Forest Find 1961 Mouse Grey 11-Window Standard

[Longmont1302]

Here’s the first pass at the steel version of the patch, before bending, plug holes, and primer:

[Longmont1302]

I've made some progress bending and welding in this panel. I sprayed some zinc-based primer on the flip side (on the recomendation of the local welding shop where I refilled my first bottle of gas - for half the price of the national chain in Boulder). Because of the zinc I'm extra careful to wear a respirator and try not to put my head in the welding fumes. Still, I try to keep any primer out of the actual weld: it seems like you have to choose between preventing rust and contaminating the weld. I also experimented with cleaning up the surrounding area with naval jelly. That stuff is pretty cool, taking away surface rust and leaving OG paint behind.

[Culito]

Nice!!
_________________
Copyright CJ Industries, Inc.
'64 standard w/2.0L type 4
'62 bug

[Mr Margaret Scratcher]

[Longmont1302]

Thanks for the encouragement, Culito, and for the fine question, Mr. M.S.

[Culito]

You're fine, minor mods to the dogleg *may* be needed but that's common anyway.
Just make sure to have the door on and adjusted before you weld in the dogleg & bob's yer uncle.
_________________
Copyright CJ Industries, Inc.
'64 standard w/2.0L type 4
'62 bug

[Longmont1302]

[Longmont1302]

I've got my a-pillar piece welded in.

Plug welds on the sides and bottom, butt welds on the top. I had some little burn-through where the old steel at the top wasn't pristine. In the end I was able to fill the holes with weld, by turning the voltage to the lowest setting and keep the wire speed up. I have a little more clean up to do here then I am moving on to installing KlassicFab inner and outer lower dogleg repair sections (and reading as many threads as I can find on the topic).

[Riff Raff]

Nice to see you are still progressing on the bus.

Still a really cool bus too!!
_________________
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge
- Daniel Boorstin

[Mr Margaret Scratcher]

Looking good!

[Two Glove Boxes]

Good work!! Keep grinding no pun intended.
_________________
1951 Split Standard Hoffman Build

1960 Dove Blue Double Cab Patina Build

Two Glove Boxes

DLK

[Longmont1302]

Warning: the following may mention a vehicle made outside of Germany. I promise to deviate for one post only. Viewer discretion advised. HBO will show this program only at night.

Although it's been a while since I last posted, I continue to make slow progress on our bus. So slow, we've named our garage Glacial Speed Garage. I'm working on the logo, but that also takes time away from working on the bus. Perhaps the most pleasant of my many distractions is that my dad gave my 16-year old son the family truck, a 1956 Chevy 3200.

It's pretty much bone stock, with no significant collisions, just dents from hail and trees blown over in windstorms. Just as our bus lived its whole first life on a Minnesota children's camp, the truck lived its whole first life on a Minnesota resort, which my dad operated from 1975-1981. Long before I had a driver's license, I used this truck to deliver ice cubes to the guests in each cabin every day of the summer. How's that for old school?

Also like the bus, the truck started out life grey, and has never been stripped of its original paint. When minor repairs were required over the years, grey primer was used over the original paint. The hand painted letters "Island View Lodge, Gull Lake" can still be seen under grey primer, and the plan is to very carefully try to remove the primer and leave the lettering intact.

For safety's sake my son and I have added two three-point harnesses (which proved tricky with the large rear window), and have completely redone the drum brake system, replacing all lines, shoes, cylinders, as well as turning the drums (thanks, Charlie) and adding a dual master cylinder. My approach is to have him lead the work, rather than do the work for him. While I have a little more experience with tools, he's very clever and we make a good team. This has been a great learning experience for both of us. The mistakes we've made along the way will pay dividends when it comes time to do similar work on the bus. Because the bus and our '71 Super take up our only garage spaces, all this work has been done outside, which understandably slows down in the snowy months. That said, on many occasions we've tossed cardboard down on top of the snow to work underneath the truck.

Other distractions have included work on the bus not directly related to replacing the driver-side dogleg, but I'll begin to share that next time. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled program.

[cdennisg]

Nice to see that truck stay in the family. I am familiar with the area of the resort at Gull Lake. I grew up a little ways west of there.

