my '67 westy restoration

marklaken · Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 12:44 pm Post subject: my '67 westy restoration

Okay, I figured i will keep a little thread with my project, a pearl white '67 wesfalia SO-42 camper for myeslf and other to enjoy.

A little background info, this is my second bus and my first attempt at restoring a vehicle to near original shape. I bought it on ebay in March '04 from a local guy for $1500 as a running bus with a basically missing interior...i had to mess with it's little, overheating 1641cc engine a bit, but it seems to run okay.

My second post on the samba was about what color to paint it...I am still completely torn at this point...my favorite colors in this order are:
mangogreen/seagull grey (but it'd be odd on a fried egg, poptop westy)
Solid Turkis (no poptop was available in this color, which ended in '64)
velvetgreen/pearlwhite (was a '67 option, but not common for westys)
solid Dove Blue (proper '67 westy color)
Turkis/Bluewhite ('64 color)
and last but definetly not least, the good old Pearl White that it is right now

I had originally planned to have profesional body shop repair and repaint the interior and exterior for me with a pricetag of somewhere between $3k to $6k...but have instead choosen to do the work myself and learn as i go...save some money and end up with some cool new tools Smile

i'll do my best to update my project with pics periodically...
_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

marklaken · Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 12:48 pm Post subject:

initial pics from mid-March:

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.

see my gallery for more initial pics...
_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

marklaken · Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 12:56 pm Post subject:

here are a couple pics of some quickie repairs that i made for my own peace of mind for the summer time:

and a quickie temp interior for summer fun...

_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

marklaken · Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 1:00 pm Post subject:

I have recently aquired a little Hobart Hnadler 135 Mig Welder and am just getting into the monster under the paint....finding more and more soft metal. Here is a quick shoot of my driverside rocker:

I've since cut out that little piece of decent metal in the middle and am awaiting repair pieces from metwiz, wolfgang, and wolfsburg west...time to start learnin' how to weld Smile

_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

Skim · Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 1:20 pm Post subject:

thats sweet Mark. Looks like she cleaned up nicely. Im in the process of cleaning up a 67 poptop as well.
Looks good. keep us posted.
_________________
GFK
Samba since before the towers collapsed. Still here.
1953 Kabriolet
1954 Sunroof
1959 Lowlight Ghia vert
1960 Lt Grey Double Cab SMZ LEGIT
1963 Deluxe Turkis Walk Thru 15 Window OG Paint

marklaken · Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 7:55 am Post subject:

the work continues...inner rocker welded in as well as a new B-pillar on the driver's side...metwiz's b-pillar fix worked great...contemplating wether i should replace the lower side pillars, which are not in top shape, but probably usable...the one in the picture is the worser of the two and i have the replacement parts from metwiz...any thoughts?....

also started working on straightening my very beat-up crooked nose panel...tack welded nails and used 2 pairs of vice grips, one locked on the nail, the other locked on the first pair of vice grips and beat on the 2nd vicegrip with a hammer...had very good success with this method..that lower raised nose skin area was a 3/4" bondo fill...every time i pulled out the dent, the dent simply popped back in...tried relieving stress by tapping the outside edges of the dent with no sucess...banging on the vice grips with a hammer did the trick!

also note that the circles are dents and the x's are places where the panel was banged from the backside with a ball hammer and are high spots...

you can also see where a previous owner tried to pull out the skin by drilling holes and putting a washer with a bolt through it and pulled the panel...he ripped it in one place, left several washer sized high spots and left a series of holes right down the center of the skin (where the factory weld seam is)

here is a shot of my dash that was covered in rattle can primer...been wetsanding it for awhile and it is mostly back down to OG-paint...i plan to repaint, so i wasn't very concerned with the final quality of the OG paint underneath, just wanted a better base for my repaint...

i will also need to fix my front pass. floor, which looked and felt solid until i started pushing on it with a screwdriver...here is the result of that:

and this last pic is of some fun times i've had removing tar that was installed by somebody beween all the ribs in the cargo floor...used a hairdryer and a 2" scraper, followed by engine brite degreaser...you can see all threee phases, the tar in the upper left, the scraped in the middle and right and the engine brighted in the lower part of the pic. You can also see the metwiz b-pillar fix from the inside in this pic...

