Windscreen corner and demister transplant

Since I first got the car there was always a distracting scab of bubbling paint creeping out from underneath the windscreen rubber. Inevitably, that bubbling later became exposed rust as the paint flaked away and finally an ever expanding hole! Annoyingly it was always directly in my eye-line when driving the car and was a stark visual reminder that my pride and joy was slowly rotting away before me. Repairing this offending section would be a symbolic victory against the rust fairies and their psychological taunts of the past!

The divers side corner looked bad from the top side: 

...and was not much prettier underneath:

It would require more than just the mating flanges replacing. My conclusion was that the entire demister section also needed replacing due to the amount of terminal corrosion that had taken hold. I debating with myself endlessly about the best cut lines before finally marking up the area up with masking tape and setting about the task. I have not seen this particular operation done before in other restorations, so it was a 'character building' step into the unknown for me and a real test of my developing skills:

I used the small Dremmel cutting discs to carefully and accurately cut of the section. An angle grinder would have been too aggressive and I felt it could have easily led to errors. So slowly I proceeded. Thankfully my educated guesswork paid off and I was able to lift out the rotten section, complete with integrated demister pipe, in one piece:

On the donor scuttle panel I rough cut the relevant section out so that I could prep it and later trim it down to an accurate fit:

After a session in the shot blast cabinet I had fresh unblemished steel. I was heartened to see just what great condition this section is in:

The only repair I needed to make was a angle grinder gash on the inlet pipe. I guess that the seller who originally chopped out the scuttle from the donor vehicle must have been cutting with haste and this part was a minor casualty. Nothing too serious though:

I filed the protrusions around the cut nice and flat. I then cleaned up a thin piece of copper and added a curve roughly the same as the contour of the pipe. I then inserted the copper backer and clamped it in place with mole grips:

I could then weld up the gap:

After dressing the weld and a quick blow-over in the shot blast cabinet it was looking like new again:

I spent some time carefully trimming up the repair section and repeatedly trial fitted. However, I was starting to feel a little frustrated at this point as I couldn't get the damn thing to line up right on both sides - so I have decided to split the section by drilling out the spot welds:

This allowed me to get a far better alignment on both sides of the dash rather than compromising. Before welding anything permanently into place I took the opportunity to shot blast the soon-to-be inaccessible areas, such as inside the window frame and the top of the door mounting reinforcement panel. Cleaning all this was actually a real pig of a job as it was tough to get the bulky shot blast gun into some of the areas with tricky angles. It was slow going and all I could do was my best, but it is certainly better than just leaving it:

I then added few coats of zinc primer to hopefully prevent any rust re-emerging:  

Starting with the inside section I got the best alignment I could paying particular attention to the contours of the dash.

I really took my time with the welding and started at the outlet end which I determined to be the end that was most critical to get right;

As I moved along the tapering flange section I was able to manipulate the steel slightly and adjust the fit. The occasional vertical slit was added as required to allow the shape to be altered more easily:

All welded and smoothed out and holes filled:

On to the front panel section and I once again started welding at the outlet / corner area before moving towards the centre to complete the weld:

Once the front was welded and smoothed I was just a case of closing the gap between the two sections and plug welding them together. I'm satisfied with the end result as there is virtually no indication of any work having been done;

Couldn't resist a before and after comparison;

Auf Wiedersehen heater channels!

With the car firmly braced up the time had come for some brutal surgery! I started with the rear crossmembers and marked the location of all the spot-welds ready for drilling out:

A few areas had small weld stitch welds about an inch or so long, these were ground back using the dremel tool as I did not want to over grind the area, which is easily done with an angle grinder:

The Y-piece heater tubes had small blobs of brazing on the top and underneath to join them to the inlets of the heater channels. I also ground these back:

After a while of having fun with the power tools, the old crusty panels came free with forceful wiggle:

The old and the new (yep, there was quite a bit of material missing from that outer edge!):

Getting the remains of the heater channels out was largely the same process. Locate and drill out spot welds:

