'69 Westy finally getting the rehab it needs...

[Abscate]

Keep at it. There’s anything there a case of Miller and a box of Miller won’t fix



Where in Rot-and-Fester are you? I’m in the Finger Lakes half time summers and cruise through often
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.ssS!

[yugo42]

[yugo42]

Progress has been on hold the past month or so, but not for lack of interest or parts. I spent some time building a welding/plasma table and setting up a small corner of my 1925 garage to not catch fire so easily when I shoot sparks at it. I got back under the bus for a short while this past Sunday and removed more of the crusty bits of the heat tube and diverter. I was trying to take apart the diverter to salvage at least the cable and flap, but not sure it's worth the effort after fighting with it for a while. The crossmember is really pretty solid and it's worst feature is a crushed spot on the passenger side where someone probably tried to jack it up back in the day. It's not really hurting anything but I'll probably try to straighten it out some.

Anyway, good to be back under the bus even for a limited bit of time!

[Abscate]

Connect with user whaanga here , who is in Kodak city, too. ( really FlowervCity but who knows that?)
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.ssS!

[yugo42]

Well between May 2021 and December 2022 it appears all I did was remove a couple of heater cables and stare at things, but leading up to Christmas break I finally came to the realization that the only way I was going to fix the structure properly was through the top. Small garage with a bad floor and no room for a rotisserie even if I had one (I have lots of excuses). I hesitated because the floor is rock solid through most of the middle, but it's not like you can get patch panels of just the outer and front edges of the floor.
Here was the starting point. I had cut the rotted front corner out long ago just to get a look before I cut off the side belly pans.

It looks better here along the front and edges than it actually is. I had hoped to take the two halves out complete, but eventually realized that was probably dumb.

Picking my way through...

I've had better luck with the flat-ended spot weld drills over the rotabroach-type (Amazon quality), and used the Blair Stick Lube to help out. I can't believe how long these things lasted so far. I used a dead-blow hammer and Seam Buster chisel to pop the panels loose.

The pitted areas make it pretty hard to find the spot welds. The method has been guess and then see where the chisel stalls out.

I tried popping some of the hard to reach spots from underneath with a bottle jack. It worked pretty well in some spots, others I found myself lifting the bus and bending the floor just trying to detach some stupid tiny shred of sheet metal. Eventually I realized if I don't give myself some better access, there is no way I would separate these without damaging surrounding metal. Plus at this point I'm planning on new WW floor stampings anyway. Out comes the cutoff wheel.

This front corner was really tough considering how rusty it was. Lots of swearing and angry hammering let me get it the rest of the way out.

For those that have used this method, do you go back and weld in the marks left by the spot weld drill? Just the deeper ones? Don't bother?

I am down to the last (and hardest) part from the slider back. Only two top hat members and the whole outer perimeter to deal with!

I was hoping that I would discover that the front top hat was solid through the middle and I could get away with patching the wheel well ends only. Not the case, a couple mild pokes with the chisel corner (by hand) dug right through it.

Planning to go at the rest this weekend.

[blink]

doing such a good job.
I would normally go back and just weld them up so when you install your new floor that if you drill in the same spot it makes it easier to weld or you can fill the hole in from the underside and just plug weld the new floor in those locations.

[yugo42]

[Clatter]

Whoo! Nice!!
You go brother.

Was reading this thread thinking “just cut the whole floor out” the whole time!
Now you can see what needs done..

Ever go to http://www.kustomcoachwerks.com ?
They don’t do bay windows but details as to how they replace bus rust are priceless.
There’s also a user ‘burlyhammer’ on the split bus forum that’s a rust warrior to watch as well.

The main ladder frame -should- keep things aligned if it’s not too rusty itself.
If that were mine, I’d go get four big jack-stands,
Then pick the thing up off the floor a bit and level it all out using shims.

Also, i might tarp off a ‘booth’ and go nucking futs with a twisted knot wheel or even a sand blaster.
Get all of the old paint/bondo/rust you can first off.
Not only do you want to know in advance what is going to need done,
But the ling-term survival of your repairs depend hugely on how well you did chasing the rust from it’s hidey-holes.
Capillary action…Ain’t she a bitch?

Man… You got a project there.
We’ll be watching for sue.
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[yugo42]

I think I got my answer about bracing from the Haynes Transporter Resto manual and the Body/Paint forum here so I should be good to chop away without it.

