1962 - "San Bernardino" - Ghia Project

[8URN]

Great project and skills, looking forward to see how this turns out

I nearly bought a terra brown from Holland in the early noughties, loved the colour:

If your looking to restore the interior you can still get the original seat cloth material:

https://www.smsautofabrics.com/products/seat-materials/foreign-cars/volkswagen.php

Did you sell the engine bay sheet metal?

[Inchpincher61]

Here are some pictures of the preparation of the fender. I am almost finished with the disassembly...

Furthermore we finished the corrections of the A-Pillar so we can soon move on with the rear end of the car.

[Mellow Yellow 74]

Wow, you are replacing the entire rear quarter and not just the outer panel! I am doing major surgery but not sure I would be brave enough to attempt this. Can you please show how you are bracing the body for when you cut the old one out?
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1962 Karmann Ghia
1974 Deluxe Microbus
1985 Caravelle (Vanagon)

[Inchpincher61]

@ Mellow Yellow: The first idea was to replace the whole section including the b-pillar but without the inner part you have below the quarter window. BUT we are now thinking about removing the outer wheel shell as well because this is the last chance to remove possible rust between the shell and the fender.

Except of the rear building site we did some progress in the front. We finished the little corner at the bottom of the A-pillar. Unfortunately it was not fixed at all so we connected it to the A-pillar and restored the edge of the fender... here we tried to form this section for beeing able to derive possible rain/water..

[Inchpincher61]

Hello Guys,

Its been a while since my last post but we of course made some progress in the meantime. The first goal was to finish the front. After welding on the top of the fender we have added some pewter to avoid centimeters of bondo.

Umfortunately the previous owner uses the same "technology" for the nose. We thought about leaving this section as it is but we were not sure about the rust between the two layers. Finally we wanted to have a continious weld even if the nose would maybe have some dents due to the welding.

AND I think it was the right decision:

So the the front is finished now, the door seems to be in the right position, the door gap is fine as well so its time to prepare the rear fender

[c21darrel]

Very nice work!!
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GhiaBuild
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=481184
1967 DC build
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Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

[Inchpincher61]

Hello Guys...

due to some other projects the Ghia is growing quite slow but fine I guess...

After stripping the fender we discovered some bigger dents and of course some rust but nothing too bad. Anyway its a lot of work until you have a useable fender for the Ghia....

To see if the fender has almost the same line like the passenger side we have built a simple tool to transfer the shape...

...replaced the rear corner...

...and finished it with some pewter...

...last but not least the lower section has been replaced with the original part that has been cut out the car...

I hope its going to have a good fit on the car...but we will see.

[Inchpincher61]

Today I picked up the rear end from plastic blasting and 2K epoxy priming...

Awesome job from "Strahlwerk Deluxe" -> more aircooled stuff on FACEBOOK

[Inchpincher61]

Today we have taken a closer look to the fitment of the spare for the engine bay.

Passenger side looks fine.

At the driver side the inner wheel housing just need to be "hammered" back into the right shape... but its still close to the right position.

[CiderGuy]

The engine bay is my next major job on my convertible. How difficult was cutting out the two sides and rear sections ? Is there any thing I should look for ? Thanks
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Cars Currently Owned:

1970 Karmann Ghia Coupe
1973 Karmann Ghia Coupe - Project car for sale
1970 Karmann Ghia Convertible (Body off restoration)

Timing is everything

[Inchpincher61]

It depends on the spare parts you have for the replacement. If you don´t need the old metal you can cut everything out piece by piece. I would recommend to keep the bumper mounts if possible because in my mind these are good reference points. Furthermore you should try not to damage the parts that you keep in the car because this is your future base for the welding... so take your time for the disassembly.

[kgj]

Plenty going on here and equally inspiring.
I too will be heading into the engine bay soon so thanks for posting.
I'm watching.
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1958 coupe

[CiderGuy]

[Mellow Yellow 74]

[CiderGuy]

[Mellow Yellow 74]

[Inchpincher61]

@YellowMellow... thanks for the explanation. At the moment the parts are just laying in the car. We are going to fix all parts with screws first before the welding.

@ciderguy... yes everything is put together with spot welds...a lot of spot welds! I drilled out every single spot. Same as I had to do at the new fender. I needed about 10 spot weld cutter drill bits until I had everything dissassembled.

Here is a pic of the mentioned bracket sitting below the battery tray:

[c21darrel]

[CiderGuy]

[Rome]

Cider, you can see the short section of that rubber seal in the shot below. It's located at the transition of the rear of the flat engine surround panel to the vertical rear panel. Painted body color. This is on my pearl white '64 Ghia cabrio which has original paint in the engine compartment. Yeah, that rear area could use a bit of a cleaning . There is another such seal on the right side, but I don't have a good shot of it.