Cut out the steering column support piece from the original Suzuki and
temporarily welded it into place. Also put in a piece of scrap metal to
hold it up. The u-joints are at their absolute limit, in order to get the
steering wheel several inches lower than it was in the Suzuki.
Unsurprisingly this now interferes with the gear lever, which is going to
have to be altered (height etc.)
Put a couple of uprights in which will be door pillars (purple). Still
haven't decided exactly where to put the windscreen, but it should be clear
from this picture (ish) that the windscreen's span is incredibly long. Am
reluctant to do octagonal because it's awkward to get it absolutely flat,
but there's a horizontal line from the rear door frame top corner that
has to be honoured, damnit.
Decided in the end to just go for it, but what did it was simply laying a
diagonal across from the roof front point down to the top of the dashboard
(seen starting top of picture, downwards at a shallow angle). Also,
reluctantly (am running out of electrodes), welding a temporary piece across
the doorframe, which gave a line to work with. So, the first piece is in.
Marked in green will be the next two pieces: the decision's been made to go
with an octagonal windscreen because a hexagonal one looks too much like
a coffin! Marked in red is where, retrospectively, that upright should have
come to, and it would have met up perfectly as a strong support for the
windscreen. Also damnit those uprights really could have done with being the
other way round (turned through 90 degrees). Ah well - it's not the end of
the world.
Very exciting! Half the windscreen support is in, and it's not botched as
badly as initially feared. Sighting down the three long tubes shows that
actually it's pretty straight. Luckily what can be done is an "inner" rail
added which is actually dead-straight, on which the windscreen can rest.
Putting in the other side is however going to be exciting... see next photo.
Ahh frickin' 'ell. Another lovely botch-job. Actually it turns out that the
bodging started with the uprights behind the front seats: the left side is
about 1cm higher than the other, which explains why it was such a bitch of a
job to match up the door frame. This does need to be rectified. I have
about 100 electrodes left, and about 5 cutting discs. Hmm...