58 Single Cab 300131

[werker]

From my entry in 'Today in bus hunting history':

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2798318&highlight=#2798318

It was two years ago that I purchased that and since then a bit has happened. However after some work on the paint this weekend, I decided to start a thread and get it all down before I began to forget it.

First off, here is the bus this morning.

The logos and passenger door are coming out well. The door is a replacement from a bus. The factory color on the entire door looks like a grey beige. The logos are on a very thin layer of L345'ish light grey which I can squeege off with a paint scraper and acetone. You can see the break in the colors.

I working on finding the break between the beige and grey so that the logos are conserved. If I keep large swaths of the grey, I am able to clean off the logos with a Q tip and acetone as seen in the ZIP and INC. I'll probably just follow the factory base as close to the letters as possible and see what comes from that. The red and white are from previous sandings and spot spray.

On the rest of the body I'm digging out what I think is Ivory under a grey then blue.

The layering of paint and body work has produced a pretty complicated story and I almost have it worked out.
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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
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Gremlin Killer

[werker]

When I bought the Single Cab in Jan 2008, it was a rainy day and I had only seen it the Sunday previous. After seeing it parked on the street with a for sale sign, I called the guy and took a test drive. The rear end had a gnarly clunk from thrust bearings and nothing blinked or wiped correctly but it ran and stopped. I had to sell my 69 deluxe to buy it for $2500.

Done and Done.

At the time I thought it had a split case transmission because the gearing was so low. Dumb mistake, it had a tunnel trans with small-nut RGBs.
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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

This first weekend I was mostly just cleaning out the car and seeing what life could be brought back into the paint. There was alot of dead material on the surface and that made the car a few shades lighter. I also pulled 6 dead mice from under the seat. Sorry no pix of that.

Check out the 4 over riders. It looked like a snarl.

I was able to get some of the dead paint off and deepen it a touch. There was alot of splattered paint on this side.

Logos!

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

Three months in and I had the car relatively safe to drive. Since I had some parts to off load I was off to BYOB.

The ag lands of the central coast.

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

Some working under the redwoods. At this point I had painted all of the rims black and turned the white wall to the outside for all of the tires. I found a replacement tunnel unit and put my small nut RGBs on it and viola, no more banging when you let the clutch our or change throttle.

I was also finally able to dig into those logos a bit.

I got this far and ran out of Acetone. Those logos stayed that way until las weekend (~2 years).

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[EverettB]

Cool, keep us updated.

You probably already did this but I did a Google search on Infra Zip car wash - no results.
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[werker]

Yep. I searched for the Auto Wash company and didn't find any reference. Strange as it was nationally franchised. Perhaps big dreams didn't get off the ground in Elmwood.

From what I've googled, there are two Elmwoods, one in Louisiana and one in Nebraska.

The map for La: http://tiny.cc/2135g
The map for Ne: http://tiny.cc/6raue

The Nebraska has a small newspaper and I'm going to follow up with a classified to see if anyone recalls the car wash. Then perhaps some photos? I'm expecting to see that logo'd door on a panel or kombi and not on the single cab as it is a replacement door. I'm not sure how to follow up on the La Elmwood.
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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[Culito]

Sweet truck!
If it was me, I'd hang that door in the garage - it's great wall art - and try to find an original paint ivory door as a replacement.

If you can find it, Jasco Green Strip is a mild paint stripper that I've had great luck with.
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Copyright CJ Industries, Inc.
'64 standard w/2.0L type 4
'62 bug

[werker]

When I bought it, the treasure chest lock/latch was completely buggered so I had to grind off the hinges to open it. Man was there a bunch of crap in there.
I am still looking for a replacement treasure chest latch. They come up from time to time in the classifieds but I am never ready when they cross my path.

Although it was a score overall. I got a few window channel felts, a jack, and some other things.

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

I knew there was some white paint under there and finally I said Fuck it, I'm just gonna strip the paint and see what happens. I started with Acetone on the driver door. This softened up the paint a bit and I was able to make some decent progress. The paint under here was looking great and represent the paint quality where they didn't do any body work before spraying. There are no sever sanding marks and the two layers of paint separated rather easily. I was using a sharpened metal paint scrapper and the paint was peeling off in strips.

However there is significant body work all over the car so I am faced with some dents and paint blending. Overall, I think this will be manageable as the ivory paint where I see it looks beautiful.

At this point I had blown through a lot of acetone so I switched to Jasco paint stripper and a plastic scraper and 0000 steel wool. I saved the acetone for cleanup after the stripping. That got the ivory nice and piano-like.

So yea, overall the paint isn't in that great of condition, but structurally, the car is amazing and dry. Check out the factory Ivory on the rockers!!
That was nice to see after seeing all the bare metal and bondo.

