63Ragtop

Another week, another patch. or two. A couple 5cm sections all fixed up. made this to close the end of the channel slots in here. welded grinered this was a pig to smooth out, the grinder wouldn't fit, so was done with the dremmel, a less than perfect finish, but no rust any more is the main thing! I needed another panel hammed to do some of the above work, I had a pointy one, a domed one, but I needed a flat pointy one, like a pick shape(very technically I know) took a wee trip down to the second hand tools shops in beautiful Henderson, I love rummaging around these tiny old shops that are packed to the roof with shit, Dude wanted $39 for the old hammed with a lose head, then I spotted this panel slapper file thing, which should be useful in the near future, He wanted 30 something for that, ended up getting both for $45, I'm sure he still made on the deal, gotta love the barter system! I cut a wedge of steel and hammered it into the top of the handle so the head is nice and tight good as new. I like old tools.

good work with the gold kitset rich, the red one looked proper fucked. Is it still going to be saved?

Got some more done last week. chopped the last of the rusty areas out and then sandblasted everything. got this blasted across the road, saving me about a days work, hopefully I can repair it. did this one night, once it was in I realised it was not quite right, I had made the corner a right angle, but it's more acute that on the inside of the channel, nothing a grinder and a welder can't fix though. this little piece took me about 3 hours of my life. seems to fit good I even made the little dent detail ( geek!) using a chunk of metal I had left over from building the spit, which I filed a groove in and smashed with a hammer. ground it all down yesterday and fixed the inside edge. I like to grind the inside as well, not because you can see it, but I hope a smooth finish gives rust less places to get a foot hold. just like a fucking new one! there where also a couple small rust holes on the top edge of the outside face that i was able to fill with just weld. Hopefully I remember to weld in a new nut for the running board before I close everything up.

Yeah, I like the windows as well, depending on what colour you paint it, maybe really black tint on them?

Sorry about the boat loads of pictures, got a bit carried away with it! This must be the trickiest area to fix, I took HEAPS of photos so hopefully I can put everything back in the right place. Carrying on from the last post, spotwelds! what fun! meters and meters of fun, stuck together every 10=5mm apart. holy shit thats alot of spotwelds! These ones where not so bad, this is the outside edge of the channel, where the running board attaches. the inside edge however! was a fucking bastard of a thing, I don't think there was enough room to get the spotwelder in like the other side, it was really stuck. and some where invisible, and then someone had double tapped these ones. Like I said such fun! The trick I found that worked good for me, was to drink quite heavily while doing this mind numbing work and listen to very loud heavy metal or punk, Motorhead, bad religon etc... And before you know it the week is finished and victory is yours! this is going to take some thunking. another double layer for strength/rust. There was also a scoop that attaches to the hole, it pretty much fell out. rear end of the channel, Ones I've seen overseas/online have a second pipe running inside the sill, you will notice the lack of any kind of heater pipe inside this channel, wonder if this an aussie car thing? trimmed abit more from the front wheelwell to get a better look, hmmmmmmm. I think I'll start at the back and work forwards, give myself some time to think what to do next, any help would be greatly appreciated, I have no idea right now/suss it as I go. Any sane person would replace the whole thing, but to be honest that scares the crap outta me!

I cut a bit more of the quarter panel off, should have done it this way to start with. so i could unravel the many layers of steel that vw stuck in here. much like the rear body mounts, I didn't really want to do this, but am now glad I did. krusty rusty stuff gave it a quick going over with the wire wheel first real good look inside the channel this is the state of the metal on the inside of that part i cut out and now for the rest of the bottom plate.

Well this thing is useful! after moving everything around I can even fit the honda inside, It was out in the pissing rain and I felt sorry for the old thing, had it for ten years now, so reliable. broke out the wire wheel to see whats what. rust is what it is! rusted from the inside out. this is what's left of the heater fitting that takes the heat up to the windscreen cut the bottom of the quarter panels off a bit of dirt and crap, mainly just surface rust. I'll make a new panel up to replace this most of these holes are old rust from before the shell was dipped, so all these areas you can't reach with a spray gun where bare steel. luck for me everything was caked in fish oil, so is pretty solid. I scrapped some of it off, it's like wax, but it has done it's job well.

