Truck gate repair

[nlorntson]

We are restoring a 1963 Double cab so I thought it might be nice to share some pictures of the gate repairs.

The bottom rails on all three gates were pretty rough although it was not evident at first glance because a PO had filled every dent and rust hole with bondo and sculpted it to look nice.

Each of the spotwelds holding the rib to the outer panel and vertical ribs must be drilled out. If you remove the paint and get down to metal you can see where each one is.

It appears VW never painted the inside of these gates so they rust like crazy. Here is the bottom rib mostly removed:

Here is one of the vertical ribs removed. Note the drain pressing on the top rib. The KF green replacement pieces don't have this drain pressing.

The bottom rib has the outer skin spot welded and crimped tightly around the lower edge. To separate the two, each spot weld must be ground off and the two pieces gently spread apart. Too much and the crimp will be torn or too stretched to redo.

We sand blasted the gates once the pieces to be replaced were all removed:

The KF pieces also don't come wtih the drain holes so we added them too.

The hinges did not fit the profile of the KF green piece. Here you can see the difference. We had to remove some of the lip of the hinge to get it to drop down in the rib properly.

The hinges are mounted to the gate via quite a few tiny spotwelds

Here is the part number of the hinge.

Once everything is cleaned up the piece can be slipped in and positioned. It is important that the gate be straight first. This gate had a slight bow in it caused by two dents in the top rib.

These dents were worked out and the bow was removed.

Once the gate is straight the new piece will slip right in. Welding is straight forward by flipping the gate over and welding from the outside.

The corners and center ribs are welded

Lastly the crimp is welded and gently restored.

The gate looks much better now!

A bit more welding and grinding to be done.

These are a lot of work but they can be done. We blasted as much as we could up inside the other ribs, but I think we will probably coat the inside with some type of chassis internal frame coating or similar befoe we start the bodywork on them.

[kalymnos]

Thank you for sharing your experience.
Love this kind of contributions on "TheSamba"; love "TheSamba" at all.

[Huetti_1989]

Thanks you too for sharing!

Did the outer skin is in good shape at all?

I must replace the outer skin at some points too, this is bad i think...

[cru62]

I really, really like this stuff and the application method.-

http://www.eastwood.com/internal-frame-coating-w-spray-nozzle-qt.html
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[Alexmobil]

Excelent!
I´ll have to do the same job with the DC dropgates and this thread will be a great reference.

[easy e]

Nice job on the gates!

The part number on the hinge, shown above (261829365)... is for what I suspect to be the hinge half.... but maybe not?

The barndoor part number for the full hinge is 261829171.
As seen here (#43): http://www.oacdp.org/5054part/294.jpg
And listed here: http://www.oacdp.org/5054part/302.png

261829361 for post barndoor:
Diagram (#72): http://www.oacdp.org/5867part/423.png
List: http://www.oacdp.org/5867part/429.png

Just posting it in case anyone is ever tearing into their gates & decides on looking for new hinges... they might be able to search a few part numbers to get a hit.
e

[nlorntson]

[mr white]

I vote sticky! Good clean honest info here. Nice job Sir,thanks for taking the time to share.