1963 Beetle Deck Lid Hinge Repair

[vincestroud]

My deck lid was trying to fall off, so I decided to try and figure out what was happening and fix it. I took some photos as I went along, hopefully someone can use them as a reference if they need to do the same fix. I'm no professional, just a hack working in my garage so feel fre to blast my (lack of) workmanship.

The tools I used were a Miller Millermatic 140, a 4" angle grinder with a cutoff wheel and 60 grit sanding disc, and of course the 10mm socket to remove the decklid.

I started out by checking out the damage. I thought that the spot welds had broken, but I was wrong. The metal was actually torn behind the hinges. Passenger side hinge showed a previous "repair" attempt that was pretty brutal.

Next I drilled out the spot welds to remove the hinges. Both sides were bent about the same, and a hitting them with a ball peen hammer on the anvil part of my vise got them pretty straight.

Here you can see the metal under the hinge. It was pretty thrashed.

Broke out the cutoff wheel. This car has all of its original sheetmetal, so this was pretty traumatic for me. But it had to be done.

I cut some patches out of some scrap sheetmetal I had laying around. Not sure what gauge, but I put the micrometer on it and measured .035". For comparison, the original metal measured about the same. I took my time here trying to get the patch panels to fit as perfectly as I could, didn't want to have to fill massive gaps.

Once the patches were fit up, I burned them in. One side had a tear I had to weld up before I patched it. I am using flux core .030 wire, which is great for welding on thick stuff outside, but not ideal for this kind of work. I made it work, but proper wire and shielding gas is the way to go for body repairs.

Once everything was welded up, I had to grind down my awful welds. I got a bit crazy in one spot and ground too far, so I had to add more material and grind it back off.

Then it was time to re-attach the straightened out hinges. I welded them on with through the holes where the original spot welds were, then plug welded the other two holes on the hinge to give a little more weld area. I have seen other repairs where people have run a bead down each side of the hinge, but I don't really like how it looked.

And that's it. Blasted some primer on it and done. The plan is to pull this car apart to do the bodywork and paint soon, so the primer is fine for right now.

[Dake]

Anyone Have the measurements to place the hinges?

[bluebus86]

rather than cut out the metal maybe a doubler piece could be placed behind the tear and welded into place, then the hinge re-installed over both the doubler and the original metal???? No cutting out of the original metal would thus be required.
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[Mervo]

Reviving an older thread. This might help some others but no guarantees it is a perfect solution.

I did a similar repair on my left side henge to repair the loose spot welds. Then the process started! I found that the original curved brackets had lost their original angle and one had been bent excessively and was damaged. I replaced these with new ones.

Still no joy - big gap, uneven each side.

Off again and then measured with a digital gauge the level of the perches attached to the body to see if they were even. Both were out. The left side was 3mm higher than the right side and both were angled down about 3 degrees. In other words out both ways. Made up some appropriate ally spacers to level them both ways and attached the new curved brackets. There is no point spending days adjusting the bolts in their slots if the foundations are wrong.

Fitted the hood and there were still some issues. The M6 bolts and their threads on the hinges had been adjusted so many times in 60 years that they would not hold position on the curved brackets. I tapped the threads to M7 x1 and fitted short M7 bolts.

Then to understand how this system works as from the outside it all seems backwards!

I did a drawing of what the action points were for adjustment and that helped understand and get it right, in my case.

[Cusser]