BTW, your photos will get deleted from the samba gallery shortly. Only VW photos allowed in there. Gotta host them elsewhere (I use imgur) then put them in here.
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nothing

[Longmont1302]

Thanks, cdennisg. I tried to use images hosted on imgur instead, but struggled a little with the coding. In case others experience the same hurdles, I'll mention that I found the solution in a pretty obvious (and helpful) place: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6

[velvetgreen]

i like those old logos from back in the day- i hope you can rescue them under the repaint. *patience* is a virtue so your glacial shop might be just the ticket

i was able to find some logos under a repaint on my bus, again go slow. the "one shot" paint that the logo's on your bus may have originally been painted with is not very hard wearing so it is easy to wipe them off all together if you get too over zealous..

take a look at some before and after if you want

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_search.php?search_id=471485423&start=150

[Longmont1302]

Sometimes when I'm stumped or intimidated by the next task in the garage, I turn my attention to something completely different. I like to think that this allows my unconscious mind to puzzle away at the problem, but it might just be an excuse for a short attention span – or – simple procrastination.

So instead of diving headfirst into my dog leg replacement, I tried the football trick out for myself. I was inspired by the classic glideking version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQVre6S5J60. Here's mine, making good use of a scrap piece of plywood:


Link

[Longmont1302]

Next I decided that as I prepare to position my inner and outer driver's side doglegs, it might be helpful to attach the front bumper as it could offer an additional point of reference in the placement of the dogleg. Because the brackets were a bit mangled, I broke down and bought new ones from Wolfsburg West at $26.95 each. In retrospect, I could have straightened the old ones, but without having good ones to compare to, it was reassuring to know the bumper was somewhat close to the right place (at least as far as the brackets were concerned).

However, I got sidetracked again as I decided to try to straighten out and repair the mangled bumper guards. This one was the better of the two:

...and this was the other:

In the end, the first one was actually more work because it was badly bend behind one of the mounting brackets on the back side. I had to cut the welds off of that to remove it, bang away at the guard with it off, and then hope I welded it back on in the right place. The other had a tear, but it was easier to reposition, and I welded it back up. In the end I got both bumper guards a little closer to their original shape, and got the aftermarket bat bus black paint off, too.

I have begun to realize that the goal of my project is not to restore the bus, but more to repair it to the point where it looks like a worthy candidate for restoration. With that in mind, here's my "after" shots of the two brackets:

and

and here's the reassembled bumper (which had been all black, too):

I also managed to mount this on the bus, but I'm not sure it was a big help in dogleg placement after all. More on that next.

[Longmont1302]

Do you know the sliding tile puzzle? It’s sort of a vintage Rubik's cube for us B students.

To solve one, you have to slide tangentially related pieces further away from where they ultimately need to be in order to move other pieces toward their goal. Anyway, it seems like a good analogy for how I need to weld the dogleg patches in place, but I always continually find something else (that’s sort of related) that I have to do first.

I’ve watched the related glideking video and he's convinced me that the door needs to shut properly before I can position the dogleg. It makes sense. And my driver door sags quite a bit. It shuts hard and has no gap on the bottom and too much gap at the top. This is likely due to multiple causes, including this tear between the rivets on the bottom hinge.

I’ve seen a photo from a service manual that shows the approved way of repairing this and it involves a patch piece on the outside of the door, so that’s our plan. First we welded up the crack:

Then we cut a little thicker patch piece (maybe 12 gauge) and drilled holes in it to align with the three rivets. Here’s the rivets:

And here’s the start of the patch being welded in, with holes placed directly above the rivets. Bill suggested I countersink these holes and start the weld in that countersink.

I could have taken more time to make this look prettier, but I was trying hard not to burn through the thin door, and this area is not very visible. I took this photo when I was pretty close to calling it “good enough”:

In truth, the bottom of the door is pretty crusty and should probably be replaced. However, given that I'm new to this, using the original door as a guide for the dogleg seems more likely to lead to success than trying to get both the door and the dogleg positioned simultaneously. I figure I can consider completing the door sometime in the future when it’s the weak link in the entire project. That’s a long way off. Here’s what it looks like with a little primer:

You might think that this increased thickness would impede the door closure, but it doesn’t.

