Fubar 64

[vwhelmot]

Cheers for the compliments!  The key is to enjoy what you are doing, the moment you start to get pissed off , just walk away!    So far I`ve really enjoyed it. The body is 90% done.  

The right rear wheel arch was a mess. I had repaired it previously with one of vengs finest panels and I knew that the only way to fix that was to try and get a genuine body cut. I eventually managed to get some cuts from the states but it took a long time. I was out of action for months on the rear corner so I did some other metal repairs on other sections of the car. I will post up those bits later.   Now when I got the box full of vw tin, I was happy and a bit disappointed too as the vendor failed to understand that I wanted all the flanges complete. Drilling spot welds did not happen, instead they were cut using an air chisel. Now the only bonus of that is that there is no lost metal as it wasn't cut using a grinder.

Rusty shit  







I was gutted to see that the flange had been cut on the boot floor  



Both the flanges were still attached to the rear arch though.

[vwhelmot]

It would have been rude not to use the an original flange 





Welded, smoothed and modified to look like the other side

[vwhelmot]

Fortunately the bottom flange was intact



I decided to remove the whole section.



Nice!





If in doubt!



I blasted it and protected it before tacking it in.



Fit was nice



Made a new overlap

[vwhelmot]

Next was to cut a huge hole out.  :shock:  Updates soon.

[Jeff68]

Very nice work to say the least....You're a dedicated hard working VW guy for sure! Keep going!

[vwhelmot]

So next I had to think about the best way of welding the flange back on to the boot floor. I ended up lining up the two panels and tacking them together to get the fitment right and then drill the spot welds out to separate them.







Separated, Why this wasn't done in the first place I will never know!









Blasted and the dents knocked out







The back of the boot floor had a tiny bit of rust under the seam sealer and as you know any rust is no good.





Offered up. Fitted nice.









Welding up the flange from the back



If you get decent penetration its sometimes easier to smooth the weld this way, but its thin metal and mistakes can be made. This takes hours.





Almost done







Trial fitting again.





Tacked in place but there was a problem



Lack of a gap as the welds had pulled it in.







I had to run a 1mm cutting disc through the line to create a gap.



No filler or bog









Layer of weld through primer to protect the metal for now





Underneath was fun







Slowly getting there



Next will be the rear arch. Happy days.

[vwhelmot]

Body went back on the pan so I could weld in the rear cross member.



Plugged in









Smoothed the plugs underneath





The rear arch arrived with a section missing so I had to fab up a replacement. I guessed how big the piece had to be for now as I wouldn't be able to get an accurate length until I tacked the whole arch in place first. Drilled out the spot too



The wing nutserts were wrong too



Fabricated a new section.










First trial fitting and it didn't look good. The bitch wasn't playing ball!



It took ages to fettle it into position.



Notice the rear and the gap even though it was hard up against the boot floor in sections



Getting there. Notice assortment of wing captive nutserts! This I would have to fix before welding the arch in.

[IMG]http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l242/vwhelmot/Fubar64/7AAAF113-

[vwhelmot]

To get the recess for the nutsert I made a press tool. I had sections of a front quarter to experiment with to get the size and shape right. First attempt the corners were too sharp so after I adjusted the tool it worked fine.



First attempt was wrong



Second try





I was worried about panel distortion but that turned out to be minimal.


Inside



This is a front quarter nutsert. I would silver solder the genuine nutserts in place. Silver solder has a low melting point and flows lovely so the weld would be invisible.  Now , I only had available enough genuine nuts to do the whole front of the car. The N/S front quarter needed the lot changing so for the rear I made my own.

You can just about see the weld between the nut and the surrounding metal





So for the rear it wasn't important what the nutsert looked like from the back as they are all hidden. I bought some square weld nuts and modified them on the lathe.









Experimented a few times but they turned out ok





Welded one in, took ages as I didn't want to damage the rear quarter with heat

[vwhelmot]

Next I could finish the lower section of the arch now I could gauge the length of the panel. An overlap was left to form a lip after.





I smoothed this weld up for an invisible repair



Every hole was welded up and smoothed



Fitted up








Tacked in





Checking levels



fat fingers

[vwhelmot]

Once I had tacked the arch in, I made a new inner lip.











 I needed to check fitment with the pan and for that I needed the outer support panel in place. As that had been cut too, I needed to replace the lower part so I used the left over veng section as a donor panel.
  See the size difference from genuine to pattern. It was quite a bit different. Not much of it lined up.





Getting into shape



After a load of work I had this



Created a new lip from scratch





Fitting up







On the pan 



Starting to weld the arch in







Hours and hours into this bitch!

[vwhelmot]

Getting a nice finish on both sides takes all the time.



No filler





Getting there

[vwhelmot]

Finishing off in a few areas. Made a new closing piece, which isn't exactly the same as factory but I like it anyway as it flows better.