I didn't get as far this weekend as I had hoped, but as I am getting into these last two rows of spot welds and areas where the walls meet the floor, I am realizing I'm going to have to slice and dice a little more to save the surrounding metal. I cut back along the edge near the rocker supports and across in front of the rear-most top hat so I can start working the spot welds apart as I go across. The left and right rear corners where the floor goes under the inner wall is going to be tricky too. Not sure whether to sacrifice the L-shaped piece that ties the floor to the wall or attempt to chisel the bottom apart.

I started out not wanting to cut up these floors too much so I could save some German metal, but it was probably a waste of time. WW seems to make good repros, and the edges of mine are rusted enough that I can't reuse them. Maybe I can salvage some patch pieces for someone that wants factory floor chunks!

[yugo42]

Thanks, Clatter! She’s a crusty Northeast girl through and through! I keep waffling between trying to get the bus off the ground for access and keeping it on wheels so it can be rolled out of the garage if necessary. I need to get some taller jack stands and have even considered those RV leveling jacks (I know, not made for this purpose and fraught with danger!!). My garage floor looking like the aftermath of an earthquake doesn’t help. I’ll definitely have to get it off the ground to do that front top hat.

I’ll be looking at that Kustom Koach Werks for sure, looks like a lot of inspiring photo spreads on there!

[busdaddy]

Bracing isn't necessary for that job, but do make sure the bus is level on jack stands before welding it back in. That means a level across the rear hatch sill should match one placed across the cab floor, the body can twist when the floor is out, weld in the floor when tweaked and it's like that for ever...
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Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

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[yugo42]

[yugo42]

Finally got an afternoon to go back at it, so I got the machine up on a new set of stilts. I have some more fine shimming to do, but at least the front and rear are about equally-crooked side to side. I lucked out in that the stands aren't sitting across any egregious floor cracks.

I got almost all of the passenger side rear of the floor out, save for the small chunk I left along the top of the rocker supports and in the wall cavity. I'm still unsure of the best way to remove that part since it's so pockmarked with rust. Guess at the spot welds, chisel out what I can, grind off the rest?

I got a little overexcited with the cutoff wheel and have to weld in a couple of shallow oopsies along the top of this frame rail and bracket.

I borrowed this oscillating tool from my father and got a metal blade for it. It's been really handy for getting inside corners where the Dremel and grinder can't reach with cutoff wheels. Seeing the grinding sparks shoot below the floor reminded me I still have some old fuel in the tank, but I feel like it will only make the danger worse if I try to drain the tank now and make a fumy mess. I am going to have to get it out of the way to fix this spot above the heat tube - maybe in the spring when I can wheel it outside.

I guess i should take the jacket off this heat Y-pipe and see if it's as angry-looking as the front one.

It's funny how the more floor I remove, the more I have to put back in just to have a place to set things!

[yugo42]

Got the last big floor chunk out yesterday! That should be it for the hard work on this restoration, right?

I took the diaper off the heat Y-pipes and was surprised how not-poopy they were. I think they are salvageable right up to the crossmember.

I had been putting off removing the sliding door just because it's another bulky think to find a spot for in the garage. With that out of the way, I freed the last chunk on the passenger side rear corner.

I definitely chewed through my second set of spot weld cutters faster than the first, despite prodigious lubrication. Possibly it's the rustier areas that I'm dealing with, possibly quality variation since they're just Amazon bits, possibly difference in the force I'm using. I have the 6.5mm one from each set which is still usable and they will come in handy with some of the smaller spot welds on the top hat/jack point parts.

Only this area left to go, and I can consider the floor to be fully departed!

[yugo42]

Everyone has to be sick of cargo floor pics by now, but got the last remnant out yesterday with a combination of drilling, grinding, oscillating tool, and a new burr tool set I picked up for the Dremel. Had a cold all weekend but I managed a couple hours of work. Next steps are to remove the front top hat and the rusty rocker supports on the driver's side. That and I still have a small strip of belly pan stuck to one frame member that I eventually have to remove - might as well do that while I'm in spot weld tedium mode!

[yugo42]

Another relatively short session, but I managed to clean out some potential fire hazards I had in the rear hatch area (cardboard, interior wood scraps, anything that made me nervous getting hit with grinding sparks) and stash the floor pieces away. First a quick "what was inside is now outside" photo op...

