Manufacturing cargo floor cross members

All the floor cross members had some sort of rust and rot. I could patch and repair what I need to, but if it's ever going to need replacing I figured now is the best time to go for it. Pricing up all the individual parts varies between £324.50 from Schofield to £483 from Muscle Bus, that price includes jacking points, which I have no intention in trying to make myself.

So I set about measuring up and sourcing the material. My initial quote was £125 uncut sheet, but I managed to find a local supplier who could cut to size and only charge me £50 cash with a small piece of scrap for another repair.

I was going to let you know how to calculate the bend allowance to work out the with of material required for 90 deg bend but in the end I just ended up winging it. I was able to get access to a workshop metal folder but only late in the evening after I had spent a couple of hours setting up the folder and bending a few practice pieces.

The first part to bend was the inner sill, at the time of buying the sheet I decided to use a thicker gauge than that fitted. This caused the problem of bending nearly a metre of 16 swg (1.6mm) thick steel which is very hard. I also forgot to set the grip strength evenly along the folder, this meant the edges rolled up as the material slipped back into the jaws. I had just the right amount of material so could not afford a mistake like this so I left these pieces and moved on to the I beam sections.

Without boring you too much I was up till 04.00 measuring, adjusting,  cutting and bending until my brain stopped working. I managed to get most bits folded and will have to do the box section later. You can see on the left the edge that slipped in the folder, I'll give this a bit of friendly persuasion to get flat.

B pillar repair and inner wheel arch left side

I think the pictures below show what I spent the last two days doing in my garage. Although It wasn't exactly all day, I did get a lie in each morning.

I pulled the rest off the left dog leg/wheel arch off and removed the lower support behind the front jacking point, this revealed the hole in the chassis. I also ground the under seal away to find a few more holes and a couple of patches that had got me through a few MOT's in the past.

For anyone replacing the bulk head panel/back inner arch panel in worse condition that this you may need to notice the tab that protrudes down, (click on the first 2 photos below to enlarge) this rests on the top hat section that sits behind this bulkhead allowing for a small gap along the rest of this edge. Cutting, forming, bending and filing can take up so much time, then welding, grinding and re-welding any holes then take up the rest of the day, giving you just enough time to spray on some primer before bed. Tip of the Day:- the best grinding disc I use is the disc with the small layered sheets of abrasive paper, they are so much easier, faster, smoother and even a little quieter than the conventional metal grinding discs.

I had to put 2 Joggles in the lower patch Id made, the outer was easily made with the Joggle pliers but the inner was too deep for these. I don't have a set of joggle wheels so I placed two similar thickness sheets of steel either side where the form line was required, then held with tape I squashed them in the vice (a fly press would have been better) that had several layers of tape on the teeth to protect marking the panel. The result came out OK, I had to finish the edges with a mallet and block and I should have placed the sheets a little closer together.

Cab Door Hinge Repair

As with most jobs at the moment one job has to be done before the first job can be finished. To repair the lower part of the bulkhead panel behind the front seats, I need the inner skin of the front wheel arch repaired, for that I need to remove the old wheel arch (dog leg) and to do that I need to align the door before the old wheel arch is removed. This leads me onto another job I've been avoiding, fitting the cab door hinge pins. But of course the hinges are cracked on the door skins so they need welding first...

The damage is both inside and out, so a quick clean with a rotary wire brush revealed all the cracks. I then clamped the skin and tacked a few spots, then turned up the welders' power so the welds along the cracks got deep penetration. A quick grind and tidy and job done. Then moving onto fitting the pins I couldn't find the correct size reamer to fit the interference fit for the hinges on the door so that's another job I've had to put on hold.

Cargo Bay Floor Removal Pt2

For the second attempt at attacking the floor I managed finish cutting all the way around and pull it up in one piece, although I did have to cut around the jacking points, and the spot welds under the seat rail plates had me stumped until I had a bit of help from a large chisel. The only things that gave me any trouble was the welding on the previously replaced sills. Although the door side was cut away earlier and also where the heater tubes come through the back of the floor, it was hard to get a cutting disc around most of it, so I chain drilled the tight corners here and the other places around the floor that a cutting disc would not fit.

One mistake I did make was along the front edge was cutting too deep through the floor and into the front support beam that was in reasonable condition. This means I will have to remove this support without damaging the lower edge of the forward bulkhead lower skin that this support is spot welded to. I am not sure how much trouble this will be.

As for the forward and back cut edges where the floor is folded up and spot welded I went round and peeled these remaining strips away by pealing and twisting the metal strips causing the welds to pop away leaving a small raised weld to grind off. This is a lot easier that grinding off the whole strip or drilling each weld but it could distort the good panel which is easy enough to tap straight again, but in the worst case it could rip away the weld so be careful when you do this. The edge of the floor that attaches between the rear wheel arches and the lower part of the forward engine bay fire wall is S shaped and not a simple 90 degree L shape as I thought, so I'll be leaving this part in tacked until I see what the new floor looks like.

Volks World Show 2009 at Sandown Park

Wise words to follow when I dont have to get up early in the morning.

