Mikes 58 Ragtop Beetle Restoration

Rome

Have you thought about welding in the nuts and reinforcement plates for upper and lower 3-point safety belts in your B-pillars? Then weld the 3rd bolt mount onto the sides of your frame tunnel?

Mike1101

No, haven't given much thought to seatbelt mounts. Maybe now is a good time to do so. Appreciate the input, Rome. Thumbs Up

Mike1101

Completed both driver and passenger side rear body mount repairs. Mounting brackets were rusted pretty bad and noticed some metal distortion. This was due to moisture getting in between the two metal panels and rusting from the inside out. I could have went with some panels which include the mounting bracket, but my goal for this build is to keep as much original metal as possible and keep it looking period correct. So decided to repair what I had.
Parts used were left and right brackets purchased from kaeferland-shop.de/en/, 20 and 18 gauge sheet metal.

Starting on the passenger side, I removed the bracket and then began peeling off the subpanel. Once the subpanel was removed I could then see how much body metal I would need to replace. Fortunately, the metal towards the backend of the halfmoon was still good. This will help ensure proper alignment using the drilled spotwelds.

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Cut out rusted metal, wire wheeled and treated surface rust. Then sized and shaped new sheet metal panel.

The subpanel with the dome needed to be fabricated. Had to cut a lot of rust out but luckily most of the dome section was salvageable. With some 18 gauge sheet metal and sandblasting I was able to repair this piece.