Aircooled VW South Africa

Thought I would post some pics of my fleetline I have been restoring for the last 4 years.
This project really was a lot to take on. There was just so much rust, and a lot of structural rot as well. The roof, gutters, front doors, cargo doors and the front windows were in really bad shape, the cargo doors frames were completely rotten, front door hinges were rusted off and the roof was full of holes along the gutters. It must have had more than 100 dents all over too. I think it was perhaps involved in a front end accident at a time as the front end has been welded on/joined half way up the pillars and tho one front door lined up so bad that when the hinges were attached the door lock was about 2cm away from the catch.

But anyway, here are the first few pics of when I bought it.

That is a lot of work

Here are some pics after I had it sand blasted, this was definitely a very bad idea. It cleaned all old rust and body filler off, but was very hard on it and left most of the panels warped. I think it would have been a lot better to just have blasted all those hard to reach area's and have rather sanded all the larger panels.





In this photo you can really see how many rust holes were in the roof.




Final preparation before spraying with primer.

Pics after primer was applied.


Note how full of dents the front is.

Some pics of the metal work in progress. These were doors off another bus that were in better condition than the original ones but still needed a fair amount of work. The one original cargo door the previous owner had welded it to the body and attached a normal house door lock to other on. All the correct original parts were their, so I have no idea why someone could such a terrible thing. The lip between the two doors was also cut away by the previous owner. So these doors were a huge amount better than the ones I had.






That sill under the doors I had to completely re fabricate as it was completely rotten inside it. There was almost no signs of rust on the outside though.

Pics of how it looks at the moment. More than 20kg of body filler, 25 liters of paint, probably 60 -70 meters of sand paper and most of my welding coil depleted later it is in the final body stage before fine finishing and spray painting. I still have an issue with those front doors that do not lining up straight which I must also spend more time on.

Unfortunately it has stayed in that place since the beginning f the year. I am hoping to make some more progress in December. In the meantime I have been searching and accumulating spares for it while not working on the body.






Hopefully I can post some more progress pictures soon!!

Looks a million times better now! Well done

great to see someone putting the work in on a fleetline.. nice one

Way to go Sean

A lot of people walked away from that bus, including myself

CHECK OUT THE TRICK PHOTOGRAFY
Lambo door,

Wow great job,
Cant wait to see the finished result !!

Hi, what tig welder did you use?

Wow good job man ! I applaud your effort i KNOW i would have walked away from that so well done man !

20kg of body filler and a 50cm bicep, looking better already,keep it up

louisvr45 wrote:Hi, what tig welder did you use?

I didn't use a tig, I have a mig welder. I had to be very careful as if I welded for too long it would burn holes, even on a very low setting. I used thicker steel for the repair panels and focused the weld more on those than the original steel which burns wholes very easily.