Load of plug welding and finishing needed.

[vwhelmot]

Before and after 





Money shot

[jick]

amazing stuff dude!   

[Neil Davies]

Nice work! Be a shame to cover it in carpet... seriously tho, it shows how far standards have risen in the last 10 years or so. Beetles arent the cheap disposable cars they were. I hope the aftermarket realises that and produces some better repair panels. We've got Hooky and Autocraft, Wolf and Gerson for the early stuff, but I'd like to see companies like Veng and Klokkerholm just looking after their tools to produce decent quality panels in reasonable thickness steel. Anyway,  rant over! Please continue with putting my repairs to shame!

[vwhelmot]

I totally agree mate. I've found since starting the rebuild that there is a lack of decent repair panels for sixties bugs. There seems to be more available for earlier cars, even splits. I suppose it's a demand thing, maybe now as people are repairing sixties bugs to a nice standard the panel companies may take note and start offering correct pressings that not only fit but look right too. Easier said than done I suppose. I'm glad companies like hookys and virtanen , wolf and autocraft are about. I've tried to tell Steve Hook to look into cross members and boot floor edges as these are common rust areas.
PS, no carpet is covering my repairs , not even the front.

[vwhelmot]

Back to finishing the arch. Welded the support panel back on. Plenty of weld through between.

[vwhelmot]

The next section to get attention was the rear scuttle. I knew it was crusty from the last time so the only way forward was to cut it out and start over. Its a really tricky area to restore as access is limited to smooth the welds. Anyway here goes.

All is not well



Highlighting the spot welds for drilling



The inside wasn't pretty





Prob loads of show cars out there with rust here



I tried to clean the lip but it was very thin







Nasty



Cut out the old and made a new one.



Blasted the edges





Kept the dimples



Trimming it down



Done

[vwhelmot]

Finding a donor section wasn't too hard as there was one on egay.  There will always be a part of the Smooth Ass Lowrider in my bug. 



Chopped it up



I blasted it and straightened it.









Trial fitted



After a lot of fettling it fitted nice

[vwhelmot]

So while the scuttle was off I tackled this area. I converted it to standard style.



Smoother and neater



Other side. These areas were really tricky to clean the weld, really awkward job and getting my pinky stuck in the sander didn't help. Nice 45 degree chamfer though. Bit of insulation tape and carry on 

[vwhelmot]

Back onto the scuttle, before tacking it in I fitted the hinge mount panel just to make sure that it was in the right place.



Deck lid fitted ok.



Gap still needs adjusting



As the deck lid mount panel is still going to be a bolt on affair, I wanted it to look clean from the inside so instead of welding m6 nuts on the inside like last time I got some Henk nuts and pressed them on with my hydraulic press.



Neater









Tack time





Getting to the inside to smooth the weld was a bitch.

[vwhelmot]

Edge needed building up.







While I was there I tidied this bit





Other side







Welded and tidied up the seam too





Hinge mount tidied up.

[vwhelmot]

Done

[karl h]

so you are trying to impress us, huh? you know what - it works!
i did most of these areas a couple of times and it didnt remotley look as clean - stellar work, bud

[Iryanu]

This thread is off the hook. Kudos.

[vwhelmot]

Thanks for the comments.

Remember the crusty egay rear valence?   Well I thought about using it instead of my NOS one as I still want to convert it into a quick release panel and the thought of cutting up a genuine new one fills me with dread. I`m going down a different route with this and I`m going to try and make it release in two sections.




I blasted it first to see how bad it was . It was bent and twisted but not too badly pitted.



Edge had disappeared



Made a new one







old new and new old 







The inner panel was removed and modified with a few choice dimple holes. I had to rebuild the corners too.





I`ve still got to finish and figure out how I`m going to do this but I will make some quick release mounts so that the inner panel can be removed separately as not to scratch paint or have the fixings showing from the outside.

[vwhelmot]

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[vwhelmot]

One of the previous owners had fitted aluminium panels so I had to get rid of the nutserts and weld up the holes.

[vwhelmot]

Going back to the N/S rear wheel arch , where I had replaced the rear quarter panel previously , the original square nutserts had gone so I had to replicate them. Again this took hours and hours as I didn't want to warp the quarter panel with heat.
 Before



Made a new section.





Patented super tool











Another one



And another



No filler required

[vwhelmot]

Next I had to tackle the channels. As I had replaced them all those years ago I knew they were rot free but the wrong shape so I had to convert them to the early smooth style. Some of you may question why I did this and not just put in a pair of gerson ones but I had fitted these old ones correctly, the doors fitted nice so to me it was easier to modify these plus I'm getting rid of the heater vents at the front too so I would have had to modify the gerson ones too. I also had to get rid of the harness mounts I had welded to them too.



I had to cut a section out and replace it as I had indented this area for the harness mount.






Big section to cut out