Dude’s 58 Ragtop Beetle

[flatfire]

Great effort Dude quality work 

[Deanodynosaurs]

Great effort Dude quality work 

Thanks dude! 

Was good to see you and the Mrs at EBI!

Dude 

[sonic]

Nice work !!,  and very useful to others .
Keep it up ..
Regards
Erich

[Deanodynosaurs]

Not much more progress to write home about!

However, a bit of a warning. Always make sure you got the correct safety gear on!

I was grinding and cutting on Friday night, and some dust/ grit bounced off my check and up under the safety glasses I was wearing. I thought nothing more of it until a day later when my eye started to really hurt. Anyway to cut a long story short I ended up having to go to casualty, and had 5 shards of steel picked out my eye with a needle!

Thus, I’ll be wearing goggles, rather than safety glasses from now on!

Dude 

[Deanodynosaurs]

Nice work !!,  and very useful to others .
Keep it up ..
Regards
Erich

Cheers Erich!

Comments like this keep me motivated!

Dude

[smurf67]

amazing work been following this on vzi also. look forward to seeing it finished. Alex

[kraftwerk]

Nice to see repairs done that keep as much German steel as possible, even if it takes twice as long!! Worth all the effort me thinks dude!! Keep it up!!
 
cheers
Lee

Kraftwerk

Custom, Speed & Resto

07889 178 638

Staffordshire, UK

[dubnut62]

Dude,

ouch.  Hope you are feeling better mate 

You'll be glad to hear that the '62 has rot around the screen in exactly the same spot as you repaired.  Barker did a good job on the repair piece for you.

George 

[Deanodynosaurs]

Dude,

ouch.  Hope you are feeling better mate 

You'll be glad to hear that the '62 has rot around the screen in exactly the same spot as you repaired.  Barker did a good job on the repair piece for you.

George 

Cheers mate, eyes slowly getting better!

Gutted about the notch window repair! 

Hopefully it will only be the outer skin. On mine we had to do the inner an outer! The outer was actually a hookys panel, and the inner Phil swaged into a bit of steel, and then bent it round using a shrinker stretcher (great tool!). The sketchy weldings all me! It took ages!

Hope all's well,

Dude 

[dubnut62]

Dude,

ouch.  Hope you are feeling better mate 

You'll be glad to hear that the '62 has rot around the screen in exactly the same spot as you repaired.  Barker did a good job on the repair piece for you.

George 

Cheers mate, eyes slowly getting better!

Gutted about the notch window repair! 

Hopefully it will only be the outer skin. On mine we had to do the inner an outer! The outer was actually a hookys panel, and the inner Phil swaged into a bit of steel, and then bent it round using a shrinker stretcher (great tool!). The sketchy weldings all me! It took ages!

Hope all's well,

Dude 

The notch is fine and dandy mate, its the '62 bug that has the rot 
I like Steve's method of media blasting the shell, shows up all that lovely free rot that you get from living on a cold damp island 
Posting on here is far easier and quicker than texting you, you reply within a day or so and not 3 weeks 
Hope your eye is nearly better and you are back in the garage.

George

[Deanodynosaurs]

Finally got a bit more done! 

After cleaning up the A post and front quarter with a cup brush I found a small hole on the inside and a larger one on the outside of the A post, as well as one hole at the front of the quarter. 

It was a close decisions as to whether to replace the whole A post, but in the end I decided to keep as much genuine steel as I could, and to just let some new steel in where the holes were.

Although it’s not a lot, it's taken me the best part of a week after work, but I was happy with the result in the end!

Dude 

Front quarter repair













Inner A post repair.









Outer A Post repair.


Here’s what I found when the A post was opened up!! 


However, it was soon cleaned up. 


And painted inside to stop the rot!








Anyway not loads, but a bit more progress!

Dude 

[Sam K]

Looks like some quality work! After looking at all of your pictures, I don't feel so scared of replacing the heater channel in my '63 this winter.

[Deanodynosaurs]

Haven’t had a chance to do much on the 58 recently.  However I did manage to find a spare weekend, and repair the passenger side heater channel. This side was actually a lot better than the drivers side as I didn't have to replace the bottom of the rear quarter! 

Anyway here’s what I had to start with.





Although these small rust holes probably could have been patched I thought it would be better to just do the whole side so that the rust wouldn’t be back in a few years time.







A repro panel was again used, and again it was modified to be exactly the same as per original (See the notches! Buffer heaven!  )







All that was left then was to weld her in!





I was pleased with how this went as I managed to keep the original bottom of the quarter with the half moon pressing!  Geeky I know, but I like it!





And finally a lick of paint! (Yes, I know its not dry! I was excited!)



Anyway I was pleased with how this went so I thought I’d share it with you all. Sorry if it a bit boring! 

Dude 

[67worshipper]

its not boring mate its resurrection

[danny gabbard]

Nice work guys, looks like that mountains about climbed. again nice work. and keep the pictures and progress coming.

[67pickup]

Great work and skills! This is so inspiring!
I've got a 59 ragtop outside my garage at moment, it's freezing cold now, but some day I hope I can put up a project thread here too. BTW - the welding is done on this, also prepped for use on the strip by Jee Racing. Need to get my hands on a complete 58-59 car with an ID, cause it's just a bare shell.
Keep the pics and comments coming!
brgds
Andy

[Deanodynosaurs]

Thanks all for the positive comments! It comments like these that keep me motivated to keep work on it! At times is can be difficult to keep motivation as the restoration is taking so long. But I think in the end it will be much better than just patching up and using loads of filler. 

67pickup - Get your ragtop project going dude and get a thread up on here! Sounds like you got much less work to do than I have, even despite the lack of chassis!

Dude

[58vw]

that is simply awesome work.....keep it up and cant wait to see the finished product.

[Deanodynosaurs]

Happy New Year Everyone!   

Haven’t got much done recently on the bug what with Christmas, New Years, Oh and getting engaged! (Cheers Nat, your a brave girl!)

However last week I managed to get a few days working on the bug despite the artic like conditions here in the UK (I had to actually scrape ice of a panel I was working on!) and managed to do a repair I've been dreading! The rear inner arch/ rear boot section. I was luck enough to actually find a panel that had been cut out of a car, so the work was much quicker compared to the other side. 

Anyway, Here’s what I started off with. 





Next up I began to cut away the rotten steel work, and prepare the panels to be welded too/ sealed up.







Here's how the donor panel sat. Not a bad fit. It good to have actuall genuine panels!



Time to weld it in and smooth the welds back.







Next up was the small repair on the boot floor. I don’t know anywhere that actually reproduces this panel so it had to be hand formed. However, I had to do the same repair on the other side and while I made that panel up I also did one for this side!







Finally I just had to repair the rear quarter where it meets the wing stud line. I used part of a repair panel, however it had to be reshaped a lot to actually get it to fit as well as it does.











Anyway that where I am to date! Sorry if I’ve bored everyone again! 

Dude 

[yvre]

Pics like that are never boring. I'm about to do the same repair on my car...

[vwcab]

It's nice to follow a "rust"oration with pictures.
Great work,and keep the pic's  posting 

[Trond Dahl]

The only thing boring is waiting for the thread to load due to photobucket images :-)
But good work on the restoration :-D

[Deanodynosaurs]

The only thing boring is waiting for the thread to load due to photobucket images :-)
But good work on the restoration :-D

LOL! It's a good job i didnt post the full series of 40 photos i took on the repair then! 

Cheers all for the posative comments! 

I'll do some more and post some pics once the ice age leaves the UK! 

Dude 

[stretch]

Looks ace Dude.

Its hard to appreciate all the work that goes into something like this when you see it in the flesh finished.  The before and after photo's really show how much work is involved in repairing something correctly.

Keep up the good work fella.

See you at club tonight.   

[Deanodynosaurs]

Looks ace Dude.

Its hard to appreciate all the work that goes into something like this when you see it in the flesh finished.  The before and after photo's really show how much work is involved in repairing something correctly.

Keep up the good work fella.

See you at club tonight.   

Cheers mate, really appreciated!

LOL! Your probably one of the few people who DOES appreciate all the work that goes into this. I spend ages boring you on the phone telling you about the new panel I formed/ welded/ shaped etc!! 

See ya later at club dude! (in the ghia?!  )

Dude 

[Jonny Grigg]

mate,

that is seriously impressive work. 

see you soon,

J.

[JamieL]

must-stop-making-babies-and-fixing-house-up-must-stop-making-babies-and-fixing-house-up-must-stop-making-babies-and-fixing-house-up-must-stop-making-babies-and-fixing-house-up

[Stoo the worm Simpson]

Hi Dude....the 58 is looking awesome...but for some reason the picture of wot u want it to look like when finished, looks rather familiar to me....!

[Deanodynosaurs]

Dude, You are my inspiration! 

No actually your car is genuinely a very big inspiration to me!

Dude 

What colour is yours painted by the way? Is it the same as Steve and Dellys?

[Deanodynosaurs]

P.S. More updates on the welding marathon soon. I been saving up a big chunk to put up all at once!

Dude