Cut carefully around and just to the inside of the seam welds of the B pillars and hack through the A posts ( I didn't have to be so precise here as these will be replaced):

Out they come ...after some twisting, tugging and leverage from a big flat headed screwdriver:

Comparison of the old and the new:

Interesting little discovery - the outer skin of the passenger side heater channel had apparently been patched up in the past using a now obsolete 'Veng' repair panel. Sticker still intact on the inside, as seen through several layers of corrosion:

With both channels now out of the car it would've been rude not to have a quick test fit of the Klassic Fab replacements:

Still some minor adjustments to make in order to make them sit right; namely, the carpet retaining strips that sit along the bottom edges of the door apertures appear to be too far back and foul both of the B-pillars. Nothing that a little trim wont take care of though. On the whole I would say it is looking fresh!


Edit (27/02/2017): The marginally incorrect position of the carpet retaining strips were really bugging me, particularly as they cost a pretty penny to buy. Klassic Fab are know for their outstanding attention to detail and it seemed a shame that this was letting the overall quality down. I sent my feedback to the UK vendor of the channels who got in touch with Gerson over at KF on my behalf. This is an extract of the replies I received:

"We got an email back from Gerson and hes checked all the channels he has and they are all the same. Hes sold over 400 pairs but has been told this by 2 other customers so he is now aware of it. He said that he thinks people just cut the small part out or de-spot weld and re-spot weld the strip."

"thank you for your email, yes Gerson knows all about this now so he will make sure that these are right in the future."

Happy to hear that this minor issue will be addressed going forward. Klassic Fab are a real asset to the aircooled VW restoration community and I am reassured by the fact that they take customer feedback onboard to improve their products.

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!

Salvaging an engine bay side tray

The time has come for me to start getting serious with the shell. I decided to set to work on the drivers (right) side rear of the car, just because I had the best assess to this section in its current orientation. First job was to get rid of the incorrect bumper hanger that had been welded straight over the original:

Presumably when the original bumper mount had rotted out to the point where it was ineffective this later model repair panel was just slapped over the top. I will never understand why garages never seem to cut out the old rusty area first; patching over the top just becomes a hot spot for further corrosion to form and spread with vigour! I guess it comes down to saving time and doing the minimum possible to keep the car on the road for the short-term. After all, the previous owners were most likely just using the car as a cheap daily driver with no concept that it will one day be regarded as a cherished classic and subsequently undergo a major restoration. I remind myself not to judge them too harshly for not future proofing and opting for low cost repairs. I now regard these typical slap-dash patches as the 'standard practice' which kept the car roadworthy in the past and thus saved it from the scrapyard. To me they are like old scars from a previous hardworking life and their ubiquity doesn't really vex me as much as it used to...

Anyway, I ground off the welds and peeled off the nasty panel:

Next task was to remove the engine side tray located on the inside edge of the above rear quarter:

Removal would obviously enable me to recondition this part easier, but also give me better access to eventually repair the bumper hanger section correctly.

It is worth mentioning that the side tray on the other (L/H) side is not worth saving as it is completely buckled from a rear end shunt (which the original owner explained was caused by a mini sliding on an icy road and crashing into the back of poor Gretch!). As you may have noticed from the previous post, I have got a Hooky replacement tray for that side, which is so accurate that it will be near impossible to know the difference once it is in situ.

I hit the outer area with the drill mounted wire brush to locate the position of the engine bay spot welds and marked them up with a permanent marker (kind of hard to see in the picture below, but they are marked in red):

Having centre punched each of the spots I used my dedicated spot cutting drill bit so that I did not damage the lip of the engine tray behind, which I was trying to keep intact.There were also a few spot welds that I drilled out at the bottom of the firewall from behind:

After switching to the Dremmel tool to cut a few little additional weld blobs that were holding it in place, I managed to remove the side tray without any drama:

Rusty R/H tray compared to the new Hooky L/H tray:

I cleaned off the flaky loose crud and then shot blast the entire thing:

Needs a few repairs and flanges straightening, but it seems solid enough to reuse: