Gotta keep ’em separated

As you can see we have been making great progress on the ’70 beetle. Unfortunately, our progress has revealed a few real rust issues. Some of these rust problems were caused by a leaky master cylinder and brake fluid  resivoir others good ole fashioned water. Because the owner wants to keep this car for another 45 years we will replace all rusty parts and take all measures to keep it from returning. We didn’t have any issues separating the body from the pan and all of the pan bolts came out with no problems. Most of them however, were just about rusted in two so they will all be replaced as well. The engine was also removed so that we can more easily degrease the chassis. The engine runs well already so we will just clean the engine tins and paint them. Next on the agenda will be to remove the old wiring harness, windshield and back glass so we can get the body over to the blaster. Once back from the blaster our replacement parts should be in so we can start rust repairs. Stay with us on this repair. We are looking forward to this project. 

Back together

 I know. We have been gone for a while. We have been slammed with work over the past 8 weeks or so and its been a quite a few late nights and here at the shop and writing posts just hasn’t been top priority. We did find a couple of guys to work part time hours for us and are really thankful for them. They have helped us out tremendously. We reached a pretty big milestone with the Ghia this week. As you can see its back on all fours. But lets back up a bit to see what all as been done. We ordered a narrowed and adjustable front beam for this Ghia. The owner wanted it to sit lower than factory and an adjustable beam is the best way to get it there. The reason its narrowed too is because when you lower them, the tires sometimes rub on the fender wells.  You narrow it to move the wheels in some to allow for some clearance there. This also opens up more options for different wheels and tires if she desires. We also replaced the tie rods, tie rod ends, new leaf springs, new steering damper, sway bar and master cylinder. We also installed the newly rebuilt pedal assembly along with a new clutch cable and throttle cable. While we were at it, we also replaced the heater box cables. On the dash, we did away with a few holes that will be no longer needed and added one for the Bluetooth microphone. We also had to clean up the radio hole a bit. It was cut a little too large the first time, so we added some metal and reshaped it for a nice fit. While working on the dash we also added a lighted accessory plug to charge cell phones or plug in a GPS. A new pan gasket between the body and pan is held into place with all new body bolts.  Our agenda holds this car getting primer on Friday or at least by the first of the week if Murphy shows up with that law of his.

Ready for final prime

The body work on the Ghia is pretty much complete. We have all of the body panels straight and ready for the the final prime. We will find a small area here or there while prepping the body for primer but for the most part, its ready. In these pictures show that we still have to sand everything down with 180 before priming. We did get a bit of that done today but not quite the whole car. We also still need to sand the jambs and the dash before priming. We do hope to have that done over the next couple of days. It is a relief though to know that the hard work has paid off and the body is straight and solid.

Fender mender

Today was dedicated to the Ghia. We started off today making sure the there we no pinholes where we welded up the lower fender sections. Once we were sure they were ready for filler, we started prepping the left fender. This left fender has been the victim of, I believe 2 accidents. Who ever fixed it before did a pretty good job of hammering and dolling it out to its original shape, but we did take it a bit further and straightened it out a bit more. Fenders for Karmann Ghias are almost non existent. When you do find one, you have to hope the guy that removes it does so in such a fashion that it can be used again. If you dont know what you are doing you can cut up a $1000.00 used fender. Yes, I said one thousand dollars. That makes saving this one a little more cost effective once you figure the hours it takes to remove and replace a welded on fender. While I was wrestling with the left one, Paul was working on the right one. He started by blocking out the slick sand to expose the dents. The ones that were too deep to block out with slick sand were filled. As you can see this side was in much better shape than the left. Just a couple of dents on the right side. Cole was working on the left quarter that was started on last week. He finished blocking out the body work that was there from Friday and also applied the final layer of filler in this are except for a small high spot that we will take care of tomorrow. We also prepped some old welds for epoxy and seam sealer. A few good hours spent on this car these past few days and it really shows. We have a couple of smaller jobs to do tomorrow and Thursday but plan on getting back on this one Friday.

Back in the saddle

Today was dedicated to the Ghia. We had some lose ends first thing this morning to tie up on another job that was picking up today, but after that, we were all in on the Ghia. We started by applying the Metal ready product to our welds to ensure great adhesion and a water tight seal. Its personal preference really, but we dont like putting body filler over areas that have been welded. We use Metal Ready for the initial fill, then body filler if needed to smooth the rest up. Thats what you will be seeing here. We did find an area on each door that needed a small patch. One picture show the bad cut out. Not sure why the car rusted here but they were both the same way. As you can see we did get one side cut out and even welded in but my camera died before I could get that picture, so you will see that on Monday. We also applied some body filler to finish straightening out the high and low spots on both doors and was able to get that blocked out and looking nice.  We did make great progress on these today and it should continue next week.

Heat is on

After being slammed with collision work for the past few months and some unforseen circumstances, we are back on the Ghia today and and we’ve made some progress. We have been working on it a little over the past few weeks but we were fighting the fitment of the heater channel. Well today we muscled that thing into place and were happy with the fit and stated welding it in. The first piece to be welded in was the grey part in the last two images. Once that is tacked into place, we started welding in the heater channel. We did get pretty well done today, but still have a few welds before moving on to the outer rocker. Tomorrow’s plan is to make a few patch panels and have them ready for Thursday. I will be off tomorrow but will be back on this car for the rest of the week.

Looking good

We painted the Mustang today. This one is back in the shop to get some hail damage repaired from a couple of weeks ago. We did paint the hood on Friday, but I don’t think I got any pictures of that.  We started prepping this first thing this morning and a few hours later it looks like this. It really turned out nice. We will give this a couple of days to dry and hopefully we can start sanding and buffing it by the end of the week. Once that is done, we can get it put back together and back to the owner. Car show season is among us and I have sneaking suspension the owner will want to show this one off.

Rocker be gone

Today I spent the day removing the old rusty rocker and inner structure. First thing we did was weld in some supports to keep the body where its supposed to be. We then started cutting out the large chunks of rusty metal. Once those were out of the way, we carefully removed the rest of the metal where it attaches to the A post and B post. Once all the old stuff was out of the way, we started fitting the new panels. After a little of finagling we got things in and looking pretty good. We still have some fine tuning to do before we bring out the welder but we are very pleased with the progress today.

Back on the Ghia

After way too long, we were able to get back on the Ghia this week. No major accomplishments here but we did get some work done. There are several places that have to be cut out and new metal put back in because the metal is thin in some areas and has a few small pinholes. We were also planning on cutting the left rocker off to start fitting in the left heater channel and outer sheet metal but tubing we need to brace everything up didnt come in. We hope to get that in next week so we can start that up. We did get about 10 or so places welded up and a few little patches in and some made to keep things moving. We have been very blessed with lots of collision work over the past few months but unfortunately that takes our time away from these more fun projects. Our many thanks to the owner for her patients. We now have a full crew and you will be seeing more posts on this one in the weeks to come.

Another rust repair

Yesterday we repaired another rust spot on an Chevy truck. We started by grinding out the rust until we found good metal. We then cut out what was bad then made a patch to fit the hole. We then carefully weleded in the patch being careful not to over heat and warp the surrounding metal. Once that was done we ground down the welds and filled the are with All Metal. Once that was dry, we smoothed that up and finished off the repair with body filler then primer. This morning the primer area was sanded and prepped for paint. We were able to get it painted today so look for those pictures tomorrow.