Author |
Message |
nlorntson Crazy VW Lady
Joined: March 13, 2004 Posts: 3783 Location: Twin Cities, MN
|
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 10:18 pm Post subject: Truck gate repair |
|
|
We are restoring a 1963 Double cab so I thought it might be nice to share some pictures of the gate repairs.
The bottom rails on all three gates were pretty rough although it was not evident at first glance because a PO had filled every dent and rust hole with bondo and sculpted it to look nice.
Each of the spotwelds holding the rib to the outer panel and vertical ribs must be drilled out. If you remove the paint and get down to metal you can see where each one is.
It appears VW never painted the inside of these gates so they rust like crazy. Here is the bottom rib mostly removed:
Here is one of the vertical ribs removed. Note the drain pressing on the top rib. The KF green replacement pieces don't have this drain pressing.
The bottom rib has the outer skin spot welded and crimped tightly around the lower edge. To separate the two, each spot weld must be ground off and the two pieces gently spread apart. Too much and the crimp will be torn or too stretched to redo.
We sand blasted the gates once the pieces to be replaced were all removed:
The KF pieces also don't come wtih the drain holes so we added them too.
The hinges did not fit the profile of the KF green piece. Here you can see the difference. We had to remove some of the lip of the hinge to get it to drop down in the rib properly.
The hinges are mounted to the gate via quite a few tiny spotwelds
Here is the part number of the hinge.
Once everything is cleaned up the piece can be slipped in and positioned. It is important that the gate be straight first. This gate had a slight bow in it caused by two dents in the top rib.
These dents were worked out and the bow was removed.
Once the gate is straight the new piece will slip right in. Welding is straight forward by flipping the gate over and welding from the outside.
The corners and center ribs are welded
Lastly the crimp is welded and gently restored.
The gate looks much better now!
A bit more welding and grinding to be done.
These are a lot of work but they can be done. We blasted as much as we could up inside the other ribs, but I think we will probably coat the inside with some type of chassis internal frame coating or similar befoe we start the bodywork on them. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
kalymnos Samba Member
Joined: January 22, 2010 Posts: 112 Location: Hamburg/Germany
|
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 3:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Love this kind of contributions on "TheSamba"; love "TheSamba" at all. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
Huetti_1989 Samba Member
Joined: February 13, 2011 Posts: 1136 Location: Austria
|
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Thanks you too for sharing!
Did the outer skin is in good shape at all?
I must replace the outer skin at some points too, this is bad i think... |
|
Back to top |
|
|
cru62 Samba Member
Joined: December 31, 2002 Posts: 4117 Location: Margaritaville.....24/7
|
|
Back to top |
|
|
Alexmobil Samba Member
Joined: November 28, 2010 Posts: 71 Location: El Salvador
|
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Excelent!
IŽll have to do the same job with the DC dropgates and this thread will be a great reference. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
easy e Samba Member
Joined: May 28, 2008 Posts: 3931 Location: 1 hr north of Santa Barbara
|
|
Back to top |
|
|
nlorntson Crazy VW Lady
Joined: March 13, 2004 Posts: 3783 Location: Twin Cities, MN
|
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:24 pm Post subject: |
|
|
easy e wrote: |
Nice job on the gates!
The part number on the hinge, shown above (261829365)... is for what I suspect to be the hinge half |
Thank you e!
Yes, that part number is on the piece that attaches to the truck. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
mr white Samba Member
Joined: October 02, 2005 Posts: 1193 Location: beautiful Oregon & Mohave County, AZ
|
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I vote sticky! Good clean honest info here. Nice job Sir,thanks for taking the time to share. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
|