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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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This will be my first attempt of welding on the beetle. On the front right you can see quite a large hole. The hole is probably caused by water in the sparewheel well.
Here you can see the cleaned hole.
Next it's time to cut a piece of metal to fit the hole. You have to make a step in the metal so you can make an invisible lap joint.
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Sometimes I am wondering what people were thinking when they fixed this beetle. On the front side panel I discovered a strange repair panel which seems to have been welded over the rusted part of the bumper mount.This is what it looked like:
So kan see that the panel isn't completely solid welded to the front panel, the gap indicates potential rust. And indeed there is:
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Must admit that I have had little time for my beetle the last couple of month. In 30 days we are expecting kid # 2. So that's going to take up a lot of time.
Last week I had time to finish the luggage shelf. Almost al the rust was removed with the sand blaster and the remaining rust treated with Fertan (chemical rust remover). This is what it looked when I started. And with the Fertan treatment.
This is the first result. Completely sprayed with Zinc spray. Needles to say that I still have to weld in the new parts.
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The last weeks have been very busy with everything but my beetle. Yesterday I couldn't resist the itching anymore; I had to do something for my beetle.
The front of the beetle is what got my attention. The spare wheel well has to be replaced and the bumper mounts are attached to very week metal. First I cut the wheel well out with the reciprocal saw. This resulted in this nice hole.
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The front right inner wheelhouse was covered with a thick layer of undercoating, rust and mud. I first tried to remove the undercoating with a wire brush. But due to the heat generated by the friction it al became one big mess. What worked fine was using a putty-knife to cut big pieces from the hard undercoating. You will damage the paint underneath the schutz in the process.
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The cross connection under the right rear seat is in poor condition, especially the part which connects to the heater channel and the innner wheel arch. So it has to be cut away.
First all spot welds which connects the cross connection to the luggage shelf have to be drilled out.
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Like on most classic Volkswagen Beetles both heater channels have to be replaced. I started with the right heater channel.
First you have to take precautions to prevent the body from deforming after you cut away the heater channel. I decided to weld a steel pipe in the door frame.
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The luggage shelf is one of the most rusted parts of the beetle. I started derusting with a wire-brush to remove surface corrosion, paint and dirt. This is what the shelf looked like when I started:
My strategy on removing the rust was: first use a wire-brush, second use a random orbit sander, third use the sand blaster, fourth use a chemical rust desolver (Fertan) and last spraypaint with zinc spray.
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The body shell is very much work as you have seen in the previous posts. Just to make some progress I decided to take on the chassis, which has been stored in the back yard for some time. At first glance it looks just as bad as the rest of the car, but looks can be deceiving. Underneath the under seal there is some nice (rust free) metal left.
This is what the chassis looked like in the last couple of months.
After removing the green plastic I could see what the rain has done to the remainder of the floor pans.
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On the left of the car are some strange repairs. I still haven't figured out what happened to the car. On the roof next to the rear window you can see two welds. There is also a large dent which would suggest that there has been an accident. But what kind?
If we proceed to the inside we see more strange repairs. The complete inner panel seems to be replaced.
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The beetle is now in the workshop where I can start sanding and sandblasting. To examine the extend of rust I started with basic sanding of a few suspect places. Fortunately not many big holes emerged after grinding with an angle grinder.
It's not a very good picture, but this is a very weak spot.
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Let's focus on the main problem areas. The most worrying damage is left from the rear window. I suspect that the beetle hit something while driving backwards (or it has rolled over, but than I would expect more damage to the roof). The arrow points to trouble.
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After transportation of the beetle to my place I stored it in the back yard. First I had to make a plan how to restore this beetle.
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The rear suspension was (primitively) fixed on the left side. The right site however is one big hole!!!
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After close inspection of the beetle one thing came to my mind, THAT'S A LOT OF RUST!!!!
All the classic rust area's were in poor condition. The heaterchannels were poorly repared, the luggage shelf was covered in a thick layer of rust, the spare wheel well was rusted through, etc. etc.
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How the project started:
After I moved from Rotterdam to a small village in the south of the Netherlands the opportunity arose to start-up an old hobby: restoration of VW Beetles!! Not the expensive nice ones but the old rusty ones. After some nosing around on the Internet I found a nice project.
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