Cargo Bay Floor Removal Pt1

After a lot of contemplation I finally committed to pulling up the whole cargo floor area. This was not a decision taken likely, many hours staring at the rust and the calculating how may repair patches would be needed in that corrugated floor, and how impressed I was with the replacement floors produced from Muscle Bus, finally got me to the decision to attack the many spot welds that pin this floor down. Once I started I knew I had made the right decision. I just hope I don't regret it later. I could have attacked the floor slicing it to pieces with a cutting disc along the edges of the outriggers which would have been fun but I felt I wanted some sort of recovery plan if I did make a huge balls up. So I decided to take the floor up in one piece, this meant removing every single spot weld. Although I had a spot weld drill I found it better to start with a sharp 1/8" drill bit carefully cutting only through the first piece of floor then finishing with a 3/16" that I'd slightly ground the tip flat so that it cut no further than the depth of the first drill bit. I only slipped through both pieces on a few holes and my knees suffered for too long on the ridges of the cargo floor.

Cargo Bay Clear Out

With a few hours to spare I managed to not sit in front of the TV and instead got myself into the garage. Although I wasn't in the mood for getting covered in rust I did manage to get the van out into the sun for a good clearout. That was after I pumped up the rear tyre with a cheap bike pump (not recommended for those with a heart condition). After a struggle drilling off a few rusty screws heads I was able to removed the rear pop outs to unearth some tiny pinhole rust spots in the gutter. I then cleared out the remaining interior, attachments, wires, insulation, gas pipes and old coppers (coins not Policemen) to get a good assessment of the whole cargo bay.

The 4 or 5 holes in the corrugated floor had not got any bigger than the first time I found them years ago, but the struts and floor supports I could see through these holes are looking very corroded. I brought a floor repair panel, but the idea of seam welding corrugation doesn't sound too good and could take a while.

Rear wheel arch and Cargo door latch rod repair

There are a few things I needed to do to get the rear cargo door lower skin to align in its original position and shape, the hole at the front of the left rear wheel arch needed patching up so that I could use the curve of that panel as a datum for the lower door skin. But as always another part needed repairing to get that panel to fit correctly. This could have carried on until I came around full circle, so I stopped at the inner wheel arch patch. The cargo bay floor and jacking mounts will have to wait till later.

Another little job to make sure the skin panels were fitting in the correct location was to repair the door locking rods (these are the rods that fit between both door skins and lock the door at the top and bottom from the central door handles) so the doors would not flap around like they did whilst on a bumpy road. A few beads of weld and a couple of minutes with a grinder and sanding disk sorted the corrosion on the lower part of the two cargo door latching rods. A little bead of weld along the worn parts of the lower latch sockets helped lock the doors in the correct position temporarily.

Cargo door repair

Well its Bug Jam weekend and sadly I’m not there, so it's a good time to focus my VW passion somewhere else and get back into the garage. Fueled up with leftover Chinese and some classic Aerosmith on repeat, I've decided to skip any attempts to repair the front arched (dog legs) and move further around the bus and start on the cargo door bottoms.

I've had a pair of cargo door inners for a while from the first batch of panels I bought a long time ago. They have weathered well but the quality of these is something to be desired, so I've recently ordered another pair from Auto Craft Engineering, They actually look like the bottom of the doors, they also include a box section to help locate the door handle locking rods.

A bit unsure where to start, I decided to try and keep as much of the original door inners as possible while keeping the length of the doors wright, this meant starting on the inner panel and getting that all to fit before cutting away the outer skin. My first cut was just below the first inner radius, I then tried the repair panel against the inner door and found the top hat section of the repair panel is a little thinner than the original. To recover from this I flattened out the inner radius of the repair piece to give me the length to cover the bad material (gap I'd cut out), this would not have been a problem if I'd just cut the old bit out at either end.

Once the panel and door were cut and filed, and I was sure they matched against the outer skin, I then made the bold move to cut away the outer skin. Using the tape as a guide and a 1 mm cutting disc I sliced off the lower portion of the repair skin to keep as much of the original door skin as possible.

How time flies by

It’s been a while since the van has been out from under its' cover, everyone who has a car project know how fast time goes by, and in the back of your mind you're thinking 'I must get something done on that car'. All the normal things in life have got in my way, lucky I don’t have kids otherwise I'd never get to see my van on the road. But a major part of garage time has been taken up by my other VW Beetle.

A bent con rod caused by a lost tin wear bolt I dropped in the inlet manifold. Remember to cover your inlets! A good 200 miles of tinkling noise coming from the engine before the bolt finally passed the valve and seized between the piston and the cylinder head.

 

Then a Ford Focus decided to cut in front of me while pulling away from the lights. After I jack-knifed him for trying to push me into a lamp post, I had to get the front of the car repaired. This then led to finding a cracked front suspension beam upper mount, this is probably due to going over too many speed humps in a lowered bug.

 

To top things a rotten heater channel that had stored a puddle full of water from the floods a few years ago decided to break through just before the MOT. This took up the week off that I'd put by to get the van restoration going again. The joys of owing an air cooled V Dub. May be next weekend I'll have some time to work on the van.

Still on going

The van project is still on going but work and exams have taken up a lot of time at the mo, I hope to post more on the project before the new year.PB

OK so its been a busy Christmas as well, so it will be updates in the new year.