Breaking tools on a rusty front end.

Welded in the closing pieces, put a bit of primer on it. Needs more tidying. Ran out of light.

 

Today I completed welding - the horn bracket went back on the chassis rail.
Then priming, seam sealing underneath. More sanding and filler on top.

Reconnected the steering and the throttle pedal, so if I want to move it around on the driveway I can.

Did not have my phone with me so could not re-enable the fuel solenoid with a text message, to see if the engine starts still.

Stopped with a post Covid jab headache.

 

Had my Jab yesterday and I've now got definite case of man flue!

 

After all the structural stuff you get to the outer skin and...
There are times to preserve the lines. Plug welds. I'll say no more.

 

I seam welded the closing pieces because I am used to a bus with such an indistinct sort of sea of filler and paint there ..

Today I managed to get the bolt holes for the new spare tyre carrier in and then fit the stiffeners behind.. using 6mm rope to pull the top end of the stiffener up to the top hole after managing to get a longer bolt to engage in the bottom hole, by twiddling the bolt into the hole in the stiffener.

I put pieces of double sided foam adhesive tape at each end of ech stiffener, so hopefully they will stick in place .

I may add some Tiger Seal to the mix to keep it in place.

 

Well done Mike....this is such a great thread. Loved the pictures too. So much better than marking the big pile of geography books to my left!

 

Physical Geography : Where's the Suez Canal? Economic Geography : How many ships will be queued up before they clear the jam ?


I shall have to keep on putting up pictures - I have had a bit of rain the past two days so I havent done much

 

I had a good painting day yesterday although it was too windy to be able to get a decent finish . Focus is on having it back on the road and Waxoyled in about 2 weeks ..
I can see where I ran out of drive sanding. ...


I decided to see if all the bits fitted. Still need some grommets for the windscreen wiper spindles.

Dont like the bolts on the spare wheel carrier - they wont work with alloys. The bolts arent M18 either.

I shall convert them to studs , chop the tops off some old alloy wheel tapered nuts and use them as spacers for the nuts.

 

Just ordered a pair of genuine front VW indicator units - £75, as the 10 year old Brazilian ones started falling apart, the grey plastic bodies are disintegrating as I poke around the seals trying to clean them up. The cheap original Brazilian lenses have been replaced maybe three times only to have them fade, until I bought some genuine Hella lenses a while back.
(same with the tail light lenses, two German ones rather than Brazilian.. )

This way I get some new lenses, and the current ones can be kept as good spares.

I was also a bit careful of the headlamp units - the new ones are now £145 each. I paid £40 each in 2014.

The headlamp units were annoying, there are three fixing tags as expected in the bowls in the Brazilian front panel. Two tags line up exactly, the third one is about 7mm out. But not the same hole is misaligned each side.
Will have to investigate further - may be I am not getting them exactly level as a result.

 

Flippin' 'eck, you don't hang about, do you?

 

Looking good Mike

 

Great work Mike. Looking forward to seeing it for real sometime soon.
Where did you get your German lenses? I’m looking for some rear lenses for a ‘69 beetle, but can only find Brazilian ones.

 

I expect you’ll have to modify the wiring on the new genuine indicators, not hard to do but a pain on a new item.

 

I received the grommets for the windscreen wiper spindles and the indicators.

The indicators were installed without too much trouble - the wire end had a female spade for power, and a ring terminal for ground. So I had to tidy up the wiring in the bus, the connections one side involved a piece of mains earth wire, and the other had one of those two way connector blocks that VW used to use. Crimped a spade on the end of the indicator wire, slipped a silicone insulating boot on the end of the wire from the indicator housing.
One nice thing is that the lenses fit with M3 screws rather than rusty self tappers. And they come with reflectors instead of a bit of tin.


Fitted up both sides, checked the hazards still worked, moved onto the windscreen wipers.
The old grommets were split and silicone, the new ones are rubber, and grip the spindles better .. Which was a problem. I assembled it and trial started the wipers, and something inside was thumping away without windscreen wipers attached.
It seems that the arm on the motor shaft either hits the top of the air box, or a strange metal rib poking out from the inner screen panel.
So I removed the wiper mechanism.. And one of the grommets popped off and dropped between the inner and outer windscreen panels.

Out came the USB inspection camera. And I found the grommet.


So after a few attempts, I taped the camera cable in place, got a bit of bent wire, and used the camera to sight the wire end into the grommet. First time I got the bent wire through it and it came back out of the wiper spindle hole.
I spent a while putting the mechanism back in place, the rubber spacer under the bolt that attaches the wiper motor to the dash had rotted, so I stacked some rubber pieces to make a sort of spacer.
Still rubs with the wiper blades on, so I think I will take it out again, and knock a bit of the metal off with a finger sander, to make more space for the mechanism.

 

Where were the indicator housings and lenses from Mike?

 

Alan Schofields. I found them on eBay.

It turns out both my previous lenses and the current indicator units are made in Brazil, but they do have VW logos and part numbers .

 

Today I think I sorted out the knocking windscreen wiper linkage - used the finger sander to take the edge off a strip of metal that sticks out from the bottom of the inner screen panel, bend the windscreen wiper motor support bracket, it now stops hitting the top of the air box and doesnt hit the strip of metal.
I also painted the rear side of some of my metalwork that I could see when I took out the windscreen wiper linkage and the hot air "antlers" under the dash.

Changed the fixing for the glove box lid from M4 bolts to self tappers into spire clips. So it doesnt come undone every 6 months.

I wondered why the windscreen wipers always went clunk at the same point in their operation - the fact its all springy and rubber mounted just meant the support bracket flexed instead of the motor stopping..

While I had the air powered finger sander out, I also put some air in the tyres from the compressor. One of the rears was down about 10psi.

 

Still to finish - waxoyl the five cavities that I have created where they were previously all one big damp tunnel from left to right on the front of the bus.

And then start the fitting of the mains inlet/outlet box that is going on one of the chassis rails under the bus.

 

I did do the Waxoyling, then I started using the bus. The high speed paint job resulted in one surface crack where it was too thick too fast.

Theres something strange about the headlight bowls - the fixing tabs in the bowl on the right hand side seem to be rotated about 3 degrees or so, so when it comes time to align the headlamps, I think I may be drilling some more holes in the headlamp fixing rings.