Saturday Baja progress.
Bolted the new rear cross members to the floor pan.
Drilled out the spot welds and removed the original rear cross members.
Removed a little more of the heater channels. lots of bodges over the years so best to take it all out and start again.
Drivers floor pan fettled to fit the chassis and alignment checked against heater channel. Pinned in place for now.
It’s already looking miles better with some fresh metal mocked up.
N/S floor pan fettled to fit the chassis, and heater channels bolted on to check alignment. Pinned in place for now until I can check the fit against the shell.
Made an alignment tool for the pedal strengthening plate to make sure its installed in the correct place when I fit it to the new floor pan, and chopped out the O/S floor pan.
I finished chopping out the old N/S floor pan and prepping the surrounding metal for the new pan over the weekend.
The napoleons hat needs a new end grafting in but is otherwise rock solid:
The lip on the spine looks great and needs no repairs:
The rear support is also in good condition and just needs a bit more of a clean up:
Trial fitting the new floor pan. It still needs some further trimming along the front edge to get the back to fit flush.
I had to drill out two of the bolts for the drivers door hinge as someone had mashed the head of the bolt. The top mount will need replacing, and the bottom will be replaced as part of repairing the A pillar.
A productive weekend saw the shell and pan part company.
Shell all braced for when I chop the heater channels out. The shell is currently resting on a temporary trestle until my steel arrives to make a dolly to move it around on.
The pan looks like a great starting point. The frame head is rock solid and the napoleons hat only needs a small repair patch.
I’ve made a start on chopping out the N/S floor pan.
The pans look to be the original ones but have had countless patches over the years and so are long overdue replacement.
Turkeys keeping me company too!
Picked up another load of beetle bits from the guy I bought the bug off. Today’s haul: a 1.2 engine, another set of wheels, all of the glass and a few boxes of engine bits!
This weekend’s job, unpicking the shell from the chassis. Historic patch repairs had welded the two together and so needed chopping out.
Two patches loosely tacked in on the toe board chopped out:
And patches on the other side of the panel:
Followed by chopping out a bunch of patches along both heater channels:
No wonder I couldn’t undo some of the chassis bolts!
And some delightful seam welds underneath:
The shell and chassis are now separate so I need to knock together a dolly to put the shell on next. The first batch of fresh metal arrived this week too!
The Second road trip of the week over to the keeper of parts, David Howard on Hayling Island.
Got a good condition drivers door, napoleons hat and arch repair.
A family trip this time so stopped in at a farm shop for pumpkins and goodies.
I managed to get a full day down the workshop today starting to strip down the bug.
Bonnet and dash area stripped.
Most of the panels at the front look solid in the right places but it needs all of the usual places which rust out on these. The areas that are bad (spare wheel well) will be getting chopped out for the baja kit anyway.
Rear all stripped out, I just need to pull the loom through. Some numpty cut through the loom when they repaired the quarter panel so we’ll need a new loom.
The luggage panel is generally in good shape but has started to go on the O/S:
And has had some bad repairs along the bottom edge:
I’ll repair these rather than replace as the surrounding metal looks good, and this is a baja so doesn’t need to be perfect.
Everyone please say hello to Iris’ little sister and next resto project, Myrtle!
A ‘73 beetle, so a year younger than Iris. She’s destined to be our off-road Baja Bug rig.
I won’t be starting on this for a little while yet as I need to finish up Iris’ interior first, but watch this space.
