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Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:18 pm

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: your body guy is making my head hurt :lol:

I mentioned the patch work. He assured me it will look fine or he'll make it right.

Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:40 pm

babysnakes wrote: My folks used to live in Phoenix. I remember a particular hair pin up in the mountains with a pile of cars at the bottom of the ravine. :shock:
We have a hair pin up here near Los Alamos that usually gets a truck sent over the edge once a year. Once it was a road striping truck, and the woods and rocks below the point he went over were all painted white and yellow.

Hey, Don, don't worry all that awful green color is just primer. Right 'snakes? :wink:

Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:54 pm

jtauxe wrote:
Hey, Don, don't worry all that awful green color is just primer. Right 'snakes? :wink:

some places do a "mud coat" to "color it up" then do a final sand to check for any flaws. i hope that's what is going on here. Erik is a good dude and this has been a long ass project. i just want to see him get what he wants and not just 'settle' and rush the project.

Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:56 pm

"awful green" sure...

Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:04 pm

skills@eurocarsplus wrote:

some places do a "mud coat" to "color it up" then do a final sand to check for any flaws.

Pretty much. I' be going through it to find any lumps, divots,waves ect....
Once it's all done so to speak we will talk about how much blocking needs to be done. These buses were never straight to begin with. I don't want to have a mirror smooth as glass finish. That kind of work would cost a shit ton.

Wed Mar 17, 2021 6:49 pm

i left some of the factory waves in my blue bus.

to your point, they were never laser straight....and to get them that way you literally have to carve them out of body filler. the reality is if you were going for a REAL restoration you should be able to see a lot of the puckers from the spot welds etc.

Mon Apr 19, 2021 6:26 pm

Well here we go. Got the gates mounted up to see the fit (they were ordered while the truck was being deconstructed). The hinges are off by a cunt hair but enough to make for more work.

Now for the real bitch. The tailgate does not fit the side gate on the driver side.

This really sucks as these were ordered about 8-9 years ago and might be non returnable at this point. The pics were sent to me when it was getting late. More measurements will be taken tomorrow to determine the culprit. ](*,)

Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:12 pm

someone else just p/m'd me about gerson gates fitting like ass. that sucks.

i can put the 2 of you in touch if you'd like. shoot me a message and i will see if i can find his message

if it's any consolation his gates are new, not 9 years old so it's still a problem evidently

Tue Apr 20, 2021 2:37 am

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: someone else just p/m'd me about gerson gates fitting like ass.

From his website "CORRECT IN EVERY DETAIL". Fortunately I still have the OG tail gate and on side gate. The side gates really should be good because I gave him one of mine as a template.

Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:52 am

babysnakes wrote: skills@eurocarsplus wrote: someone else just p/m'd me about gerson gates fitting like ass.
From his website "CORRECT IN EVERY DETAIL". Fortunately I still have the OG tail gate and on side gate. The side gates really should be good because I gave him one of mine as a template.
Sheesh - they shouldn't need a template anymore. They should have these gates down!

And yet...

The Klassicfab gates I got for the double cab were fine except that some of the little bumps that define where the rectangular tie-downs go were off. I did not think to check until I had the truck home and tried out the tilt. This is after welding on the tie-downs and after paint. Why would they put these in the wrong place? Everything else was spot on. Damn it.

Very annoying!

In the end, I had Tom Buese make a new tilt canvas anyway, and it fits the gates that were built wrong. So, it worked out, but this is a one-off canvas for a one-off set of gates.
Thanks for working with me, Tom!
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=365187

I probably should tell Gerson, but I was sort of done with it.

Tue Apr 20, 2021 12:08 pm

jtauxe wrote: Sheesh - they shouldn't need a template anymore. They should have these gates down.

8-9 years ago he did not have SC gates. I gave him one of mine back then. My current side gates are based on the one I gave him. I believe the current issue is the tail gate. We will be measuring every thing including my OG tail and remaining side gate. I'll post results when I get them. People look at me cross eyed when I said I would not sell the old ones until the truck is finished.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 5:38 am

Well this happened a little more than a month ago.

Then the guy doing the work got the Covid. :shock: He was sick for about a month, couple of weeks in the hospital. Not good for a 50 year old. He's out now and feeling better but not 100%. He is back to work. :D I talk to him all the time, we have a good friendship over the years. So anyway...
She finally has all four wheels. 8) This is the first time in a decade all four have been on the ground.

