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!

Mirror image of last week's work

This week I focused my efforts on the right side of the car. I stripped the paint and rust off of the drivers side dash area, doorway and around the windscreen:

Then everything was given the standard 'once over' with the now ubiquitous red primer:

Just Another Victim

That is the 4th cheap-o drill destroyed thus far...

In other news, I have been progressing with the stripping and priming of the shell:

INSANE 4-door custom VW Bug!

You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

I have about half a dozen partially written blog posts sitting in draft form almost ready to publish, which pretty much mirrors the current state of the restoration; lots of partly finished things that I am slowly progressing without any big note-worthy leaps forward. Things are still cooking, but not in an easily definable way! There are a few factors that have slowed the pace down and these are my lame excuses in a nutshell:

• No access to MIG welder - since my garage neighbour has moved out I have been on the hunt for a suitable (and affordable) replacement machine. Unfortunately the old beast I was using has relocated with him!
• Too cold for paint - at the moment I cannot bare metal my components as the Mastic paint cannot properly cure in winter temperatures. Frustratingly I had a bunch of parts that I had already shot-blasted, but not put into paint and they have already started to rust again ....you live and learn!
• Life outside the garage - the past few months have been a blur of other conflicting activities demanding my attention. 

So to ease myself back into regular and structured emails I have decided to be a bit more 'bitesized' with my offerings. Basically, shorter posts more frequently. To kick off the New Year here is a little overview on door removal:

First up I removed the pin and detached the bump-stop-hinge-arm (for lack of technical name):

This can then be withdrawn through the cavity between the door skins:  

To detach the door hinges an impact driver is obviously pretty handy. However, there were some bolts that just would not budge (something that I have become accustomed throughout this project!). For the tough ones resorted to my old friend LEVERAGE! I fitted the impact driver attachment onto my breaker bar and slowly applied pressure. This got the stubborn buggers moving without any trouble:

With the six screw bolts out the door can be lifted off:

I then withdrew the door glass and disassembled the winder mechanism, handle unit and quarter light:

Both doors are now ready to be stripped of paint (and probably hidden filler!), repaired and panel beat back into shape.

More updates to come. Soon. Promise!

Vinegar, rinse, blast, paint, repeat...

After a lot of experimenting I have finally settled on a method for taking rusty components and transforming them back to good-as-new. It all starts a lot of vinegar, citric acid powder and a Bristol City council recycling bin:

I came across this method after reading through an amazing build thread over on Volkszone, so full credit to Andy Sweeney (aka: Last Triumph) for originally sharing this idea.  Basically, once the vinegar and citric powder have been mixed, you simply submerge the dirty components in the acid bath as they are, close up the bin lid and wait. Over the course of a week or so the solution dissolves the grease, dirt and much of the rust. 

A word of warning in case anyone reading is considering doing this; the vinegar bath should be used on components that do not have a structural purpose. This is due to potential embritllement, which could compromise the integrity of such parts. So, no suspension, steering boxes etc!

The results straight out of the bath are impressive... Here is a before shot:

After:

However, when I put a second batch of components in the vinegar solution I unintentionally left them in a bit too long (summer is full of distractions and tangents!). When I pulled them out I was baffled to find that they were covered in a stubborn residue like a coral reef:

I am unsure if this is the result of the sediment from the previous components that were cleaned or simply what happens when you leave metal parts submerged for too long. I guess another possibility is that the citric acid powder and vinegar somehow breaks down or alters over time?

Unexpected coral reef cultivation aside, the parts are then rinsed in water and any loose dirt is cleaned off with petrol and a toothbrush or wirebrush:

The parts then go into the blast cabinet and without that stubborn coating of several decades worth of accumulated crap encasing everything, it only takes a minimal amount of time before they are done. Not only does this process remove the last traces of rust, but also provides a perfect key to the surface ready for paint:

Its then a case of masking (if required), mixing up some Mastic 121 and painting it on using a regular brush:

Front Bulkhead and A-post’s bare all!

During the past week I have stripped back the foot-well and bulkhead area of the shell with the drill-mounted wire wheel:

My drill died about halfway through this task (the 3^rd drill casualty so far in this resto), so off I went to the large DIY chain store where I originally purchased it and exchanged it for a brand new one ….ahh, the system works ;-)

It should be noted that the doors have never been particularly well aligned on this car, especially the driver’s side. So, once the wire wheel had made short work of the thick filler layers, I was able to see what was truly going on with those feeble A-posts. The passenger’s side had been repaired in the past using a standard off-the-shelf repair panel, but it looks awkward and somewhat crooked: 

The driver’s side was just patched in a half-arsed way and completely lacks strength, which explains why the door would always drop a couple inches when opened! 

Luckily Hooky’s panel shop make top quality replacements, so I now have some on order along with a handy ‘Door Alignment Tool’, which will allow me to weld the lower door mounting brackets in perfect position. 

I then removed the remnants of the rotten heater channel that was attached to the front bulkhead using a mini grinding disc attached to the Draper Multi-tool: 

I then ground off the hideous repair patches from the other side of the bulkhead: 

I am not sure how much of this metal work will be kept or how much I will eventually cut out, so I may well be taking the long route by spending valuable time carefully removing these old repairs. However, I find it hard to visualise what needs doing and how things should fit back together with these rusty distractions in the way – so for me it feels like a necessary task...

News from the garage

My apologies for the small break in blog posts lately, I have been doing many little odd jobs in the garage and thought it would be most efficient to deliver a round-up post when I had enough news. So, here is a brief overview of the past month of activity....

My glamorous assistant has been dropping by occasionally to continue stripping the shell. Starting to make some real headway at the front end now:

Meanwhile I set about cutting out chunks of rusty bad metal from old repairs that I could no longer stand the sight of:

However, it has recently come to my attention that the front of the car has had a shunt in the past, as there is some buckling and creases along front quarter panels that were not part of the original factory pressings (hard to see from this photo, but it is quite blatant in real life):

I have a feeling that I will end up replacing the front quarter panels entirely, but as my experience and confidence in making these judgement calls is still lacking I shall make this decision at a later date. Even so, I decided to press on and began stripping the passengers side:

As the eagle-eyed of you may gather from the semi-outdoors shots of the shell above, I finally got the rear of the car up on casters! Again, I significantly shortened the width of it to maximise the overall space in the garage:

This one turned out to be more unstable than the front one with a quite a bit of lateral play, so I added some additional support for peace of mind. The shell can now be maneuvered in the garage by one person, however taking in it onto the often muddy terrain outside still requires the assistance of an extra willing person. I am happy though because, with the summer months approaching, I can simply roll the shell outside whenever I need to liberate a bit of workshop space! 

Oh, something I forgot to mention in my previous post; when I was inspecting the state of spare wheel well area I found evidence of an improvised repair using fibre-glass that I was able to pick off in small pieces using my fingers! I am now starting to desensitise to the all the lurking horrors and have accepted that it is all part of the fun of restoring an old car: