About my Beetle
This beetle project started with the purchase of a 1967 1500cc VW Beetle. The Beetle was in a very bad condition and needed major surgery to be revived to a new state of youth.
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Latest Comments
Nicholas Cremato (Volkswagen 1200 W…): I would like to buy the restoration videos for the VW bug. How do I do that I haven’t seen a link on …
bongani ndala (Volkswagen 1200 W…): hey there, i am looking for the wiring manual of a beetle. The one i have is still a 6 volt wiring, i…
rick (Buying a project): I just bought a 1969 beetle, for 1300.. it run’s, i can drive it to work every thing is ariginal it h…
Nathan (Main problem area…): I have a 71 super beetle, and from what i have read the area that Bill is talking about is a common r…
GWYLLYN HOYTE (How to Rebuild Yo…): Iwould like toget abook on how to recondition the VW BEATLE air cool engine as i am just trying to do…
James (Chassis zinc spra…): this is the best website I’ve found for pan removal/replacement, mine was rotted out about like yours…
27 07 15 - 21:03
With the bottom of the chassis and the frame-head finished, it's time to continue with the rest of the chassis. The back-end has the be sanded clean and the center has to be sandblasted and sanded. But first, let's take a look at the original state the chassis was in. I almost forgot how bad it looked. In the pictures below you can see the very first beginning.
It looks horrible, but everything is possible. Just keep the faith!! There is only one good method to tackle this much work, lots of TIME.
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26 07 15 - 20:12
Now the big hole in the frame head it ready, it's time to clean up the rest. There is (of course) a lot of rust. It looks like there has been a lot of water in this area. A lot of rust pits can be seen at the picture below.
The first thing I did was welding a few small holes (after sandblasting them). Next came a lot of sandblasting, grinding with the angle grinder and using a wire-brush. Here is the work in progress
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25 07 15 - 07:39
I mentioned before that the front of the chassis is in a bad shape. The Napoleons hat is rusting a lot around the master brake cylinder. After sanding and sandblasting the below damage is became visible. A lot of holes but the connection plate for the cylinder is still in good shape.
The best way to fix this is to buy a new hat and remove the old one completely. But I decided to cut a few corners and weld a patch over the holes. First I cut a template out of some cardboard.
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24 07 15 - 21:17
After the bottom of the frame head it was time to start on the rest of the chassis. First the bottom, than the top. The rest of the underside was in relative good condition. Just a lot of Schutz, mud, oil and grease. But that's much better than holes and rust.
I first used a chisel to remove the Schutz, than thinner to remove the oil and grease. Than it was time to get the sandblaster out to work. This resulted in the above shown nice bare metal. As you can see the edges along the center console are a little rusty with small corrosion holes..
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23 07 15 - 21:21
The frame head is in a very bad condition. If I want to do the perfect restoration I should completely replace it. Don't know exactly what happened to it. But I think it was exposed to a lot of rain for a long time. The previous owner has fixed some big holes, but the top of the bottom plate is covered with rust holes. I will try to clean the holes and then fix it with lead.
The bottom of the frame head is relatively good. Just some holes on one site (they propagated from the top).
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22 07 15 - 07:06
After testing the floor pan halves I started cleaning everything. First I used a wire brush with the angle grinder to remove most of the dirt and paint. With an orbital sander I removed almost all of the paint and rust. I removed the remaining rust with the sandblaster.
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16 05 08 - 13:04
Before removing all the rust and paint I decided to trail fit the floor pan halves. To my surprise it all fits very nice.
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01 05 08 - 11:59
I've been working on the body of the beetle for some time. And I neglected the chassis because it's in such a bad shape. But a great article in HotVWs which featured a pristine floorpan motivated me to get started. This is what it looked like when I picked it up!
The last thing I did with the floor pan is cut out the rusty floor pan halves. You can see the remaining metal of the floor pan halves which have to be removed before I can fit new ones.
To remove the spot welded remaining metal of the floor pan I used an air chisel. Sometimes you need a hammer to make some room for the air chisel, but when it gets started the spot welds are hacked loose before you know it.
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13 01 08 - 19:45
The right heater channel has been removed for some time now, today I removed the left one. The previous owner did some patchwelding to fix it a little bit. But I don't think those repairs are good enough.
These are pictures of it's previous state.
I made the first cut just before the B-post.
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22 11 07 - 19:28
Finally had the time to finish removing rust from the front apron. I removed the hood seal retainers, there was just to much corrosion beneath them. This is a before picture:
The dent beneath the apron is not too deep so a few taps with a hammer were enough to flatten it. A chisel and an anglegrinder were enough to remove the seal retainer. After the first major cleanup activities it looked like this:
Yes, still a lot to do.
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07 10 07 - 19:38
After I removed most of the paint and rust from the inner wheel house I haven't had the time to finish it with protective zinc spray. So here's what it looked like when I restarted whith the wheelhouse.
The black spots on the wheelhouse are the fender fastening nuts which had extensive corrosion. I treated the corrosion with Fertan chemical rust treatment. The be on the safeside I used my favorite sand blaster to remove as much rust and Fertan as possible. The is the result.
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26 07 07 - 07:49
I was not able to make a continuous weld when I inserted the repair patch. The path is welded in with spot welds about a centimeter apart. After welding and sanding I used my sandblaster to clean the metal. This is the finished result.
As you can see there is a seem between the old and new metal, this will be filled up with lead. What do you need? Sticks of lead, wooden paddle, heat source and solder paste. First you have to apply the solder paste, this is used for the thinning process and will be the adhesive layer for the lead. After applying the solder past you get the following result.
Looks quite nice, but now the hard part.
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