Brace yourselves!

In preparation for the major bodywork surgery that is required to the bottom portion of the car, I decided it would be wise to upgrade the temporary bracing that was currently held in place with self tapping screws. I opted to add turnbuckles to the middle of the door apertures to allow for fine adjustment of the door gaps when the time finally comes to weld the new heater channels in place.

I took a trip across town to the steel merchants to buy some fresh 40 x 40 angle iron (3mm thick) and also picked up some M12 turnbuckles (I originally purchased some M10 turnbuckles online, but they felt a little flimsy for the task at hand):

After an hour of faffing I produced these little beauties:

Dry fitted to the car so that tweaks to final positioning could be made:

Welding the bracing to the body was a bit of a concern as too much heat would cause warpage to surrounding bodywork and too little would ....well, lets just say that there would be no point in adding the bracing if the welds were that weak. I practiced on some scrap steel and played with the MIG settings until I had found a happy medium.

With all the joining surfaces cleaned back to gleaming steel, I started adding a series of strong tacks. I then added cross support bracing to ensure that everything was robust and firm. This was the grand result:

Thanks to Stu_b over on the Volkszone forum for his input and for sharing photos of his bracing arrangement (which I pretty much carbon copied here!).

Now the real work can begin!

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!

Rear valance removal

To start proper repair work on my bumper hangers I needed to detach the rear valance/apron. To begin with I removed the (incorrect) patch panel that had been welded over the top of the original (same old story as before!):

I then removed the buckled engine tray on the passenger side (L/H):

Removing the rear valance basically involves locating and drilling out all the factory spot welds. There are quite a few down the side lips. Most need drilling, but a few had already broken off, having weakened from corrosion:

A few more spot welds inside the engine bay on the upper protruding taps and down the inner flange: 

I then needed to grind a couple of small solid welds on the top edge of the lip:

Same procedure on the other side as you would expect:

And away it comes:

The valance hasn't faired well. The left hand side of the outer skin is misshapen from the rear end shunt (although this doesn't really show in the photos, but it is very obvious in real life). Additionally, the inner reinforcement section has a lot of corrosion and rust holes. It would take a lot of work to get this section anywhere near good again:

I will keep hold of it for reference, but ultimately replace it with a high quality BBT reproduction.

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:

More Hooky's panels!

Some fresh new Hooky's panels have just landed on my doorstep, so it's time for me to really get going on the major shell repairs:

• Engine Bay Side Tray
• Rear Bumper Mount (LH)
• Rear Bumper Mount (RH)

As I have no doubt mentioned before, the quality of Steve Hook's panels are outstanding! If only he made every body component that I will need to complete this resto...

Quickie: First welds on the shell

After the epic progress of the last post, the pace has slowed slightly in the garage. Whilst the paint cures on the chassis and it is too cold and damp now to paint the associated ancillaries, I have turned my attention to sorting out the shell. However, my approach to this is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of the restoration. I have been researching the best strategy based on the experience of others and have been drafting a workflow diagram in an attempt to get my repairs in a logic order. I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a daunting prospect of this phase of the project. Intimidated, but excited!

To ease myself back into the swing of things I started by making some very minor cosmetic repairs to the dash section. Thankfully the shell uses largely the same gauge steel throughout so this gave me the opportunity to fine-tune the settings on the welder, which will be a good starting point for everything that follows. As you can see, at the bottom of the aperture for the radio blanking plate there were two holes that had been drilled by the PO, presumably to accommodate additional switches; 

Repairing this was a simple case of cutting a small circles of steel to sit within the holes. Here is one of my tiny patches clamped into position;

I then welded all the way around. It is important to note that I added just one spot at a time and let the steel cool down completely before adding the next. This was to mitigate heat build up that could lead to warpage;

Carefully ground down and linished to form an invisible repair;

Once the other side received the same treatment I sprayed some primer over the area to give a little protection. As they say around these parts "Jobs a good'n!"