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Old January 15th 2010, 15:30
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ricola ricola is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Warwick, UK
Posts: 1,137
WRX/Porsche Karmann cabrio 1303

this is my long term project that I initially bought about 5 years ago like this:



It was never going to stay standard, the original plan was to buy a solid car and stick a subaru engine in with some uprated brakes and suspension, staying with an uprated VW transmission to keep things simple...

First up, some decent adjustable struts for the front



and some 996 brakes all round



I then started having a poke around and what I thought was solid turned out to be an incredibly rusty car, these things rust from the inside out!


inside the sill!
front end:

So I decided to do the job properly and take the body off the chassis

New heater channels and cabrio strengthening panels underneath:


rear crossmembers:


front bulkhead:


Inner wings: I think you get the idea, lots of other repairs too!

As the body was off I thought I may as well go the whole way with it and upgrade it completely to take the power of the scooby lump (starting at about 300bhp). I also decided to go the whole hog with upgrading everything to be futureproof should I upgrade even more. This is all based around a Porsche 911 trans (G50, like the Ultimas use).

As you can see, it wasn't going to just bolt in..


So I started cutting!



There was too much removed from the framehorns for my liking so I started scheming up new stronger ones

which ended up as this:


I planned to cut out the sheet floors and build a perimeter frame for new ones which will be substantially stronger


I did not want a roll bar of any kind, I like to keep a stock-ish look


front end of the chassis looking rusty too so that came out!



I also needed to make provision for a hydraulic clutch so went with a fully adjustable pedalbox, I lowered the front section of the floor to keep things tidy
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