Quickie: NOS rear quarter

Throughout my long hiatus I kept my eyes peeled for any VW rarities that came up for sale. To my delight a year correct NOS rear quarter came onto my radar, which I purchased without hesitation for a barginous price. These genuine panels seem to be as rare as rocking horse sh*t these days; 

A fortutius find to say the least as I was dreading the idea of having to patchwork something together on what is the worst side of the car (both in terms of chronic rot and warping from old crash damage). The only thing that needs doing to make it complete is to graft on the bumper mount section, but this is a relatively straight forward by comparison.

As with all old genuine VW panels, it has a liberal layer of surface rust, but this is superficial and will clean off without much sweat. 

Big thanks to T-Bone for kindly couriering this half way across the country for me!

Two is company

After another few weeks of part-time garage tinkering the other cross member has now undergone its wondrous transformation to make it '65 accurate:

I followed exactly the same process as before, so see my previous post if you would like the recipe and wish to indulge yourself with countless photos of metal fettling. 

I now present the two modified cross members together for the very first time:

A very fine pair indeed. Although they are now complete, the rear reinforcement panels do still need spot welding into place. As I am sure i've mentioned previously; I don't want to commit and attach them together just yet as I'm keen to have a proper test fit with the chassis and rest of the shell before finalising. Just want to ensure that I have some wiggle room if things don't line up right (which I am half expecting things not to!)...

Modifying the new cross members

As I mentioned in the last post, I now have some new 'German' cross members which I am going to be using as a foundation to produce some year correct ones (i.e: '64 - '66 Beetle). They will not be 100% accurate, but will come pretty damn close. I have given this a lot of thought and it seems like the best approach as mid-sixties cross members simply don't exist as a repro item. Cross members commonly rust out on a vast majority of old bugs, so getting hold of a rot-fee OG section is almost impossible and only exist on rare foreign cars that have been driven exclusively in dry climates. Anyway, I have not seen this particular modification done before, so hopefully this detailed overview will be of some help to others who may be interested in doing the same... 

I began by drilling out the spot welds and separating the reinforcement section from the main panel. This gave me better access and allowed for a neater job:

On the main panel I smoothed out the unnecessary hump by simply cutting around it and welding in flat sheet steel:

These repros include an access hole to the heater channel. This was not something that mid-sixties cross members had, so I welded it up:

The rear edge needed a new profile adding to accommodate the correct upward angle of the heater pipe. After careful measuring and scribbling a few notes I mocked up a cardboard version of the hump I was trying to recreate:

I then transferred the measurements to sheet steel and cut out the geometric net:

After some folding on the vice and a quick zap of the MIG welder to close up the slits:

Linished back and compared to the original:

tacked into place on the cross member once the appropriate recess was measured and cut out:

After being fully welded, tweaked and dressed:

Just after the hump is a small section that is bent down on the original. I had to improvise around this section as access for clamping was tight. After some careful tapping with the hammer (remember that man light taps are better than fewer hard bashes), I got the 90 degree bend I was after:

Next task was to alter the heater pipe hole to the correct oval shape:

And trim the return flange to match the original (which terminates about halfway down):

At this point I roughly bolted up the heater channels to the pan and added the crossmembers. The fit wasn't as good as I had hoped and I was unsure at this stage if this was due to the restored pan being off or it the location of the mounting holes in the new panel were incorrect. After some head-scratching I discovered that the lower holes were not spaced apart close enough. There was a 5mm difference compared to the OG spacing. 

To correct this I elongated the hole;

Then using a copper backer I welded the other end to close up the gap slightly:

After some Dremel tool action I had it all looking correct again:

I then shot blast the entire panel before plug welded the mounting reinforcement sections back into place:

Moving on to the thicker supporting rear panel that I removed in the first step, I proceeded to cut out the unnecessary hump and chopped off the rear section that I assume adds strength to the underside of the boot corners. However, this was not present on the originals so I determined that it was surplus to requirements:

Welded in some flat sheet to replace that bump and welded up the access hole that was also present on the main section:

I welded up this little join to add a bit more rigidity:

Shaped the mating flange that will eventually fix to the inner side of the rear wheel arch:

Shot blast the reinforcement panel and got it realigned the best I could to the main section. I decided not to plug weld the pieces together at this point, just in case I needed to adjust anything further down the road. So, here is the nearly finished article just prior to spraying with zinc primer:

Now to do the same on the other side...

