I decided to use an interior shop called Love's Trim.  He's a VW specialist and does excellent work, much better than any of the local shops I've checked out.  The only wrinkle in this plan - he's located in Georgia!  This weekend I made arrangements to meet a guy named Jack in Hagerstown, Maryland on his route from CT to GA.  He was making the trip for his interior, so I gave him some cash to haul my stuff as well!

I was so glad to get this stuff out of my way.  I had un-boxed most of the interior over the last few weeks in preparation, and I didn't even have room to work!

I borrowed a friend's motorcycle trailer to keep everything dry on the trip down.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but managed to achieve 10.5 MPG all the way down and back.

Fro rode along.  We left at 7:30pm on Black Friday.

We met Jack in a Walmart parking lot at about 1:15am.  Not sketchy at all.

Jack was rocking a MK4 Golf pulling a Uhaul trailer.  The photo is a little dark, but this thing was PACKED.  He had 8 interiors in there!

Back to work.  I'm walking the line between "detail oriented" and "clinically insane" on this fan shroud.  I decided to add a few strips on the bottom of the flat area, and of course I couldn't leave the corners sharp!

Clamped:

Drilled and clamped with Clecos:

Plug welded through the 1/8" Cleco holes:

Finished!

I have to add a clearance radius around the radiator inlet and outlet hoses, but I need to get a new radiator first.  I'm not going to re-use this one, it's pretty old and has evidence of leakage.

I started shaving the radiator support.  I'm going to use the original steel "North American" spec rad support, which has a lot of extra holes.

20ga steel filler:

MIG

Ground.  I'm about halfway done filling the holes, then I'm going to re-shape the top section.