'66 Deluxe

[slayer]

Thanks for all the pics, I feel like I am right there with you.!! OUCH on the wire under the thumb!! That kinda stuff happens to me when I drink beer and work on the bus.

[vw7266]

Id be tempted to repair that corner...rather than cutting it off and putting one on.

but you're doin it right by gettin a new one prolly

[Ron]

There was a mudflap screwed here with 3 sheetmetal screws. Is that OEM?

The VW mudflaps on my bus have a bracket that hooks under rear bumper bracket and frame and 2 pieces of metal that clamp the other end of bracket on lip of rear corner. No screws through body.

[rokemester]

Looking GREAT Bruce! Glad to see you're getting it prepped for the radio

[Dual Port]

I drilled out all of the spot welds holding the old battery tray in, luckily I did not drill through or damage the outer skin.


Nice clean removal, eh?

From underneath, not showing much rot.

You might not be able to tell from this picture, but I spent considerable time working the ripples and dents out of the RR corner where it had been "bumped" several times. There was also some unidentifiable holes from "accessories" I migged in.

I'm really quite happy with how today went, looking good.

I fit the new battery tray and it fits well. Looks nice uh?


Came home tonight to find Santa UPS had dropped off a big box of bus parts. Yahoo!

[WideFive]

Did Sean give you some photography tips on Sat. or what?

[Six Volt]

Hey! I want my camera back!

[Dual Port]

As you can see, there's surprisingly little rot in the back of this bus. It doesn't look like much was done in the pics, but I straightened a lot of very old ripples out from the taillight area, lower corner, and welded one big f'ing access hole up that someone had siliconed, mudded, and painted over! It takes quite a while to do crap like this, I'm glad I'm not working flatrate. Even drilling the spotwelds without disturbing good metal requires patience and care, both of which I'm short on. I will be cutting the lower curved section out and replacing it, but I thought it would be good workmanship to straighten it first before removal. A butcher (me, sometimes) would just FG that panel, mud it, ship it, and nobody would know the difference. The cheapie battery tray fits just fine after typical "massaging" but I'm not going to weld it in for a while. The area under the side vents near the vertical seam is pushed in 1/4"-3/8" from an old injury and I want that completed before committing to the battery tray.

I assume that big hole in the lower panel is for a bumper bolt? There's a matching one in the left rear. What's the strange tiny little rubber "plug" for in the lower panel?

[tferr]

Hey Bruce nice work. The corner looks great. If you ever get a chance to try one of these "The Amazing Shrink Disk" by Wray Schelin http://www.hubgarage.com/classifieds/803
Try it it was the best purchase I ever made for working high crowned panels like corners or beetle fenders.
Thanks for sharing this build

[Dual Port]

I had a great couple of days, getting more accomplished than any other short period of time since I got the bus. I started by putting the latches and rods in the doors and finding that the lower rods I have were pretty rotted from age.



The good thing about all of the extra doors I received is that I have an excess of lock rods.

I took some extra rods that were too long, shortened them, heated them, rebent them, and cut new tips on them.
One of the "new" rods is on the left.


The forward cargo door latch is easy to lube, but the rearward door latch is difficult to get spray lube into, so I drilled a small access hole to put lube through. Now all latches and rods work as smooth as new. The upper latch is junk, you can see the small hole I drilled towards the right of the lower latch.



The big accomplishment was getting my rockers from ECC and finding them to fit very nicely. Everything went so smoothly that they aligned, tacked, and I'm in the process of finish welding them.




I can now actually put a number on my progress. According to my calculations, I am 1.15743094% completed with my restoration! Yahoo!