_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

CoBusDriver · Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:16 pm Post subject:

Looking good Mark,

Gimmie a call if you need an extra set of hands.
_________________
Big Mike
'58 standard
'71 westy

vdub_nut · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:31 pm Post subject:

that is a really sweet bus, i wish i had the time to start a project like yours. Hopefully one day i will, that'd be really great. All the best with it, keep posting pics to show how its going Cool

TimGud · Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2004 7:25 pm Post subject:

Looks good Mark!

marklaken · Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:54 am Post subject:

alright well i decided to do the right thing and switch out my badly dented nose with a donor nose (which i still need to buy...do you have one? PM me!)...

this is my first time working through a body repair of this magnitude...i have a thread going that kinda documents my process and is a bit of a cry for help/hints too...if you can suggest something, please throw your comments in here:

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=90683

i think i'll also replace the lower valence, too, which is pretty soft in a couple places...you can clearly see the watertrap that was designed into the nose (it's the heavily surface rusted area at the bottom of the picture)...you can also see that the hit my front end took also dented the heater tubes
_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

70 140 · Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:47 pm Post subject:

That looks good. That nose looks like an ambitous project.

vwspijlbus · Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 3:35 am Post subject:

What a load of work!
Good luck.
_________________
Frank
1967 Dutch SO-42
www.vwspijlbus.blogspot.com

marklaken · Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:50 pm Post subject:

and the work slowly continues...here's what i've been up to when it is warm enough to work in the garage...

i welded in a donor spare tire mount that stanagon sold me awhile back...

i welded in a metwiz battery tray which fit pretty nicely and i am happy with it...the original was missing in action and the whole side of the bus was substantially dented from being hit by a snowplow according to the guy i bought it from...

i fabbed these battery tray parts up and need to weld them in:

here is the rear passenger corner which i've straightened up quite a bit:

the last thing to fix int the engine compartment will be this carburator "cutout" area that a previous owner hacked in:

another area i need to prepare to fix or replace is the pass side rocker...you can see substantial decay on the top of the floor around the door latches and another dent (also caused by the damn snow plow incident):

and my nose replacement is slowly coming along...i've removed the remenants of my old nose from the window sill using a couple fabbed tools for the job (thanks chopped50ford for the "over the phone" help)..i also POR-15 the lower sill area and used the weld on nails method to straighten my heater duct a bit:

i gotta alot of work left...was originally hoping for Denver areas June "vws on the green" show but now thinking Jerome may be the first show that i will be ready for...
_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

TimB · Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:54 pm Post subject:

Good work.

You and Jeremyrockjock are now in competition for best samba bus welder.
_________________
'62 Rag Top Bug
'68 Autostick Bug

marklaken · Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:17 pm Post subject:

gearhead · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 11:47 pm Post subject: bus

mark now is the time for any wiring repair , gage replacement LOL . shit you sure have that bus apart . wish i lived closer to some of you guys as i did body work my whole life.
gearhead
_________________
67 westy
70 mci greyhound bus-that still needs a name

Roamingwesty · Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:11 am Post subject:

Great going Mark. You'll be one of my inspirations when I tear into my doublecab.

marklaken · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:15 am Post subject:

another update...last two weeks i finally got the cargo floor all cleaned up and painted with Masterseries CT:

and finally got everything prepped to my satisfaction and began welding up my donor nose:

preped donor panel with Rust Bullet and Masterseries on the headlight buckets...sprayed some aerosol pearl white on the bottom of the panel to check adhesion with rust bullet and it seemed okay to me...the rest will get painted/oversprayed when i get to the front interior painting:

checked for fit...not too bad...there is a slight difference in the windshield wiper holes on the passenger side...don't think it will be too noticable, but the windshiled wiper will not be exactly in the center of the wiper bucket on the nose....also the passenger side shows a little more of the flange that is tucked up under the windshield channel...not sure why but i'm not going to worry about it...it looks much better than the old nose panel:

with emblem Smile

and a close up of how i'm going about it...simple plug welds...i cranked the welder up to 3 and am doing 1/8" holes and am getting excellent penetration and weld adhesion:

_________________
Wish List:
1967 Wesfalia SO-42 Parts Needed: Kitchenette, Cot Poles

'65 rear left beetle fender

15" Bus Wheels in fair condition

Mark Laken
Fort Collins, CO

Major Woody · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:41 am Post subject:

Looking good, Mark.

bk63rag · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:31 pm Post subject:

Cool these do it your self post are inspiring to think about doing my metal work my self Smile

_________________
63 rag under construction for 30 years and counting.


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