If I don't start this thread now, the resto will be finished soon! I'll post when I can and try and catch up with myself, but as I'm working on the bus out in the sticks and using next door's wifi, I'm not on the internet that much. Some of you may remember I bought a 1970 prototype bay in September 2014. I'd been looking for a couple of weeks before I came across one that caught my eye. I wanted a blank canvas so I wasn't fussed about paint work or interior. I arranged to go and view it with a friend who worked on my Beetle. It was the first one I'd gone to look at so I didn't want to get my hopes up that this was the one. We had a good look around it and took it for a drive. It was solid and running ok, but nothing much to look at. I asked the owner if he'd accept £5000, he said yes, I handed it over and away we drove. Pretty painless really. The interior was still the original Devon Eurovette. Complete with 40 years worth of stains.
Took it straight to my mates VW garage, where they changed fuel lines and serviced brakes. Before I took it off the road I wanted to enjoy it a bit. The first local show I went to, a friend driving behind noticed petrol leaking out over the exhaust when I went round corners. So off it went to a friend's who has become my vehicle saviour. It's probably been on his driveway as much as it's been on mine. The leaking culprit. Nice shiny tank though. I knew what colour I wanted it before I'd bought it, but wasn't sure how I was going to go about doing it. It didn't fit in my garage. Not that I had lights or electric in there. So good ole mother said I could put a gazebo up in her garden, out in the country and do it there. If she'd realised how long it was going to take and what a mess I'd make she might not have offered. After getting some minor issues sorted and enjoying it as much as I could, I started the end of December 2014. My mum could've at least got a gazebo big enough to fit, tut.
The roof was in a pretty bad way so that had to be the first thing I done. The back green bit is part of another roof welded on... very badly. With a load of filler slapped on and not even smoothed or painted over. Mistake number 1: Trying to remove the rust and paint with a wire brush on a drill. BORING! After a few hours of doing this I discovered flap discs. It took me 5 minutes to do the same amount that before took me a couple of hours. As you can see I'm very health and safety conscious. Lurking beneath the filler was this strange hole that had had a very hasty repair job.
Where the 2 bits of roof were welded together it sank down a couple of centimetres, so getting the filler smooth and flat was by far the hardest and most tedious bit of the whole thing. Mistake number 2: I wish I'd discovered fibreglass back then. It probably would've saved me about a month of sanding and filling. Mistake number 3: Using fine filler over the top. It was rubbery and wouldn't sand, it just crumbled. Waste of time and effort. Took the whole roof back to bare metal. Kurusted it A LOT. 2 coats of zinc primer. 1 coat of high build primer. Mistake number 4: Not diluting the zinc primer with white spirit. It was pretty thick and so didn't dry really smooth, and was really hard to sand back.
I decided to go for Rustoleum as the top coat as I'd read good reviews about it being easy to use, hard wearing and you can get a good shiny finish with it. The videos on youtube made it look so easy. How could I go wrong... I used high density rollers and mixed the paint with 20% white spirit. It went on so quickly and easily, it was a joy to do after weeks and weeks of prepping. At this point I should probably say this is the first time I've done anything like this before, and I don't know anyone who has done a full resto and I've not watched anyone do it. So I'm learning as I go along. Hence my pretty basic mistakes. But I wanted to give it a go anyway. Especially as it was such delightful weather. Mistake number 5: I thought I'd got the high build primer smooth enough. But probably due to it being white and matt, I was wrong as I realised as soon as I got the first dark shiny top coat on. It was like crater city. I did not like high build primer! And I wouldn't be using it again! Mistake number 6: In all the research I done about rollering, nowhere did I read about air bubbles. So coming back to it once it had dried and finding it covered with them was not great. I found a good video about laying off with a large soft brush which totally eliminated the bubbles but it was time consuming, being able to only do a small area, lay off, wipe brush and carry on. Mistake number 7: About 3 coats the Rustoleum guy said I'd need to do. I don't know on what planet, but I ended up doing 10. They were very thin though. That'll be a mistake I realise later on. The feeling of getting that 10th and final coat on was amazing.
I didn't have much time left before I wanted and needed it back on the road so I wanted to sort out the worst of the rust at the rear behind the vents. And I done the rear hatch, as it didn't need much prep, which was nice. A little splash of orange.
use da sander and 80 grit discs far better , use finnigians metal treatment on all repairs , like the tight s too
60 grit flap discs on a grinder are working well on the really bad bits, and I managed to find some for less than a quid each, as the first ones I bought were about 4 quid each. And I'm getting through a fair few.
When I bought it I gave myself 2 years to finish the whole resto in and out. After working on it pretty solidly for 3 months and only getting this small amount done I began to realise 2 years was looking pretty unlikely. I'd finished this part of it so it was time for it's first MOT. Sailed through. Got it Waxoyled as well. And took it home to have some fun in it over the summer. Realised the stereo didn't work because it was wired up to a non existent leisure battery. So fitted one and a split charge. There was no surround to hold it in place. Tupperware sorted. Done a bit of work stripping the interior in between using it. Some more weird looking welds. Scraped off all the lovely glued on horse hair, sanded everything, hammerited the inside of the roof and the floor over the engine and primered all the back half.
Thanks para, been meaning to for ages, but you know how it is. I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with it.
Very true. It just didn't seem like I was making any progress for ages. But I'm getting pretty excited now.
There are so many weird repairs on it! Someone obviously started restoring it because I've come across a fair bit of filler that's been done really neatly over some bad welding. Nothing dangerous, just odd. But then if there's ever another owner after me, they're going to wonder what the hell sort of bodge artist had it before them, as I'm probably not doing it the 'correct' way.
