Another Bus Resto picture book

[Chubber]

[Chubber]

[Chubber]

Playing catch-up on this thread, posting a bunch of work from the fall and winter.

Pulled the motor

and transmission. No troubles in either part. I'm evaluating the nose cone to see if I should press in new bushings. The trans has always worked well, just getting sloppy with old age and I suspect a lot of that is in the nosecone.

Ill probably press in a new main seal and clutch shaft bushing while I'm at it. Cheap parts, no better time to do them.

I pulled the whole rear suspension for sandblasting, priming and painting.

The rear apron wasn't in "bad" shape, but it was rusty with a few holes and a lot of surface bubbling.

I wire wheeled it down to see what the paint hid.

Just two little holes like this

Welded those up, ground them down and moved on to the rear engine hatch.
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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

The rear engine hatch had a few rusty bits along the bottom, so I fabbed a new patch piece.

When I was done acid washing it, I didn't want to wait a week for the seam to dry out, so I torched it. Better than having water under your primer.

New piece templated with cardboard, cut and welded in place.

Did a first coat of epoxy primer, filled a bunch of pinholes and waves, then primed two more coats.

I had pulled the gas tank out in about 2000 after I had an engine fire. I cleaned up the tank and painted with Rustoleum paint.

Still looks great.

A coat of Dupont Centari inside the gas tank shelf still looks perfect.

I've got your typical small rust in the filler neck, what a painful place to sand...

The inside of the gas tank cover still has the carpet underlayment I glued on it 16 years ago.

PSA: Do yourself a huge favor and get one of this kind of face mask if working under the bus. It kept metric buttloads of grit, rust and paint out of my face and fits easily over the respirator. Not expensive either.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

After all that work I had to prime and then paint the bottom. I think there are more nooks and crannies in the rear end than the rest of the car combined. Every time I thought I had it all done I would shift 6" to the side and see a bunch of places I had missed. Paint, move, paint, rotate 180%, paint, move, paint, rotate 90 degrees, paint, move, etc.

The first thing I repainted was the fuel pipe. Just primer inside, it's impervious to gasoline but the black paint is only resistant, so I don't use it on the inside of anything.

Getting started with the painting:

I didn't spray this time because the weather was terrible and I didn't have the time to clear out the garage and put up the shower curtains. The brush worked well, at the expense of a disposable thrift store shirt.

Continue around

Corrugations, stringers, pipes, wires, struts, braces, they all hide spots to be overlooked and missed

Hangers too

My next welding job is to rebuild the wheel arch on the right rear. It's really not too bad, except for the forward edge under the C pillar, but it's curved in strange ways, so locating the seam won't be trivial. I might install the rear brake lines at the same time.

Off the body I'm going to drain the transmission, pull the nosecone and order the parts I need to refresh the bushings throughout. I've picked up a few parts along the way and I need to inventory my spares to find all the parts I'll need.
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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Wow, I can't believe it's been 3 years since I updated this thread. I've made a lot of progress in the mean time and moved 2 years ago into a house much better suited for the work. But I'll go ahead and post some of the highlights here for the work I've been doing along the way.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Once most of the body work was done on the outside, I cleaned it up and sprayed everything with white epoxy primer. You can see the big shower curtains I made to be able to spray inside my 2 car garage/workshop. Cup hooks and clothesline allow me to open and close it.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

While the paint dried and when I couldn't take sanding any more, I worked on "rebuilding" the transmission by replacing the bushings and gaskets in the nosecone and throwout bearing.

_________________
Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

I also "cleaned" the inside by filling with ATF that I had laying around, spinning the input shaft fast with a drill while tipping all around, then draining out. I think I did that 2 or 3 times until the ATF came out schpic-und-schpan. I also added magnets to both tranny plugs to help catch any metal dust.

I also removed the liners and insulation from the flexible air hoses, cleaned them up and painted them and removed any traces of asbestos gaskets or insulation.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

I found some more pics of metal replacement along the rear wheel arches.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Now, on to the front of the right rear wheel arch. This was more complicated to fix on the inside than it was on the outside.

_________________
Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

I dipped everything in Masterseries primer, then moved on to work on dings, rust pits, etc on the rest of the rear end.

_________________
Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

I also took this opportunity to rebuild the shift rod. I replaced the bushings. I actually just take the old bushings, carve off the little button that sits inside the hole in the rod to keep it in place and push them back on the rod to help hold it centered in the tube near the middle. I feel like it supports it better so there is less flex near either end.

I also cleaned up the axle hubs and stubs and tapped the paint out of the mounting holes.

_________________
Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

More back brake work

Starting to come together underneath!

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Lubed the accel and E-brake cables before putting them back in

I picked up a used small oil sump to add, but the mounting flange was scratched, corroded and otherwise unsuitable for sealing to the engine. How to make flat again? Drill press + DA sander pad + 400 grit wet dry + oil.

I was trying t0 combine black and gray to get the off-black for detail parts. This looked good, but still not what I was hoping for.

_________________
Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Santa brought a surprise for 2017, a new house! Wife was flipping through Zillow one day and saw a house come up close by that had a unique feature that made my spidey sense tingle: Room to park 7 cars inside!

My garage hasn't been this empty since I moved in! The bus was the last thing to move. It took me more than 12 trips in my little HF trailer to empty the shop and attic of parts and supplies.

Fred is strapped in and ready to drive over to the new place!

The tow truck driver wouldn't back down the hill to the bottom driveway, so I "drove" while he ran off his recovery rope. Easy sailing.

Some pics of how much room is in the new "underground" garage. It's 2 cars wide and 49 feet deep. I cut off the end by the garage door with a plastic curtain to make a paint booth on that end.

First thing I did in the new place was pull the windshield and see how bad the rust was. I had rebuilt this with my first real welding on the bus back around 2004 or 2005, and I was curious how it had held up.

It looks worse than it really was.
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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

More windshield work. Where I had fixed it last time was mostly still solid, some new rust holes had started to develop. Some was only solid on the top, but as soon as the welder it it, it burned through, rusted on the back. I cut back to thick metal again and then closed it up. Lots of grinding, flap sanding, welding, repeat, repeat, repeat. Finally did phosphoric acid etch top and bottom, brushed on a couple of coats of epoxy, metal-2-metal filler, more epoxy, then blocked and filled and epoxy primer again.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

More windshield pics

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

The next big job to work on was fixing up the front seats. They were all original, broken foam and springs and crushed horsehair and everything.

As you can see, one of the foam bolsters on the back of the seat had disintegrated. As far as I know, this is a NLA part. So I made one out of Great Stuff.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)

[Chubber]

Some more seat pics. I made a couple of cutting mistakes and had some bubbles on the corners when I trimmed, so I re-filled some parts with foam and trimmed again.

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Chubber
'71 Deluxe 7 Passenger Bus (Resto thread)
'72 Fastback
'74 Super Beetle Convertible (Sold)