And nice photography also. well done yous guys.

also, hows my welding looking now?

a couple more pics of the shell right on its side, and the added bracing. it doesn't go completely upside down, but it doesn't need to. I might still have to weld a nut on one of the stands so I can lock it in place. all in all pretty happy with it, I've started work on the sills now, it sits perfectly balanced just a little higher than the old pics above, even enough room to fit the wifes car inside, just.

Magic number plate! So I've just about finished my rotisserie for the vw's shell, it's been a bigger job than I thought it would, but it's going to make working on the sills much easier. I started with these basic plan First job was sorting out the rust in the old stand, it had been sitting outside in the grass for age's, the wheels were rusted tight and one pretty much just fell off. feel free to stick this is the fab fuck up thread! lol. I haven't done alot of welding on thick metal like this, took a while to get the setting right. one down. I then had to add 200mm of 60x60 to the red stand, so they would both be the same height. better? I then welded up the front mount to the shell goe's here and the rear one. another fab fuck up. I left the brace and welded up the rest of the frame, I wasn't sure how high the shell would sit once I found a good centre of gravity. what I did find is with the rear mount being so long it flexed, heaps! it would like bounce. scary shit. so I made these braces to the rear bumper mounts. much better. I cut the brace of the rear stand and repositioned it so the frame clears it and it now rolls right on it's side. I'm going to add a couple more braces to the frames and once I'm happy with how it rolls over I'll weld the frame to the stands plate, just in case.

Time to get the sills sorted!

Great work on the welding bro, slow and steady eh?

plan some skids bro!

Yeah, very cool. Interesting how the vinyl roof stops short of the actual gutters.

wow, that makes the old one look shit! good job.

VERY COOL.

nice one bro, look after the old girl.

I'm going to have a crack at building a rotisserie for the bugs shell this weekend, stand by for updates in the fab fuck up thread.

Giz CB! good luck with the sporty

so cool man.

Right, re-learnt how to use the MIG, turns out it was missing all sorts of things a welder should have to make it actually work, so much better now. some of the welding I did on the driver side fender is a bit shit because of this. several pinholes still, so I'll have to go over it again. It's a real bitch cuz the more you weld and grind the thinner the metal can get making welding harder, which leads to more blow outs and more pinholes The front patch has came up well though, the doner needed some work. has had a hard life. welded it all back together and stuck it here tacked more tacks and after more tacking I ground it down on the weekend and hammered it flat. both fenders looking good heres a better shot of the other side, after it's beating. Shouldn't need too much bog. While I've been working on the front fenders, I've also been thinking about the rear fenders. The left one I had is a awful pattern panel that was about an inch to long where it matches the valance, was a stupid shape and the tail light (both actually) were on a angle. So I got this lovely old thing off the veedub shoppe in hamilton, Solid OG fender, Me happy. someone had painted over the factory paint with this lovely BLUE! Just two cracks in the bottom edge, which should weld up sweet. i though this was cool, check out the tracks. only problem now is it makes my other good fender look shitty! Also found this while looking at my pan wonder if that's why the electic's sucked on this thing? okay, time to build a spit.

just spent the last couple days reading that! cheers. Found this guys though another fourm, kinda steampunk shit, I like it. http://www.thechopperunderground.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=52612&page=1 his blog http://www.selectedgrub.blogspot.co.nz/search?updated-max=2014-01-17T18:12:00-08:00&max-results=100&start=21&by-date=false kiwi! how fuckin bad ass is this!

when you wrap this round a power pole, I'd like to buy the alloys.

Still chopping guys! Had a bit of a break on the bug, had to do housework/lawns/go away for the weekend and the kids where kind enough to give me both of their colds one after the next ah well. Right where was I? Spent a little time hammering the weld on the fender, bloody happy as, will need feck all bog! kinda hard to show, so just take my word it's awesome. better than massive rust holes! Got the valance all welded up just look at all those holes! not going to show the welding here, welding upsidedown sucks, looked like little metal stalactites, took ages laying on my back grinding that shit down! Started on the drivers side fender opened it up to fit the oval fender like the other side. weldy weldy And then I broke the welder! well sort of. I got the wire stuck in the torch, really stuck, Turns out the liner is worn out and it needs a couple other things sorted, should have it sorted soon. So onto the next thing!