is what was put in to make sure it was straight before putting it back together(based on factory dims):
The appropriate under chassis supports had been removed in this pic as the welding was finished.

I had a link to a page with alot of detailed factory dims but cant find it, maybe someone else here might have it. I thought it was at the Renegade 914 Club site(nomore).

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

The 914club now has those pages.

http://www.914club.com/specs/bodydims.php
http://www.914club.com/specs/underdims.php

...And Pelican has an all-in-one kind of page, too.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/914/Parts/Body/frame_dims_big.htm

--DD