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Taking it ALL off!
I have to strip all
the old floor panels off before putting the new ones on. This
is a fairly long, but satisfying process. The air chisel was
an absolute blessing and made quick work of all the original
spot welds.
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MORE New Parts
My first major parts
shipment came in from VW
California Imports.
In these two huge boxes are the new front beam, floors and small
body parts.
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Drive Train Removal
In order to completely restore
the frame I have to remove the transmission and swing axles.
This proved to be a bit of a challenge as many of the large bolts
were really rusted and I had trouble getting them loose.
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Completely Stripped
Finally the frame
is free of all the parts that I care to remove. All the rusted
nuts and bolt will be replaced with nice shiney new ones in the
near future.
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The First Signs...
This transmission mount
at the very rear of the frame is held on by two huge bolts (circled) It really doesn't have to come off, but these would
be the only two bolts on the whole car that I didn't replace.
Luckily, Dave Homer has the 26mm socket (big surprise there)
and they WILL come out! This was my first sign of becoming obsessed
with the project.
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As It Stands...
With all parts removed,
the chassis now resembles the skelton of some obscure dinosaur.
It is light enough to safely be set on my sawhorses which puts
it a comfortaqble working height. I have started to grind the
rust off the frame and prime it before final painting. You can
see the grey primer on the rear parts of the car.
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More Grinding
Now that the frame
is stripped, I was able to flip it over and begin working on
the underside. I removed the last reconizable piece of the floor
and have started to grind the metal in preparation for welding
in new metal. That grey thing in the background is the floor
for the right side.
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Fresh Paint
I have wire brushed
all the rust off the back of the frame. The bare metal was first
primed and then painted black. It's important to paint the metal
quickly so rust doesn't get a chance to settle in.
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Welding Practice
Being terrified of
electricity, welding has never had much attraction to me. It
does seem to be fairly important to the success of this project
so I borrowed a friend of a friend's (both of whom are bus owners)
mig welder and confonted my fears. After some less-than steller
results I eventually started to show some progress. This one
was pretty good - I thought.
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