The next step: the lower hinge.

[Longmont1302]

With the tear between the rivets repaired, we bolted the driver door back on. This repair didn’t seem to make much of an immediate difference, so we began experimenting with shims. I saw these purpose-made shims by Alan Schofield, so I thought I’d try to make some. Here’s my version:

…and some other shims we tried:

We experimented with various shims in different places, but didn’t find a perfect combination. Looking for other solutions, I read multiple accounts of Lind smacking the hinges of priceless buses with a hammer and an article in the Fall 2021 issue of VW Trends that suggested using oversized hinge pins and “springing the hinge” using various sized punches. We went the later route.

Both because I think the bottom hinge is the primary culprit in our sag AND because I don’t want to replace my stock-sized mirror, we only replaced the bottom hinge pin. I ordered a first-size over reamer and pin from Wolfsburg West, and that process was pretty straight forward. Here’s the "after" picture:

While the new hinge is clearly tighter and sags less, we weren’t done yet. As the article suggested, we tried putting a small punch between the hinge and easing the door closed.

That made a small difference. So we moved to the next larger punch.

Eventually that did the trick. Check out this door action:

Link

With the door shutting smoothly and easily, the next step is to begin positioning the inner and outer dogleg repair sections in place.

[Longmont1302]

Here's the "before" photo on the driver's side dogleg:

I decided to buy lower dogleg patch pieces, rather than the whole dogleg halves, in part because our lower doglegs were much worse than the uppers, but also because doing the whole dogleg was more intimidating and expensive. I may regret it later, who knows?

While I have seen some folks have success welding the inner and outer lower dogleg pieces together before installing them on the bus, I chose to install them one at a time, for two reasons. First I believe it’s closer to what VW did when they installed full size inner and outer doglegs, and second, because I think this gives you more wiggle room for adjustment during the installation. Wiggle room is good.

It also made it possible to splice in the inner and outer patch pieces in slightly different places on the original remaining halves. But first I had to decide how much to amputate off the original dogleg. Here you can see a few different marks. Maybe I should cut here. Or there.

Here's where it ended up:

I wanted to use as much of the new metal as possible, but in the end cut a bit off the patch pieces too. Here’s the trimmed inner dogleg, held in place with sheet metal screws, viewed from the wheel well. I used a flange tool on the end to avoid a butt weld and spent a fair amount of time coaxing the replacement piece to match the shape of the old inner dogleg. One lesson that this project has demonstrated again and again is that if something isn’t fitting right don’t panic, but to figure out what needs to change before it does fit.

Getting the dogleg patch in the right place is challenging. Once the outer piece is temporarily screwed in place, you can use the door to judge placement, but before then it’s tricky. We bolted the bumper up to make sure it would line up, but who knows how twisted our bumper or bumper brackets are? I was glad we hadn’t cut the passenger dogleg up yet, as it was nice to have that handy for reference. Here’s the other end where it attaches to our newly repaired a-pillar:

And the side view:

Next I cut and began to fit the outer dogleg:

Because the inner dogleg is often in the way, the process of lining everything up is more complicated.To help, we welded some backing plates on the outer dogleg.

Once in place, we ran a screw through the upper dogleg though the backing plate to line things up.

Then we’d take all the screws out, make some adjustment to the inner dogleg, put them back together, and try again. Here we’ve bolted the bumper on again to check that positioning:

Once we’d taken them apart and put them together a few hundred thousand times, we began to think about welding them together. But first we put a bunch of holes in our brand new dog leg patch.

Then, of course we screwed them together and checked things again. Keep in mind, we still haven’t welded the inner dogleg in place yet!

Once we were sure the door gaps looked good we took the outer piece off again, and welded the inner piece in place:

...and here...

Then I began welding the outer into place:

...and more...

One of the tricky bits was getting the wheel well arch sorted out, smooth and uniform. We got it pretty close. Here’s a few more shots of the dog leg and door gap in its current “almost finished” phase. We have a little more grinding to do, then, once the weather warms up we’ll smooth things out with a thin coat of Bondo, then sanding, primer and paint.

Before I move to the passenger dogleg, I’m going to tackle an easier project, patching the seat pedestal. Film at eleven.