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Sun Aug 07, 2011 4:04 pm

c21darrel wrote: Neighbors would have heard me on that one!

I will admit to saying a few choice words, but it was my own fault. I know better.

The only lead I found was toward the very top in the sharpest part of the curve right above that sticker.

Well it's done AGAIN. Last Sunday I started tacking the repair strip in. I finished up the welding and grinding yesterday and the filler work today. I also put down the first coat of Master Series on the battery tray.

Oh and just for grins I put the drivers seat in it and drove it around in the neighborhood for a bit yesterday. I wanted to make sure I could drive it to Dave's instead of towing it. If I had to tow I would never hear the end of it. :lol:

Sat Aug 13, 2011 9:07 pm

Well, what a difference a week makes. Here are a few pics of last weeks repair fixing my mega screw up.

Finally here is the gap I ended up with. You can now shut the door with your pinky finger. It closes nicer than by daily driver.
Sorry about the pic I have no idea why it loaded like that.

The next day I was able to get the filler on and ready to go. So this week I called about the paint. The local store is a PPG dealer and he said he could color match the crappy respray color in an acrylic enamel and with enough reducer, hardener, primer and thinner to do that rear quarter I would be out the door for about $110.

While e-mailing with Dave and trying to get our schedules together he said that without to much more trouble or expense we should just go ahead and paint the whole car. I did a little checking and he was right. So I started checking on taking it back to L-554 Cherry Red.

While looking in the gallery I ran across this pic by Samba member "semajnai" in Denmark.

It is probably the nicest example of Cherry Red that I've ever seen. The PO that resprayed my car only did the exterior surfaces so I have plenty of real nice original paint everywhere and it looks exactly like the pic above. So I sent the above pic to my wife (since it's her car) and told her I was thinking about painting the whole car back the original color to see if she liked it. Well she LOVED it. She liked it so much she decided to do the black roof also.

So today after the weekly mowing was done I got to work. A couple of hours later...

The only casualty was the dash pad. It started crumbling as I was taking it out. The split in the speaker section was all the way down to the metal and over an inch wide and some water had gotten in at some point because there was extensive rust to the metal frame of the pad, but not the dash, weird?

While I was staring at the dash trying to come up with a plan on what to do about that fake woodgrain contact paper the wife came home. When she left the car was drivable so she was quite surprised at it's current state. We talked about different options and she has decided that the dash pad will be left off, the contact paper will be removed and the dash will be painted body color.

Here is the current state of the dash.

Tomorrow I'll take out the gauges and try to start taking that contact paper off. Any suggestions on how to get it off? I tried a small section and it is so old and brittle that it breaks off in VERY tiny pieces.

Also what are my options for the speaker area? Does anyone make a metal cover for that area of will I need to cut it out and weld in a section?

Mon Aug 15, 2011 10:18 am

Lots of good stuff and progress, congrats. 3m makes a product that should get rid of the contact paper mess, i remember Vince mentioning it in the past. You will have some oval holes to weld up on the 68 dash so it is all smooth, its never easy when you go "custom". I remember someone made a Karmann Ghia cover for the speaker that was selling a few or you can weld a flat cover over and make it all smooth. Cherry red/black is a great color choice!

Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:54 pm

Thanks.

I spent yesterday with a wire cupped brush hitting every little spot that I saw on the car. It was pretty much what I expected with a couple of exceptions. Two very small bubbles in the paint turned into major repairs needed. Here's a few pics of what I found.
This one should be an easy fix.

Still deciding whether to patch it up or just replace with repair panel.

and SURPRISE!

the culprit

I found a good contact paper remover, wire cupped brush on a grinder. :lol: Use a light touch and it comes off pretty easily. Only a few spots taken down to bare metal. I'll give the 3M stuff a try, thanks for the tip.

Minus most of the paper.

And now onto the big project. If I counted correctly I'm going to be welding up a metric buttload (14 on top, 15 in face plus ?? underneath) of holes plus having to deal with the speaker hole.

I'm going to think on this a little longer. Even though it's her car she might get vetoed on this decision. I've not heard any good things about the fit of the repo ones so I might just see if I can find a good used one that I can recover.

Mon Aug 15, 2011 3:30 pm

Mine is patched at the "cross" and all along the bottom edge in front of both wheel wells. The holes in the 68 dash were one reason i grafted in the 67 dash...no holes to fill. I think it was eaiser to swap than patch up the 68, maybe. Looks like you have all the normal bad spots. I think the smart guys just pay the price and buy a better car to avoid so many time consuming/expensive repairs.

Mon Aug 15, 2011 4:03 pm

c21darrel wrote: I think the smart guys just pay the price and buy a better car to avoid so many time consuming/expensive repairs.

But what's the fun in that? :lol:

Mon Aug 15, 2011 4:18 pm

I said they were smart...not fun :wink: