Etched outside and zinc primed inside of wheel tub repair. Fabricated and etched some closing panels for the three holes the Brazilian floor has which I’ve no use for.
Finished welding in and dressed the welds on the front of the O/S rear tub tonight.
I took a break from the middle sill today as it was getting me down.
Rust treated and zinc primed the underside of the door threshold piece (centre section left bare so I can get some etchweld on it instead):
And made a first pass of the welding on the O/S rear tub repair (this side is in pretty good nick):
Having cut away the rot there isn’t a huge amount left on the original middle sill. I’ve managed to keep the curved bit which the new panel doesn’t have so hopefully I’ll be able to make this work (I have to really as I’m not going to find another original middle sill anytime soon).
You can see the curved bit better in the below image (Annoyingly I had to drill out the spot welds on the sill too as I couldn’t drill them out accurately enough through the threshold piece. arg. More work).
My plan is to cut the new middle sill down and then weld it to the old so it looks something like this:
The curved bit is the challenging bit and will need a lot of fiddling and measuring to get right. Hoping to crack on with this tomorrow night.
Next up the N/S middle sill!
The middle sill on the N/S has the top and bottom track for the sliding door roller attached to it (the top track is part of the flange that attaches the sill to the door threshold). i wanted to avoid removing the whole sill as it’s better to repair it in situ, but ours was pretty far gone – there are some substantial holes towards the top track which would be near impossible to fix with the track in place, and the rear of the track has completely collapsed (this was what caused our door to fall out during the first few weeks of us owning the van!).
In theory I should’ve been able to mark the centre of each spot weld holding the sill in place and drill the welds out. However in practice it was a right pain as the rusty track made some of the welds near impossible to spot, resulting in me needing to either chisel it out or expand the hole I’d drilled. It must’ve taken nearly 8 hours to get the thing out (embarrassing I know!).
Here it is all drilled out, it is as bad as it looks! Lots of holes near to the top track. I think I’ll have to graft as much as I can salvage from the old sill to the new one, rather than repair the old one as such.
On the plus side the underside of the threshold is in pretty good nick. I’ll clean it up, rust treat and epoxy it.
I think sorting the middle sill will take up most of the next week or so to get it right.
And one more before and after. 7 months to get to this point but well worth it. #restoration #classiccars #vwcamper #vwbus #iriscamper
Next job; repair the sliding door track and middle sill. No room for error otherwise the door won’t open or will just fall off!
Up at 6 today and down the workshop by 7 to finish the floor up. Finally all welded in and dressed the sill welds. Happy with it all apart from the minor bit of distortion on the O/S panel towards the middle (will know for next time 🙂 ). Sexy underside!
Competed most of the plug welds on the N/S floor pan today. Filthy but very happy.
It’s not fully welded in yet but I couldn’t resist taking a snap of the van with a full floor for the first time in 7 months! #iriscamper #classiccars #restoration #vwt2 #vwbus #vwcamper
