Body             Updated 3/3/99

The text below is in chronological order, I'll keep adding text as I make progress.

Here are some pictures of the body as it sits on October 28, 1998.  These are my first ever attempts at repairing sheet metal. So cut me some slack if the welds look a little sloppy. I'm on my third replacement panel, and getting the hang of it. By the time I've fixed all the holes, I'll have many hours experience with the MIG and want to go back and do it all over.

The first piece I tackled was the rear right wheelhouse, seen below.  The replacement piece was quite different from the original and difficult to position.  The welds don't look too pretty but are strong, and will be hidden by tar. On the inside are a dozen giant spotwelds.  I used one of the fenders for donor steel to make a couple patches in this area, too.  Another challenge here was that the replacement piece featured the chassis mount support flush with the bottom turned-under edge.  The original support extended down below the sheet metal about two inches.  If I positioned the sheet metal in the original position, the mount would be too low.  I finally positioned it by triangulation.  I measured the original parts' position relative to a mark on the floor and two other points on the chassis and then was carefull not to move the shell at all.  If possible, I would recommend doing this repair with the body still attached to the chassis.


Next I put in the replacement for the lower 5 inches of the rear right quarter panel.  This piece was tough because it included the bottom of the "b" pillar.  Better welding skills would have made for a more sightly repair....

A real problem was the area under the back seat and the rear luggage shelf.  Most of this was missing.  What's worse, when I finally decided to buy a new replacement, I found out that there weren't any left in the country.  I turned to RAMVA...the rec.autos.makers.vw.aircooled newsgroup and found a cool guy from way upstate New York who cut this entire area out of a "spare" beetle he had.  I rec'd it via UPS and commenced to spend about 24 hours sandblasting, tar scraping, adhesive wire-wheeling,patching up, etc. It was just about ready to go in when the boat load of beetle rear luggage shelves from ??? arrived at our shores/border and my five month old back-order was filled by Rocky Mountain Motorworks. When I saw how perfect this piece was I decided to use it.  The steel was actually thicker than what came out of the Super Beetle.  It was more accurate too, not having a couple of buttresses the SB part has.

While welding this piece in I learned the value of removing EVERY bit of everything not steel from the area to be welded. I used the wire wheel/electric drill to prep for this.  I plan to sandblast the whole shell when it's whole again.

12/1/98:  I picked up a 4.5" knotted wire wheel from Sears that screws right onto the arbor of my 4.5" angle grinder. This tough wire wheel spinning at 10K rpm sends tar flying. I stripped all the tar and most of the paint from one of the front wheelwells with this setup in about 1/2 hour.

12/6/98:  Time for a moment of truth--Rolled the chassis under the body and lowered the body on. Would the two come together? Well, almost.  As I anticipitated, there would be some adjustments to be made after this test.  Here's what it looked like...
 

Looks OK doesn't it?  Well, guess what?  After these pix I had to "unweld" most of the welds in the above right pic to re-align the firewall.  The mating surface was about 10mm forward of where it needed to be.  I also had to detach the left heater channel assembly and move it inboard about 5mm at the front.  This meant cutting through the piece I fabricated for the bottom of the A-pillar.  Bolt holes lined up well in two pix below.
I strongly suggest to any novice carrying out major replacements of panels with the body off to use light tack welds.  When you put the body back on and it doesn't line up perfectly, you'll be able to make amends without undoing a lot of welding.  With so much of this car gone, I found it necesary to separate body from pan--there were so few reference points left on the chassis sheet metal that I had nothing to gain by keeping the body on.  This was my thinking at the time. I don't know if the two days of work I spent aligning the body was made-up in the ease of access having the body off.  In any event, EVERY bolt hole now lines up.

1/10/99  This weekend I re-welded the left heater channel and firewall in their proper positions with most of the chassis to body bolts in place.  Had to re-make a patch for the left A-pillar. Also made a patch for the spot above the rear of the left heater channel. [insert picture]  Now I'm finally ahead of where I was a month ago. Only a few more patches left:  spare tire well, bottom of front left wheel well, and the area at the rear of the right heater channel.  I only have to make the last, the others I bought.
 

3/3/99  Its been a while since I updated these pages...
I've finished all the sheet metal replacement.  I ended putting in over a dozen pieces.  Spent a couple days grinding welds down and lowered the shell onto dollies.

After a solid day of "blasting from a bucket" and cleaning up the ensuing black grit that blankets the driveway and in turn the floors of our house, I decided to take a short cut. My 5HP 30 gallon compressor doesn't put out enough air to do a large surface area quickly.  I figured it would have taken me 10 solid days of blasting that would have been spread out over about six weeks.  Flash rust would no doubt set in to spots blasted weeks hence. I made a couple calls to body shops and found a guy who offered to blast the whole shell, doors, and lids for $375.  He would even applied a gallon of PPG self-etching primer I purchased for the occasion. Easy decision--spend the next two months picking grit out of my ears or let this guy do it in a day with a diesel powered 100+cfm compressor.

I borrowed a snowmobile trailer poste haste and within a week I had everything back safely in the garage looking like this:
 
 


 



3/3/99--As John Henry predicted, getting the whole thing blasted and in one color would be a real inspiration to work harder to finish the project.

So today I went for some polyester filler, glaze, and other painting supplies.  Next task is to apply filler thinly to a few seams and rough spots.  After that I plan to coat it with epoxy primer, then primer surfacer and lots of sanding, then PPG acrylic urethane.

4/11/99--Filler and glaze are on and sanded smooth. I used it in many places, but in no place thicker than ~1/8".  I had a couple small dents that, once pounded flat needed smoothing, and of course the seams weren't perfect so they needed a bit.  Some areas pitted by rust needed filling as well.

I've been doing a lot of remodeling on the house of late, and its been too cool in my garage to spray the epoxy primer.  In the mean time, I fitted a motor/fan setup in the garage window.  This will be blowing filtered fresh air in to the makeshift "spray booth" partitioned with sheets of plastic.  I had a problem with fumes when I painted the chassis--they wouldn't go away.  Now they will.
 
 
 
 

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