So the test was successful, time to make it permanent.

A little bit of welding later

Testing for fit in the car again.

Next up, weld it in place.

I ended up cutting back the front here as while it “fitted” it was rather too close to the clocks

Finally, here you can see the difference in column location. The chassis tube running up/down in this image is the original centre line.

With the column in place behind the dash.

And again.

Finally with the wheel in place.

Note that the steering lock is fully usable still which helps with IVA but unfortunately the stalks don’t fit.

My intention is to use the original wheel with a padded centre replacing the airbag.

I may at a later date replace the wheel with a more appropriate one but this appears to be tricky as while the spline is not unique to the Wagon R/Agila A (it’s shared with the BMW E46) the adaptor for the E46 doesn’t fit particularly well due to the differences in the column hardware.

I’ll worry about that once its passed the IVA!

For various reasons I decided to swap the original dash I had for a Lee Dawson one. At the time I picked it up he commented that someone else had said it didn’t fit the Forte (but he’d buy it back if that was the case as “he can sell them all day”).

Anyway, I tried it and it doesn’t fit. I measured things and had a revelation. The original  GTs40 dash is larger, has the steering column in a different place and has hence been reprofiled, that’s *why* it’s distorted as it’s not quite worked.

If you take the centre of the seat to be the “ideal” position then the original was offset ~31mm to the left while the LD would make that ~14.5mm

The new dash is 44mm narrower. If centralised the difference between the column positions was 45.5mm which accounting for the difficulty in measuring makes it near as dammit the difference in size between the two dashboards.

After a bit of a think about things I broke out the angle grinder.

This then let me fit the dash

I then messed about with relocating the steering column only to run into a major issue. It doesn’t fit.  The column has to move over about 50mm but the most it can move before the motor hits the side of the chassis is 30mm.

Back to the drawing board. Either a manual column or a different power steering column.

Step forwards please the Suzuki Wagon R / Vauxhall Agila A powered column. This is both 30mm narrower and the motor points up not down. Due to the way the panel slopes out at the top this increases the room available.

As a bonus it’s both lighter and has an electronic clutch. This means that assistance is optional and when not powered is only very slightly heavier than a fully manual column.

As a size comparison

Roughly clamped in place

VS the Corsa B column

That should work then. Now I just had to attach it securely.