After connecting the Volkswagen body to the Mazda chassis and welding everything solid (well, most everything), it was time to start putting all the body parts back on! I started with the doors:
The driver's side door closes beautifully, btw, with a perfectly crisp "thunk". The passanger side door, the one that had the broken hinge that I repaired, doesn't close quite as well. I got it as best as I could and after several hours and one broken phillips head (was using an impact driver) I said that it's good enough.
There's no issues at all with clearance between the inside of the doors and the dashboard area and the new door sills. Except for the window cranks, of course.
Here's the video of me putting the doors on, as well as messing with the fenders:
Then it was time for something shiny and new, the new wheels! They're 16x5 +45et rims that Toyota made for the Scion iQ smart car. They're the narrowest wheels I could find with the right lug pattern and diameter. Only MINI Cooper rims have a higher offset of +48mm but they're wider. I got some 175/60r16 rubbers and overall they're supposed to, in theory, stick out 10mm less than the Miata wheels. But they're an inch taller.
The way the car's sitting, without the weight of the hatch door, gas, people, etc., the fender is just barely touching the tire. Moving the arch's an inch, inch-and-a-half up on the fender is still the leading idea, but I could probably get away with just "stretching" the fender, it only needs to move a little bit and it would probably be a lot less work. And it might even look better. I'm going to do whatever looks the best.
Here's the video showing the install of the front clip, hood, hood release, etc.:
Oh, and this happened. I chopped the front "apron" a little with a cutoff wheel.
I was a little hasty with the cut, but it will hardly be visible at ride height and with the front bumper on.
I've decided that when/if I do a restoration and paint job, I'll get a replacement front passenger side fender. It's too rusty, too bent up, but mostly too rusty. The drivers side fender is a little better. So I started some rust repair on that one, I made two patches and welded them on and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.
And I removed all the rust scale from the insides of all four fenders and coated the inside surfaces with POR-15 followed by rubberized undercoating.
Here's some 16 gauge steel that connects the Miata unibody chassis rail to the front bumper mounting area. It's not strong enough to survive a minor collision or anything, but it should keep the front bumper from wobbling around too much. One oversight I made while hastily putting this thing together was to build a crash bar or something in front of the radiator.
And then I made a pair of brackets with captive nuts for the bumper to bolt to, bolted the brackets to the bumper, then clamped the bumper onto the car where I wanted, tacked the brackets on, unbolted the bumper from the brackets, and finished welding the brackets onto the car.
I've also started the wiring for the exterior lights. The Miata's sealed-beam headlights are an exact match with the VW's, so I can re-use those and their connectors as well. The Miata's front turn signals have me confused a little because there's three wires going to each bulb, which are 1157s (one bright filament and one dim one). I assumed that the bright one is for the turn signal and the dim one is for running lights. In the rear, the Miata has three bulbs (tail light, stop light, and turn signal?) and the VW tail lights also have three bulbs, so I should be able to figure that one out. Oh, and the battery will need to be fastened somehow in the back, and the battery cables routed under the body. I don't have to worry about it yet, but if I keep the battery in the cabin of the car, as is the plan, then I'll need one of those Optima batteries I think.
So everything is ready for me to put the fenders one! Followed by the bumpers, rear door, and the two removable windows. Put the dash back in, seats, and it's ready to go! I'll have to figure out the windshield wipers, cowl area, window cranks, finish the sheet metal around the trunk area and rear fender wells, etc. in a few months from now, which will be Stage 3 of this build. Stage 3 is getting it daily-driver-able, and stage 2 is/was turning the two cars into one. Stage 1 was stretching the Miata by six inches. Stage 4 will be the full restoration.