Project: Front End Nose Repair

9/14/13 - Today we started working on the nose section, this area was rusted out pretty bad. When we started we found a CRAP load of bondo and some questionable repairs made by the previous owner.

As you can see, there is a ton of bondo we are trying to get through just to find metal.  We have a replacement piece to replace the area that is marked in the photo so we cut that area out first.

David cutting out the rusted area for our repair panel

Kind of looks like Lightning McQueen from Cars :)  The piece we cut out was just welded on over the previous rusted area, so the repair the previous owner made was pretty shoddy, and with all the bondo that they used, this repair just didn't hold up. The area to the right of the cutout was pretty rusted also, so we cut a piece from our donor car and the curve fit perfectly with a little tweaking.

Bill tacking our repair patch in

Repair patch tacked in.

Update: Driver's side kick panel 9/14/13

 9/14/13 - Finally! The drivers side kick panel is pretty much done.  We are pretty happy with the way it turned out considering we were just kind of winging it.  It may not look pretty but its solid!

9/7/13 - We got a lot done on the drivers side kick panel today.  It was our most rusted out area, most of the panel was gone so we did some creative fabrication using metal cut from our orange donor car.  We are repairing our car on a budget so we are not just buying every repair part that is made.  Many of our repairs are self fabricated so it may not look the best but it should be structurally sound and definitely cheap since we have all the body metal from our donor car to use.  Today we cut away the rest of the rusted area and the area where the screw holes were from the previous owners hack metal/fiberglass repair of the area.  We then cut some patch pieces from our donor and went to work trying to piece it all back together.  We also got the pan to body bracket welded into place.  All the pictures are on the drivers side kick panel post.

Update: Heater channel replacement

2" x 3" box channel (which is our replacement heater channel) finally tack welded into place

Project: Drivers side kick panel

Well we spent most of the day staring at this mess and trying to figure out what we are going to do with it.  After much deliberation, we may have come up with a plan.  It's probably not the way any car professional would fix it, but hey we are not car professionals.  It will call for some creative fabrication and welding skills. Stay tuned to see if our  plan works!

This is where we started.  The previous owner actually screwed in a piece of metal and then used fiberglass to attach it to the floor

Same area, view from the inside

Here we have cut away all the rusted areas and the area where the all the screw holes were

view of the cutaway area from the inside

This is the patch we welded in to replace the screw hole area and after we attached the new floor to body piece.  Of  course now we figured out our new box channel is about 1" too long, so we will just have to work around it on this side since its all welded in.  Lesson learned!

The bottom piece of the repair being dry fitted

Interior view of the dry fit

David smoothing out the bottom of our patch piece.  It has been tacked into place

Tacked into place, just need to go back and finish welding and seal all the seams

Interior view of repair

9/14/13 - Well I think we are almost finished with the kick panel, the exterior is done and the only thing we have to do is make a support piece for the interior

All welding done

Exterior done with seam sealer and por 15

Exterior done with seam sealer and por 15

Update: 8/14/13

Finally felt like we made some progress today.  We cleaned out some of the rust so we could see what we are dealing with.  We got all our braces in so we could start working on the heater channels, and cut out a lot of the old heater channel.  David got the new 3x2 box channel cut down to their workable size.  All the work today was productive, we could actually see what we need to do and it all seemed to make sense now.  So hopefully we can start making some headway.  Pictures of what we accomplished today in the project heater channel replacement post.

Project: Heater channel replacement

Okay, this is where things get a little ugly.  The original heater channels are shot.  They were a poor design to start with and a fairly common issue with Volkswagons.  Heater channel replacement parts for a Karmann Ghia run in the area of $300-$350 per side!  So after a lot of internet research and considerable time on thesamba.com we have decided to replace the current channels with 2"x3"x3/16" box channel.  We really are not 100% sure what we are doing but I guess with a plasma cutter and a welder we can fabricate or remove anything we come across.  But if it works, the total cost of the box channel (and the braces needed to reinforce the doors) came to a total of $73.  So, its around 1/10th the price and hopefully be a much stronger fix.

Ugh! this is where we have to start, it's pretty ugly and we are still coming up with a game plan on how we are going to tackle it

Passenger door braced prior to cutting out old heater channel 8/10/13

View of front left wheel well. Note holes where the previous owner just screwed a piece of metal on the existing  wall and then fiberglassed the floor to the body on the inside.  8/14/13

Front left where we need to fabricate some metal and install the new floor pan to body piece.  8/14/13

Existing rusted heater channel on the drivers side door frame.  8/14/13

Add caption

8/14/13

8/14/13

Most of the heater channel cut out and part of the rear quarter panel where we removed a portion that was rusted.  8/14/13

8/14/13

8/24/13  Today we finally got the drivers side box channel tack welded in, Since we are basically winging this project there was a lot of idea tossing around.  We finally decided to lower the body back onto the frame so that we could try to line things up.  Pretty happy finally getting this part done so that we can start building around it and getting onto the body panel work

Project: Shaving the gas filler door

So, everyone in the shop decided that it would look sleeker to do away with the gas filler door.  They also want to shave the door handles, rain gutters and god knows what else.  So, obviously you can figure out by now that we are not going for an original restoration. 

1st go round ready for grinding

Ok, I think this is finally done!

Project: Deconstruction

So, originally we were just going  to get this car, bring it home, do a little here..a little there.  But since we had to take the body off the most popular phrase was "well since we have the body off, we should just do it".  And so here we are.

David in the engine compartment

Bill taking his turn in the engine compartment

Finally, nobody in the engine compartment

Body stripped and ready to start repairs

Stripped and on the handy dandy roll around cart that the guys built to move the body around

See through view

360 degree view of deconstruction

Project: Front Axle Beam

Front Axle beam was in pretty bad shape and had a significant amount of rust on the bottom.  Luckily, our donor car's front in was in pretty good condition so David removed the entire front end from our donor 74.

Front axle beam from the 74 before we blasted it



After  media blasting

After cleaning and some POR 15

Another view after POR 15

Project: Floor Pans

Removing Body from chassis to get at the floor pans

Passenger's side floor pan cut out and as you can see, the drivers side has a large defect just behind the seat rails

Side view of the passenger side floor pan cut off.  Special thanks to the guys at MBD  Automotive for allowing us access to their shop and equipment, the plasma cutter made this project go a whole lot faster and easier!

New floor pan measured out and ready for the plasma cutter

New floor pan dry fitted in, just need to make a few minor adjustments

Both pans completed and welded in.  Both seat rails were removed from the original pans and cleaned up and welded back on the floor pans.  We actually moved them back 3" due to the fact that I am 6'2" and any extra room is a bonus.