As far as metal work goes. The passenger side dog leg and front floor need to be finished. Then I'll have to take a bunch of high quality photos of the gates to send to Gerson.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 6:13 am

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: someone else just p/m'd me about gerson gates fitting like ass. that sucks.

i can put the 2 of you in touch if you'd like. shoot me a message and i will see if i can find his message

if it's any consolation his gates are new, not 9 years old so it's still a problem evidently

Don’t know how I missed this thread, but I’m the someone else that had issues with the new green gates. They certainly aren’t “perfect in every way”, like suggested, but pretty damn good once massaged a bit. I received a nice chunk of dough back from Gerson on my recent SC gate set due to the rear gate needing some work to reduce the gap where it meets the sides. These are older pics when I got the truck back from paint in the Spring. Only the gates and bed were painted for now, a tad different from body of truck since I was going for paint code match of OG paint. Rest of the truck will match the gates one day. 😄

All hinge locations on the new gates were spot on and fit up perfect, however, my issue was the angle on the rear gate hinges leaving a pretty good gap at bottom where sides meet. Very pleased with the results and the refund received on gate purchase.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 6:20 am

I put a shit load of elbow grease into salvaging the bed. Quite a few hours wasting abrasive wheels with an Eastwood ECT and plenty of dust masks got me down to bare metal and then two coats of Masterseries silver, followed by three coats of color.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:29 am

brando90gl wrote: Don’t know how I missed this thread, but I’m the someone else that had issues with the new green gates. They certainly aren’t “perfect in every way”, like suggested, but pretty damn good once massaged a bit.

All hinge locations on the new gates were spot on and fit up perfect, however, my issue was the angle on the rear gate hinges leaving a pretty good gap at bottom where sides meet.

Well according to my builder it's not the hinges, everything lines up nice on the bottom. It seems to be the rear gate. The passenger side lines up with the side gate. It's the drivers side of the rear gate that was built shorter than the passenger side. The top of the gate also slopes forward on the drivers side but the passenger side looks correct. I'll be down at the shop next weekend taking pictures and comparing with the OG rear gate that came with the truck.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:50 am

babysnakes wrote: brando90gl wrote: Don’t know how I missed this thread, but I’m the someone else that had issues with the new green gates. They certainly aren’t “perfect in every way”, like suggested, but pretty damn good once massaged a bit.

All hinge locations on the new gates were spot on and fit up perfect, however, my issue was the angle on the rear gate hinges leaving a pretty good gap at bottom where sides meet.

Well according to my builder it's not the hinges, everything lines up nice on the bottom. It seems to be the rear gate. The passenger side lines up with the side gate. It's the drivers side of the rear gate that was built shorter than the passenger side. The top of the gate also slopes forward on the drivers side but the passenger side looks correct. I'll be down at the shop next weekend taking pictures and comparing with the OG rear gate that came with the truck.

If the rear gate is that far off, I’d imagine Gerson would make it right for you. When I first installed my new gates I wasn’t very happy at all, and it took a few phone calls, but in the end, he did what was right. He even offered to make a rear gate exactly like my original but I’d have to send the old gate to South America. I opted for a local fix at the body shop.

Thinking about what I just wrote……..hahahaha, the new gates were supposed to be exactly like the originals the first go around.

One more small thing on these gates that aren’t, “perfect in every way” was the threaded bung for the first bumpers right behind the cab is not present. I was prepared to install threaded inserts in these locations, but I found after drilling that the metal here was thick enough on my gates to actually cut threads for the bumpers.

Super nice truck you got, babysnakes! Nice work.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:14 am

brando90gl wrote: I put a shit load of elbow grease into salvaging the bed. Quite a few hours wasting abrasive wheels with an Eastwood ECT and plenty of dust masks got me down to bare metal and then two coats of Masterseries silver, followed by three coats of color.

What did you do to fill in the rivet holes?

Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:31 am

Holes filled with long hair fiberglass and sanded smooth.

Sun Jun 27, 2021 12:39 pm

Hey Brando, if you have the time would you mind taking a few close up shots of the rear left gates top and bottom where it meets with the side gate with the latch in the up position?

Sun Jun 27, 2021 1:08 pm

brando90gl wrote: I’m the someone else that had issues with the new green gates. They certainly aren’t “perfect in every way”, like suggested, but pretty damn good once massaged a bit.

glad you chimed in 8)

i can grab photos off of my truck if it comes to it, just let me know