_________________
72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[BlastMasterMannyFresh]

what a killer truck, keep the pictures coming

[werker]

So an update on the paint. I mostly just found a few cans of paint at the local hardware store that looked close and painted over the sand through that was exposed when I stripped the old blue off. It doesn't look that great, but I left a strip on the edge for in the future when I want to really paint it. I think the gates are coming out great.

The door jams and interior are going to come out really nice. The P.O. used some adhesive to lay down some sort of material but the only thing left at this point is the glue. That is on top of the poorly prepared paint, so it makes for perfect stripper fodder. That all comes up and there is nice OG Ivory underneath.

I did alot of this work a while ago so there is some surface rust building up on the few exposed areas. It goes away easily so I'm not to concerned yet. More work stripping the blue and painting where there is no other option.....

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

Funny problem... the rear gate is factory Dove Blue under the respray blue. The other two gates are factory Ivory, which means I will eventually need a gate that I can paint or one from Gerson... anybody have an idea/offer?

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

The combination of chipping bondo, bad welds, wrong shade of blue, and wavy metal on my rear corners had finally got to me. That and I had a free afternoon...

Since I was in the process of making the whole car some shades of ivory, I decided to sand down the paint, hammer out a touch and then repaint.

The P.O. had welded just the back face of the rear corner to as a repair in the past. It was from a late model split with the large taillights thus the patches. But man it must have been beat as this whole panel is wavy as hell.

After some hammering. The body on this truck is solid, its just the paint that is schizophrenic... and as a confession, I accidentally sanded off the OG Ivory in the areas below the vent in front of the welds. I thought the whole panel was a replacement.

The right side is totally beat and will require lots of attention, but for now I'm going to focus on grinding and filling to make the taillight patches invisible. I used the sledge but mostly the river cobble from my front yard to get the corners right, and the stone had a flat face so I used that to press out some of the more annoying waves.

So here it is with a coat of flat ivory from the local hardware store, after some hammering and with no bondo. Some more hammering and a skim coat, this will look better. Don't even ask about the deck lid, I'm gonna hold out for Gersons 58lid.

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

The rear is the easy part. As I have the nose to deal with in the future as well. See the bondo cracking here?

Well I figured I would grind that out, get down to the bare metal and then paint over it.
But as you can see here, I got down to what it was hiding and stopped.

The PO had somehow stuck a nose on the frame and then just shoved it under the old nose, did some spot welds, slathered on the bondo and called it a day. Seriously when I saw that I just stopped and said fuck it. Thats why the last pic is just paint over it. I wanted to get the bare metal covered, and uphold the unspoken deal with my neighbors. So now the car looks normal from a quick glance from 25ft but up close it gets bad.
At least it will all be one color again and I'll know what panels to take care of.... one at a time. But it runs is licensed and insured. Rough but ready to go.

_________________
72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

Got the lights, bumper and license plate back on. It looks much better put together. But the corners are still crunchy. I'll get to that once I'm done stripping all the blue off. While I was at it, I redid all the turn signal connections, so now everything blinks right again. And since it's a 6v things are a touch brighter.

More work stripping paint off the side gates. I can't believe how much character the Ivory has under the blue. Using jasco paint stripper works great, but takes time. I probably have a couple hundred hours in now.

Finally, the new addition. Great grandmas 73 chevelle. It has 86k miles on the clock. When great grandma passed our uncle had it for a bit, then sold it to my father. Dad ran out of space so now I'm the curator. It is fun for trips around town. I also took it to the TRP swapmeet and it cruises nice on the freeway.

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[Culito]

Nice work on the excavation.
I never noticed that cab divider panel before. Single cabs get beat up!
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Copyright CJ Industries, Inc.
'64 standard w/2.0L type 4
'62 bug

[werker]

Yea, the divider has at least a 6 inch bowl to it. Something HUGE must have smashed it. (Or something small, like 10,000 times.)
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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

I finally finished stripping the left gate and moved on to the roof.

The paint up there is much slower to remove and very sensitive. I'm not doing anything different, but here it seems to be separating from the metal almost automatically. It must of have had some previous trauma, as next to these spots is perfectly strong paint.

I also replaced the flaking bondo over the bad metal work on the nose. I'll just cover that up and save it for another day a few years from now.

I also finished the headliner. Much nicer now.

While on the phone I stared down at the bed and was randomly brushing the dirt from between the cracks and got the idea that there may be good paint under there. The lighter spots is where I just hit it with the CLR and the truly white is where I put some paint stripper on it.

And the whole bed is like this!!!!

Can you imagine what it will look like when I'm finished? All weathered and old. Yet still the OG Ivory peeking out from behind all the years of work and wear...

Aaaah yes... Ivory bitches...

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer

[werker]

So I decided to take the truck out past the edge of town today and do a little photo shoot. It was perfect weather, a storm had just passed through and puffy leftovers were scraping their way over the sierras and coast range. Duffy came out. What a dog...

This is a great shot!

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72 Squareback
9th air-cooled
Proud Member #8, SBS (Stock Bus Society)
---------------------------------------
Gremlin Killer