Oh Oh!! Time for the A-Pillar repair!

Well here is the part of this build that i was really nervous about. Replacing the A-Pillar!!

First up... brace the shell! The A-Pillar is kind of important for keeping a lot of things lined up, so i bought some 1"x1" box section and welded across the car from heater channel to heater channel. Then from the heater channel up to the roof and lastly from the heater channel up to the dash.

So here is the offending article that is causing all the problems. Me and the friend im building this Karmann Ghia for are of the opinion that its had a smash at some point. If you look closely, you can see where a previous owner has brazed in a section of metal to try and hide the accident damage. The sheer amount of filler i removed from the area was incredible!

Here is some MORE filler removed. Look at the state of the wing! The edge of the wing had even more brazing down the edge. This thing was mangled!

Another thing that you can see is the packing piece that a previous owner made to space the door on its hinges. These measured 5mm thick! something was definitely out of alignment somewhere. I documented as many measurements as i could, comparing one side to the other and then started cutting bent and rotten metal out!

First to come off was the wing. There is a swage line that runs along the top of the wing for its full length. I wanted to stay away from this line with my cut and weld line. The reason for this was that the line was in pretty good condition. Nice and straight and pretty symmetrical the length of the wing. I knew that if i disturbed it then i would need to reform it later. I don't want to make work for myself if i don't have to.

So once the wing was off, this was the mangled mess i was left with. Not good!

Cutting out more and more bent/rotten metal

This picture shows pretty well how i managed to locate the spot welds that attach the A-Pillar to the inner arch. I was really conscious that i wanted to preserve as much original metal as i could. Not because im precious about "original metal" it just makes things easier if i can keep original shapes and profiles to repair to. After that was detached, all that was left to do was cut through the top to detach it from the car! Ok so im scared now!!

The most important thing i did before cutting the A-Pillar out completely was measure both the original one and the donor one (remember the donor Ghia i refered to earlier). I made sure that i cut them both in the same position so hopefully, when it came to positioning the new one, it would glide straight in with no problems whatsoever! Well.... thats the plan!

Here is the donor Ghia's A-Pillar tacked in place. So far so good. The bottom section you can see i had to fabricate from sheet steel. Both the donor Ghia and the original were both too far gone.

Another shot of the donor section tacked in place. Everything lined up pretty well i must say. I did cut it out and re tac it once though.

Here is the bottom section of the donor Ghia pillar. I nearly didn't use this piece. It was in a very bad way. After taking a closer look though, i decided that i probably wouldn't be able to fabricate it from new. So i used what i had and started repairing it.

So here is the complete donor pillar welded in place. All that's left to do now is clean it up a bit.

The finished article! After a good amount of time with a wire wheel, a dose of kurust and some primer later, here it is. Im really pleased with how this came out. It was the one repair that i was dreading the most.

So here is a before and after shot. Definitely better me thinks!