Before the transaxle change was completely finished, I took a sawzall to the body and cut off the front section. There was an easy way and a hard way to do this. Naturally, I chose the hard way. The easy way would just require making a straight cut across the front just ahead of the footbox (which is also just behind the triangular cutouts). This is how the Fiberfab company separated the front from the main body in some later versions of the Valkyrie and Avenger.
The more difficult approach, which I chose, was to make a cut about 4 inches in front of the lower edge of the windshield, and continuing each end of that cut down the outer edge of the door jam. Doing it this way gave me excellent access to everything in the footbox area (under the dashboard), the front suspension, and it looks (to me, anyway) how the factory would have done it if they designed it that way from the start. A big drawback to this method is that it weakens the remaining main body section, resulting in significant cowl area flex and shake, requiring reinforcing the remaining structure in a couple key areas. Most of the shake was greatly reduced by bonding a 3″ x 0.375″ x steel bar to the underside of the remaining roof panel (between the T-tops). Additional stiffening would come much later during the Second Major Rebuild when a tubular steel framework was added to the top of the footbox area.
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