Meet the Flinstones...

Floor Removal continues. The floor beams are still pretty sound, but they are swollen with rust so I am going to pull them out. The top hat channel at the rear of the floor is solid except at the ends. I am still debating how much of floor has to come out. Both cross member sections are bad so having the floor out will make their replacement somewhat easier.

It is starting to get cold again so I have not put much time in this past week. I am hoping to get back there today or tonight for another bus lab session.

Floor Removal Started

I started to remove the floor today. It is spot welded onto the "joists" in the valley of each rib. I also cut out the left front frame outrigger. I should have a new one arriving in the mail this week. I am soooo looking forward to welding in clean sheet metal!

The more you look , the more you find

I removed the interior panels today and pulled out all of the fiberglass that someone had gobbed into the LF wheel well.
Notice the little hole in the frame. Nice.
From inside, looking out into LF wheel well.
Notice where new rocker skin was scabbed on over the old rusty one. There is about 1/8" layer of body filler in this area on the outside. The floor is pretty bad in spots too. I think I will pull it all up, but I have to start paying attention to what is actually holding the body up!

Removing the Driver's Dogleg

2 hours and maybe 50 spotwelds later... Driver's dogleg is off. I just sawed it off ahead of the B-pillar and then drilled out the rest of the spot welds that connect it to the wheel house. The B-pillar is really bad and I can see evidence of prior repair attempts.













Here is that B-Pillar.













Hard to tell what it what in this shot the jack point is sort of there, but this is mostly rot - I will be cutting this out next.

Iner Support update

No pics this time, but I spent another couple of hours working the front inner support into position. The outer extremes of this repair piece require some tweaking to fit just right. I am on the waiting list for the A-Pillar repair pieces. They are made in Columbia (the country). So while I wait I will do some barn cleaning. After the A-Pillars go in, I will be able to put the whole nose back together. It is getting a little cold now. Last night was only 25°F, but that concrete floor felt much colder! Stay Tuned!

Test Fit of New Inner Support

Getting There

Spent a few hours today to remove the rest of the inner support. This was time consuming as there are some more significant weld joints between the support and the frame heads. I still have yet to remove the tabs that lay on top of the frame rails. I think I will end up cutting a hole in the floor to gain proper access. Progress, slow and steady!

Removing the Inner Support

Removing the inner nose skin was fast and easy. It is spot welded to the upper flange of the inner support. Since my inner support is coming out, it was OK to drill all the way through the spot welds. I just zipped the bottom edge off, leaving it attached to the support piece. Removing the inner support is a little more delicate since it is spot welded along its upper edge to something that I plan to keep. You can drill out the spots from below pretty easily if you cut to bottom flange off of the inner support. The tabs that connect the inner support to the frame head are going to be tricky to remove due to limited access - I'm going to leave them alone until I see what the new support piece has on it.

I cut off 3-1/2" from the bottom of the nose tonight. The skin was pretty easy to remove once I found the spot welds. Whole job took about 3 hours. This was not as scary as I thought!















Rust was getting pretty bad - probably due to the leaky windshield gaskets.













You can see where moisture was collecting between the inner and outer layers.















Better shot of the inner support piece rot. Bottom of the A pillars are also totally gone - that should be fun!

Front Interior Cleaned out

Photos taken on 9 November 2008.

Front interior cleared out. Had two mice living in the base of the front seat. Typical rust in the floors and doglegs. I have been looking at some pics of other restorations and looks like the bottom 4-5" of the nose skin need to come off along with both doglegs. I think I can get by with just doing the other floor sections. I have ordered new front support beam and lower nose sheetmetal. Probably start cutting this week.

Pictures taken 8 November 2008 - Rusty Bus!

Getting Started.... Again.

So here we go... This is my Bus - It does not have a name or anything like that - I bought when I was 15 for $150 and that was 20 years ago. I had it registered back in '95 when I was in college in NY. Many belated thanks to my VW mentor "Obie" for helping me tackle the basics of brakes and wiring. Now, many years later, the bus is back on my mind and it is going to get the treatment. This blog will document the progress as I go.

First some basic specs and history of this bus. It is a 1966 Deluxe, 13 window with bucket seats. The white paint is original, but the blue is a re-spray and is a little lighter than the original Sea Blue. I bought the bus in 1988 in Gloversville, NY for $150. It was running, but just barely. The motor was not original so I yanked it and put in a fresher 1600 DP from a '71 Beetle. I replaced the tranny with a "freeway flier" that has a taller final drive ratio. While attending Clarkson University, I brought the bus up on a trailer (thanks Dad!) and did the brakes and wiring work necessary to make it all legal. Finally, in 1994 or 1995, the bus was on the road again - at least for a short time...

I parked the Bus in November of '95 and stuck it back in the Barn where it remained untouched until 2005. It came out of the barn with a couple of stuck brakes and a leaky fuel line, but otherwise just as I had left it. It actually started up and ran on that 10 year old gas. I couldn't believe it! For the past 3 years, I have used the bus to drive back and forth between my Father-in-law's barn and our house - basically, it is my rolling tool box. That brings us up to today. I have been watching the rust in the corner of my eye and now it must get fixed. As you will see in the upcoming posts, the rust is pretty bad! I hope you enjoy looking at these pictures and following the progress.