New BBT rear valance

I am slowly acquiring top quality reproduction panels as and when they happen to be on sale. This week I got an accurate rear valence manufactured by BBT, who are based in Belgium:

Really impressed by this panel in every way and the finish is simply excellent. When compared against my original valance I was able to see just how bent and knackered the old one was:

The photo doesn't show the full extent of the damage, but replacing it is definitely the best course of action. Even if I possessed half decent panel beating skills it would take a substantial amount of time to get this back to anywhere near straight - and that's before any fabrication work to repair the inner reinforcement section behind the tail pipes.

Couldn't resist a quick dry fit on the car:

Looks great but the fit is slight off in places, but I think this will be corrected when I have straightened out the rear bumper hangers. In summary, I am very happy with this panel!

Happy New ...Rear bumper mount!

So, the rear bumper mount has now gone from this:

to this:

Pretty happy with my welding and it has ground down nicely (still requires a little bit of fine finishing). All is good ...or is it? You see, I made a rookie mistake along the way and I am now unsure if it is going to come back to bite me. Lets put the order of events into sequence and I shall explain...

After a lot of measuring (hours) I started cutting out the old bad steel progressively. I was continuously holding the new panel in place to ensure that I wasn't cutting too far back.
More hours of fitting and finessing later I had the panel 'dry fitted' and held in place with intergrips and c-clamps: 

The edges around the section to be welded were meticulously cleaned with the drill mounted wire brush to ensure a solid weld free of contaminates. I then started to tack the panel on, adjusting the profile and gently massaging everything into line where required:

Built up my tacks until I had a solid welded area, except for the rear section which needed cutting back further to remove mangled steel. I will eventually fabricate a suitable infill piece (see first pic above for the initial signs of that):

Good penetration on the rear side. I have now found the sweet spot within the settings of my welder for butt welding these thin body panels:

I ground the welds back and was feeling pretty good! 

I then thought I would chuck the old rear wing on to assess the fit and marvel at my handiwork. This is when I realised the error of my ways - I should have done this before commencing the welding! Basically, the two captive nuts on the repair panel did not line up well with the wing - although the edge profile did flow nicely (something at least!). It appears to me that the repair panel is possibly sitting a fraction too low. However, I am not sure I trust that old wing as it could have been knocked out of shape from the rear end shunt the car is know to have had. Plus, in general the wing was looking pretty forlorn, so I really need to repeat the fitment test with a decent wing before I jumped to a firm conclusion.

I will leave this section as it is for now and revisit at a later date - possibly with a reciprocating saw and a diction of crass expletives!

Hecho en Mexico!

Fortune was on my side last week as I was able to get my grubby mitts on some genuine VW panels (made in Mexico) from a chap who lives less than a couple of miles from me:

They are in 'as new' condition, but have been in storage for some time as you can tell from the slight discolouration of the crossmembers. In fact, he mentioned he had been slowly collecting various Beetle panels for years for his own project, but these were now surplus to requirements. The front right quarter panel and left rear cross member are now discontinued, so they rarely pop up for resale. For once I was in the right place at the right time!

The rear crossmembers do not share exactly the same profile as the original mid-sixties type, but the steel is a lot thicker and pressings crisper compared to current reproductions on the market. I confident that they are going to fit without too much faffing around;

Authentic VW factory sticker still just about hanging in there:

I am really impressed with the front quarter. It is designed for '68 and later vehicles, but can be made to fit my '65 with a few adaptions to the bumper mounts, petrol tank support rail and of course the deletion of the fuel filler recess. Just got to source the other Mexi side now (thankfully still available from the usual stockists);

Feels good to have some virgin VW steel to use in this resto. The resulting finish wont be a 100% year accurate build, but as I am more concerned with strength and functionality I can live with a solid car that hits the 95% mark. Christmas has come early!