Welding in the new rear deck.

So rear deck removed.. now time to put in some new metal. I decided to buy a complete patern rear deck and front passenger side deck extension (the piece that extends from the deck forwards to the B-post). These panels are not cheap and I am always a little wary of quality. In this case the quality was a little mixed. The rear deck was pretty good while the extension needed some fettling as it was a little too long. A trial fit looked reasonable after some fettling.

You can see along the right hand edge of the deck I have already drilled the panel for some plug welding. You can see the extension in place here. If you look closely I have also begin to weld the rear deck to the vertical support (below the mole grips)

 And on the otherside:

Then I needed to sort out the plug welds for the rear. You can see the holes in the deck panel and how they line up with the lower horizontal support (well most of them do!)

Which I then plug welded (note I placed some silicone welding sheet below to protect the fuel pump etc.)

I also welded the panel to the inner wings and then checked alignment with the wings bolted up.

Not bad.. There is a bit of a gap (about 2 mm) where the wing meets the inner wing along the side of the boot. Interestingly when I took the wing off there was a rubber gasket between the wing outer and inner wing. I havn't seen this in the parts catalogue..
And the whole thing complete with new bootlid.

Much better!