In these pictures you can see the hood has been almost finished and the car has been stripped and primed.
During the bodywork i was also making drivetrain updates. I knew the stock rear axle would never survive, so i located an axle from an early 80s S-10 that had burnt. I removed the old brackets and purchased a set of new OEM style brackets from Don Hardy Racing. These were welded in the stock location of the original rear end. I replaced all the trailing arm bushings and had to fab shims for the original sway bar as they aren't produced anymore. Changing the rear axle also required shortening the driveshaft and re-balancing. After getting the car back on its wheels i decided that the chassis need to be upgraded to keep it from twisting. At the time i hadn't seen any subframe connectors made for the Vega so i fabed up some out of rectangular 3/16 wall tubing. Since i planned on 5 point harnesses i needed an anchor point for them. I ordered a 4 pt roll bar from Jegs in Columbus Ohio.