Aircooled VW South Africa

Well, some good progress has been made lately. Firstly my first shipment of those really lekker KlassicFab repair panels has arrived, despite the terrible rand/dollar exchange rate at the moment which really is a pain, but at least I still got a fair price from Gerson. Had a contact send it over as a gift too, no taxes......



In the process of welding in the reinforcing plates over the join in the chassis.



And now its rolling on all four wheels.

Since the pick-up was now rolling, I was able to get it outside and give it a decent clean with the high pressure jet to get all those years worth of dirt, sand, spiders and wasps nests out of there! What a mess.

Here’s all the main areas of concern that will be needing repair.











Two bin loads of dirt were removed from this fuel tank compartment, there was even plant life inside, but unfortunately because of this, this part of the floor is quite rusty, even the fuel tank has been rusted through.

Great work there Sean.

That there tank does not look too bad, my epoxy method will save the tank I am sure.

How many green panels will it take to close all the holes. ??

Herman

Here some of my donor panels.





Busy drilling out all the spot welds of the donor panel.


The replacement rear corner settling into place.


Same story as always with the front door hinge mountings. In the process of cutting and welding.



And I just couldn’t resist putting a few parts on to at least see it looking complete. The front doors are now fitted and working.



Soon it will be off to the sand blasters to have all that rust in those hard to reach places cleaned out.

Jolas decided to join today too. Obviously feeling the need to get started on his Fleetline pickup after 11 years...... Mmmmmm, think I still might finish earlier....



So he started cutting the rusty piece off, which ended up being the entire roof.



But at the end of today the replacement was ready to be fixed on.

Looks good Sean. It always helps when there's extra hands.

Amazing Sean, I wouldn't know where to even start but this is major heart surgery! Cool Job

Dude, takes a lot of courage to take on something that rotten, hats off to you.

Great job S3an. Making us proud

Sean....When you've got nothing to do then come work here !...for free !
looking ok. seen better.....no green man !!
what's with this donor stuff ?
Paul should be fixing his own buses not practising on yours !!

Loads of work has been happening lately, just haven’t had a huge amount of time to update, but here’s a few pictures.



After the rear wheel arch had been cut out and the replacement section ready to go in. The PO had cut this part up quite badly with a gas torch, so replacing the whole piece had made it easier.



Front nose. There was very little rust on the nose, only small little holes towards the bottom end of the V. I decided to cut this section out with the idea of just plating it, but after seeing what was inside, I ended up cutting the whole lower nose off. Just shows you what's hiding in some of these places that otherwise seem fine. Its very easy to get carried away with cutting these vrot pieces out, but glad I got to this.



Found this old number plate under all the dirt in the compartment under the front seats, possible its old registration. Will check on it when the time comes for licensing the bus.

Good work there boss, please keep the pic's coming, this gives all inspiration

Herman

Body work after sandblasting.

All the large flat panels were left alone for fear of the warping that happened on my other fleetline.
Its works very well, especially in all those hard to reach places and cleaning up all the area’s with rust. It is somewhat depressing though to see all the rust holes I thought was just surface. Unfortunately I'm in for a lot more work here...









Hopefully Paul can share a few more pictures of the work being done on the day. Paul spent the entire day at this sandblaster to make sure they are careful and not take any shortcuts on the job. Shot man!

You got any pictures of the sandblasting job underneath?

This poor guy had to blast the underside of the bus while working off the floor.

Some pics after I applied the primer. Paul and myself pulled many late hours to get these buses primered ASAP. Its one huge job to spray these buses inside and out. The underside takes especially long by having to get into all the wheel arches, chassis channels etc. The worst must have been climbing into the treasure chest area to spray inside the hard to reach area's. Man, you get gassed out doing that.

The primer is a marine grade epoxy 2 pack metal primer. Quite expensive stuff, but it covers well.

sean wrote:Body work after sandblasting.

All the large flat panels were left alone for fear of the warping that happened on my other fleetline.
Its works very well, especially in all those hard to reach places and cleaning up all the area’s with rust. It is somewhat depressing though to see all the rust holes I thought was just surface. Unfortunately I'm in for a lot more work here...

FORTUNATELY the world has some good guys in it, like you, saving these old ladies..
Great work, keep it up!