When to cut the car to it's final length?
The rear end cut of for my project is too long as it sits but even if the bottom of the "car" is very rusty it stays together quite well due to the strengthening structures behind the rear seat. So I'm thinking I should work on the rust and support frame before cutting it to final desired length.
Therefore I need to decide where to make the final cut so that I can do repairs within the area that will be used for the couch as there is no point in fixing rust on the part that will be cut away!
Where to cut the car?
There seems to be two main versions when browsing pictures of car couches.
1) One basically uses the sides of the car and the back rest of the sofa is the end of the couch.
2)The other version is to cut a little bit longer piece of the car and leave a short piece of the trunk lid behind the back rest. This looks better in my view but the sofa will take more room and you need to either make a piece of lid or cut a piece from a trunk lid.
As the donor car was very rusty there will be extensively more welding work if going for alternative two. Also the space where I'm planning to put the sofa is not so big so I'm moving forward with alternative one.
How to cut the car?
I'm thinking of taking advantage of the sub frame of the car, meaning cutting the car completely, not just using the sheet metal. This enables using original bumper fastening points and hopefully support frame build wont be as extensive as all the main measures are already in place.
Main Dimensions!
I have taken some measurements and made some calculations to determine main dimensions of my couch. The height of a sofa in my home is 44 cm from floor to seat pillow top, the depth of seat pillow is 52 cm. Backrest height is 46 cm and the backrest angle should be about 100-110 degrees.
Total depth of sofa should land somewhere between 70 cm and 80 cm depending on the angle of the backrest. The width of the sofa is determined by the trunk opening!
A tricky part was how to determine when the car is in level witch is needed to enable taking measures. The hat shelf seems to be quite in level so I will at least for now use that for determining when rear part is in level.
As I have no bumper for the couch project I took some measures of my 65.
A small side comment. I'm hoping to get hold of rear bumper and tail lights of a 65 Dart, but the same from a 66 will also do fine as they are almost as good looking. The advantage of using a 66 bumper would be that the bumper completely covers the sand plate witch is missing from my project and also the 66 has integrated licence plate lights in the bumper when if made working would look nice.
The plan is to have couch upholstery end where the measurement tape shows 2 cm. That will make the gap between body and bumper disappear and I'm hoping the bumper is close enough to not interfere with legs of the person sitting in the couch.
To temporarily mark where I will do the cut in the future I use masking tape witch unfortunately is almost identical in color with the rest of the car.
Inside trunk. The spare wheel bay will be completely removed.
So now we have a plan and can start rust repairs! I have a feeling those might require several posts.
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