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Tue Apr 27, 2010 9:47 am

So I finally got to the bottom of my ignition gremlin. . . Hall sender in the distributor. This is the deepest I've dug into my Van's guts, and I must admit I had a pretty good time learning about it with the help from the Samba and my Bentley manual. In the process, I also fixed an oil leak from the breather tower and replaced some bad drive belts. Took her for a test drive yesterday and she felt real smooth which made me feel real good!

So I patted myself on the back and quickly began to think about what I can do next. I want another project but am not sure I want to dive into this one: I am thinking about tackling the rust issues I have, but I have never done any rust/body work on cars before so I don't really know what I'm getting myself into. I live in Colorado so the air is pretty dry, but over the past few winters of driving through slush and mag-chloride I've noticed that it's getting worse. I've got a fair bit of bubbly paint and flaky metal but I don't think it is not manageable. I'm including a few pictures just to see what kind of reactions I get. So don't be shy, lay it on me: how bad is it really?

Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:07 am

most of that looks like surface rust, just sand it of and repaint. the steps will have to be welded, you can do a patch job or replace it. New steps are available on the net somewhere, and so are replacement panels for most of those other areas too. Easy job but a pain in the but to do.

Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:19 pm

Those seams are also rusting from the inside to the outside. Just sanding the outside and painting will not stop the rust. You are likely to have rust bubbling through within a year. Do a search on rust here and you'll see what techniques have been used to remove the rust and seam sealer from the outside, then go and remove your interior panels, throw away the fiberglass sponge insulation, and treat the rusty inside part of the seam too. If you do a good job on the inside as well as the outside you can keep the rust away for many years. YMMV.

Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:32 pm

There's more to the picture than meets the eye. If you get under the front left wheel and look up to where that rust is, you might be surprised what you find. The rust you have above the rear wheel is mosdef on the inside also. Once again get under and look. To halt its assault you'll need to attack the source from the inside like dobryan says. To answer your original question though, it isn't to bad. I have seen worse. ha ha
Check out this thread:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=263839&highlight=paint

Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:19 pm

very doable. Stuff that is bubbled up often goes further, if the surface is still relatively flat its just surface rust.