I tried to measure the offsets from the floor supports up to the inner rocker top surface, but those rocker flanges are pretty wavy so I will want to confirm this. It seems like the prevailing wisdom is to have a new floor in hand to measure the offset before welding in the rocker supports. On average it was about 7mm for the small offset and 12.5 for the larger offsets. The front top hat to the rocker lip was closer to 15mm but it's also pretty deteriorated.

I started working on removing the front top hat section. The crossmember is surprisingly OK, but the outriggers are spent. The worst is the driver's side so I started there using a quick and dirty method since there was nothing salvageable there.

I will have to remove the remaining flange from the frame rail, but started picking away toward the center. It's clear this is going to have to come out one piece at a time, as Johnny Cash would say.

[yugo42]

Went at the rest of the front top hat section yesterday afternoon. The first order was to cut most of the top and rear off with the grinder, leaving the flange behind to drill out the spot welds and remove later.

The passenger side outrigger here was nearly as bad as the drivers side, so I hacked the outrigger and most of right end of the top hat out together with the sawzall.

The Haynes restoration book recommends that you cut across the leftover front tophat face about 1/4" down from the top, but there are two pieces of sheet metal overlapping at the front and that would lop off the bottom of one of them. These are stitch welded from the front (under the bus). Instead of this cut, I pounded the seam buster chisel between the top hat and sheet until I could see a divot where the metal was fused. I used the Dremel and burr bit to thin the metal around the welds, cut across just above the flange with the cutoff wheel (with the guard removed from the grinder to get closer), and then popped each location loose with the seam buster and some wiggling. The Haynes way definitely would have been faster, but I didn't want to accidentally cut through the wrong thing.

I still have to get the flange remnants off the front of the crossmember and the outrigger flanges off of the frame before new metal can go in, but now I have access to clean out junk from the crossmember and maybe even knock out the dents (where someone clearly tried to jack it up from there a couple of times).

[yugo42]

I got some more metal removed that was not that photo-worthy, and I'm not sure I saved myself much work by keeping the crossmember. I could have had the top hat out MUCH more quickly if I just chopped it all out, but it does at least give me a reference for lining up the new top hat and outriggers, plus I didn't have to risk burning anything in the conduit tubes.

This past weekend I finally got to do something I've been looking forward to since I bought this thing. The ugly drivers side rocker remnants have been evicted!

I am debating what to do with the rear jack point on this side. It has a crunchy blowhole on the back side of it but may be patchable. The outrigger seems solid enough and I have a Klokkerholm replacement jack point (it's actually nice, believe it or not). I'll probably cut out the worst areas of it and then assess what to do.

I held the new rocker supports in place just to see what they would look like. I have an Autocraft inner support and a Preservation Parts middle. Since the Preservation rocker supports don't follow the original curve shape, I'm going to have to cut it and modify to get it to fit inside the Autocraft piece. The new top hat will come first, but I need to think about getting floor pans on order soon to make sure these supports go on in a happy place.

[yugo42]

I managed to pound and form the worst dents out of the front crossmember and the rear-most outrigger on the driver's side. The outrigger isn't pretty, but I pushed out the worst caved-in part.

The ds rear jack point got some exploratory surgery, and unfortunately needs a transplant. Once I scraped out the rusty mulch, there wasn't much left to the channel that supports the jack.

I said below how nice and solid the Klokkerholm replacement jack point is, and that's true...but dimensionally it sucks. The front support gusset is crooked and way off target. I hopefully can get away with just moving the gusset, but it may require blending it with the old jack point body in order to get it to sit at the right height. I only bought this one because it was the only version in stock at the time.

Determined to end on some good news, I started dry-fitting the front top hat on the left side so I can cut it to length and re-form the tabs. Getting closer to new metal time!

[yugo42]

Got to play a little dress-up this weekend once I re-sized the front top-hat half, just to see what she'd look like with new metal! I have some clean-up and coating to do before I weld these on, but it looks like a decent fit. I'll have to bite the bullet and get the floors so I can verify the position of this.

I got a little sidetracked scraping some bondo out of the way just to see where the good sheetmetal ends above the rocker. A heat gun on low and a putty knife were doing pretty well.

Finally I took some measurements and chopped the rear jack point out of there ahead of fitting the replacement. I had some trouble removing the spot welds on the back side where access is tight, so I'll probably just cut that whole tab off and make a new one.