New fuel line! ...and other miscellaneous repairs

The internal captive nut holder which the accelerator 'guide-tube-backing-plate-thingy' and outer cover plate attaches to (at the front end of the tunnel) had partially rusted out along its bottom edge. In its corroded state the captive nut was loose and close to being ineffective, so a functional repair was required. I started by straightened up the bottom edge of the affected area using the small grinding stone mounted in a Dremel tool. I then carefully pried up the bracket to release the captive nut:

This gave me the access to clean up the area with the drill mounted wire brush. I cleaned and reinserted the captive nut and tapped the bracket back over with a small hammer, clamping in place so that it was tight up against the wall of the tunnel:

Then it was a simple case of adding a couple of tack welds to fix things permanently in place:

On the outer side of the tunnel I got reassuring signs of good weld penetration:

A quick dressing to smooth the bumps out and a lick of primer:

With the welder set up, I decided to fill a few pinholes on the bottom plate. I shone a small torch from inside the tunnel so that any pinholes were easily identified as pinpricks of light. I then marked them all up with a permanent marker. Turned out that I had 3 to take care of:

I clamped up a clean 2p coin (early minted coins are apparently best as they contain more copper) behind the pinhole to prevent blowing through and contain the amount of excess weld build-up. The thinking here is that because you cannot weld to copper, it is a good way to control welds requiring a delicate touch:

With the power settings turned way down on the welder I added small amounts of weld material to plug up the holes:

With everything ground flush it’s impossible to tell where the pinholes used to be:

With the bottom plate off I had great access to replace the original steel fuel line with a new Cunifer line (an alloy composed of copper, nickel and iron that is very corrosion resistant):

The process I adopted was simple and rather ingenious. Full credit for this procedure goes to Bada Ben over on the Volkszone forum. To start with I found myself a screw that fitted up snuggly inside the internal bore of the fuel pipe:

I screwed it into the end of the old pipe as far as it would go, then cut off the head:

I screwed the new Cunifer pipe onto the exposed end until the two pipes were joined together nice and flush:

The original fuel pipe was fastened inside the tunnel by VW using a series of steel tabs that are spot welded in place. Access inside the tunnel is very limited; however I was able to loosen the grip of the first and last tabs which made it easier to draw the pipe through. With the Cunifer pipe straightened out and propped up on a garden chair, I began to withdraw the old pipe from the rear frame horn:

This method allows the new fuel line to be correctly routed through all of the original brackets for a perfect ‘factory correct’ appearance. After the first few tugs it began moving about 8 inches at a time and in a couple of minutes I had the new line in place:

Then it was just a case of unscrewing the old pipe and admiring my handy work:

All that is left is to bend the front section of the pipe up into place so that it exits the hole on top of the frame head. However, as I am still fiddling with various things in this general area I have decided to leave this final step until everything has been taken care of: