Fubar 64

[vwhelmot]

So then it was a case of welding up all the holes made when I had drilled out the spot welds on the cross member, and generally prepping the panel for its new home.





Drilling holes in my newly repaired firewall wasn't nice



I also made a new dimple in the modified section to even things out





Left my mark before welding it on.







Even weld through primer sometimes needs to be scratch off for the best results





Seam welded on to







Seam tidied up

[Lids]

two questions:

1 - what weld through primer are you using

2 - how are you finishing the welds?  What type of sander is it etc

[vwhelmot]

Upol weld 2

I linish the weld with a 1" belt sander and then use a random orb sander.  All of my tools are Makita.  I know them inside and out.

[vwhelmot]

So next on the list was to sort the crumpled pressing on the right channel, so I cut out the section and welded in a new one.



Sorted





Onwards to the lower front quarter. Now the Virtanen panel I bought is a good pressing but there was a few differences as it was for an oval , so I modified it to the later sixties spec.  I cut the end off completely and grafted on a genuine section I had, so that it lined up perfectly







I had to be very careful to get the measurement and cut right





Right shape and thickness



Nutsert started like this, wrong for my car.





Super Tool 





Genuine nutsert





Silver soldered in







The bottom didn't flow properly either so I added some metal



Matched from the other side



I needed to trim it down after this shot

[vwhelmot]

As I wanted a nice invisible repair both inside and out I knew there would be an issue with metal thickness and I was right. Over the years of abuse, rust, blasting, scraping etc the inner quarter had gone thin, it starter from the factory as around 1mm sheet and mine was on average .7mm





Again welding thick to thin does not work especially if you want a nice finish on the inside too. The new repair panel was 1mm



I thought about this problem for a while, what could I do.....?
The only way around it and I know this sounds crazy but I had to make my new panel thinner, so I put it on the linisher ( basically an upside down 4"belt sander) . You can see where I sanded the whole side down.



Got it down to a nice even .73mm

[vwhelmot]

I epoxy primed the inner door pillar first like the other side





Spent a long time panel prepping



Then started the welding











All the spot welds are just temp plugged for now but the main join is getting there. This took an age.





Inside nearly done



Bare metal





Much nicer than before



No filler





Getting to the inside here was hard





Happy days  

[mychatype3]

Wouw insane metalwork, love it

[Neil Davies]

Those virtanen panels look nice - i remember when the Veng panels had that full closing piece in for the bottom of the quarter panel - now it's just a slot! Great work as always.

[vwhelmot]

Ha, veng stuff is so shit, none of it fits right!

To get away from the welding etc here is some of the other stuff I`ve been doing . All the bolt on panels have had their own various issues, the wings that were on the car when I bought it back were Day moulding ones. They are great quality and I was going to reuse them and had thoughts about getting the insides gel coated too but for a show car fiberglass doesn't cut it.  Finding a nice set of original wings is getting harder, especially the fronts.  I got a pair off a well known person in the vw scene, they are slightly earlier ones so the indicator holes are wrong for my year but I am going to fill those in anyway and run us spec headlamps. They needed quite a bit of straightening, some of the dents were very difficult to get out but after a lot of beating they are good now.







I had to heat this area up to get it straight



It split



After welding etc



I was not 100% sure if the bonnet on the car was original vw , it fitted ok but I had a nagging doubt that it wasn't so I did a deal with the same well known vw person for my old day wings and bonnet for the two fronts and a genuine bonnet.  We arranged to meet one weekend to exchange the panels but when he turned up with the bonnet I was a bit cheesed. He actually turned up with two , one was peppered with stone chips . had some splits here and there , some dents too and there was this one 





So I bought both       This rusty one had been previously blasted and for some reason just left with no primer or protection whatsoever. Running my hand over it there is no dents and no splits or cracks, just rust.  I was confident I could get it back so to start I ran a DA sander over it first , just to get the worst off.



The trim holes had been welded and leaded. I will put the holes back in.



Outside for a bit of rust removal 





Other bonnet which maybe for sale soon !



No substitute for blasting



This is the ex rusty one







Other one came up good too



Underseal took an age to scrape off











Came up nice

[vwhelmot]

[vwhelmot]

The wings like I said had numerous issues, dents and bent etc. Took a week off to massage them out

Doesn't look bad here but it was out of shape



Large area misshapen





Came out nice









Showing the high and low spots on the same wing







Almost there

[vwhelmot]

Other side had more issues



You cant see it but the whole lip wing edge had been pushed in and was out of shape





Difficult to get straight







Top had a crease



It had stretched too so I had to shrink it with heat







After shrinking and a quick layer of primer to check

[vwhelmot]

Getting rid of some of the factory pressing marks. Suppose I could have used a bit of filler here but that aint my style







Still work to do on this wing, the mounting flange needs welding etc

[vwhelmot]

The passenger door that was on the car turned into a bit of an issue. After blasting it looked ok to start of but at closer inspection the skin had stretched and was out of shape and I knew that without many many hours of work it still wouldn't be ok to use. I had worked on the door previously, it was a rust free cali door but was bent when I got it and I remember I had to cut the window frame to straighten it. Maybe the whole door was under tension or something and the blasting process compounded the fault causing metal the stress relieve maybe.  

Looked Straight



Being that its a 65 model, these doors are pretty rare in that they only made them for two years so finding another one was going to be a prob.   Luckily FBI had one advertised on evilbay so I bought it now !  It looked on the advert to be a really nice one until it arrived.........



It looked like it had been driven over with a forklift truck or something.  



I was gutted

[vwhelmot]

I knew I would get nowhere with the courier company but fbi sorted me out with a discount fairplay, fantastic service.   I knew the corner had had a big sqeeze and there was no way of straightening the inner panel so the only way to fix it was to cut it out.

I had another scrap door for the section I needed



Drilled out the spot welds





The reason why most doors rot from the corner is this lump of sealant that they used. Its just a water trap.





Blasted



Fortunately the skin was undamaged and when I removed the damaged inner section , the outer pretty much sprung back into shape



Tacked







Lined up correctly



















I was extra careful blasting this one!

[Lids]

I love this thread. Where did you get those mini adjustable jaws

[vwhelmot]

Thanks lids

Here
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=121486566962&globalID=EBAY-GB

[Lids]

Thanks lids

Here
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=121486566962&globalID=EBAY-GB

thank you, just ordered some

[Mirco Jufer]

Awesome Work!! Love It

[leec]

Great work on that door. Will you work on other people's cars?

[vwhelmot]

Been thinking about doing other work when this is finished, but would have to travel to North Wales, suppose it's not the end of the world! I Would have to call it Custom Creams too. 
Thanks for the compliments by the way.   

[vwhelmot]

Onto the front and again it was a proper mix of wrong shape panels and modifications. I`m replacing the front beam for one that doesn't need body mods so I could get rid of my previous cycle chain guards ! 

It seemed a good idea at the time to modify the bodywork instead of the suspension 



Finding the correct replacement front clip sides would prove to be a bit of a problem. I placed various wanted ads on some sites and had a few replies. Some folk on the Samba wanted to charge me up to $1000 to ship the two side panels to the UK  but fortunately I came up trumps with a near side one on VZI and then a while later Alex Taylor from Defcon3 sorted me out with both front panels off a UK car.   All three panels needed work so I chose the best and took it from there.

Super cycle fenders



Lovely spot of welding



Drilling out

[vwhelmot]

I blasted the panels and drilled out the tank support and bumper mounts etc as I knew there would be rust behind them. I was right, bet there are plenty of show cars out there with rust behind here 



It was pretty straight but thin in places. This is the UK one



Nice on the outside....



Shit on the inside

[vwhelmot]

More



Its strange but there are two captive nuts that are different than the rest. Its more square for some reason. I had a couple spare.





Silver soldering it back on





Lower one



Had your horn mount off recently? 



This is the near side Californian panel. It was in good shape





I cut the front off and quickly offered up the replacement





It lined up nice



Wing on to check



Everything was good

[vwhelmot]

What was left of the original tank support was removed



Plenty of rust





Blasted clean





The UK panel was holed and thin so I had to replace various sections. I cut the repo panel up and used that as donor panels.





Super tool







Matching up to the cali side





Welded on



W

[vwhelmot]

I offered up the new tank support which I modified a bit by adding some dimpled holes for that custom touch.





This was encouraging, the spot weld holes all lined up

[vwhelmot]

The UK panel needed more work



I used the old panel as a donor







Neater than factory. This area is always crumpled from the factory

[vwhelmot]

There was also a section which was thin so I cut that out too . I had to make a buck to form the panel in one piece.













Cleaned up the inside more.





Almost ready to start attaching the front on for good





Tacked





Kept a check on this











So much time welding this on and being extra careful with dressing the welds after















No filler

[vwhelmot]

After welding the tank support on I trimmed the lip so that it flowed straight











Cheeky pic through the glove box

[vwhelmot]

Onto the other side and I knew this was going to be more of a challenge as mixing a new style quarter with an old front would be difficult to get to look right. There was numerous differences.

In the pic you can see I had to add a piece to the new front as it had been previously cut short.





Notice too the scorch mark, this is where I had to heat up the metal to get rid of the bulge pressing for the twin brake master cylinder feed pipes to pass between the tank and the quarter. This took quite a while to get right as the metal wasn't playing ball to start off with.



Like I thought , this side was proving to be a pain 
 






See if you can spot the other problem