OT plastic kit car

[Ulu]

Well folks, I was way too optimistic about the amount of rust on this chassis.

 

When I started digging around into the seams of the frame head, and looking inside the tunnel, I realized there was a lot of sealer concealing rust-out.

 

I opened these up with chisel and hammer, wherever there were perforations.

 

above…

 

 

 

Below…

 

inside…

Old repairs below are still solid, but were never comprehensive.

 

 

 

 

[Plymouthy Adams]

yeah a few surprises come with every old car......you will be wise to bring this up to speed for safety immediately and long term use down the road.  I got a bit more of a surprise when I removed the back glass from the yellow AA I have here.  I work a bit on it now and then, this was my surprise:

 

 

 

 

24 hours later and about 7.5 hours in the shop I have it at this stage....

 

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by Plymouthy Adams

[Ulu]

Yeah you can’t buy a patch panels for a car like that can you? Everything has to be made from scratch.

 

That’s the Austin America? I remember that car: looks like an MG in the front?

[Plymouthy Adams]

You are right, body panels are not easy to come by for these.  I was fortunate that I had a car with the entire floor and rocker shot to hang but the upper parts in decent shape.  I started the cutting of this car and decided before sending anything to the scraper....inspect my 5 other AAs for anything this one can donate a part for.  Thankfully the rear lower glass pinch and package tray was in good shape on the donor.   Saved me a ton of fabrication work.   Laying the bodies out for exact cut lines and fitting of the chunk was critical but not that bad a process.  

 

IF I recall your floor pan is older VW and these are probably common in Cali.  with the extended front it would not be a swap but repair chunks should be handi...

[Ulu]

I do not like the way the Volkswagen frame head and tunnel take up all the space that I want to use for batteries and fuel tanks and tools. Currently I am planning to cut the rusty mess away & reframe the whole front of the car.

 

These are my photos of a mock up using some parts I already have.

 

I have frame rails from a 1970s garden tractor which are quite stout, and the dimensions are just right to go from the welded frame appliance back to the forward running board crossmember.

 

You can ignore all those minor bits of 1” tubing as they are just things I was playing with to hold my mock-up together.

 

These rails will lap over the frame extension, and are the same gage.

 

The Volkswagen pan will have to get bobbed off, and it will tuck inside these rails and weld to them. There is a crossmember under the pan, right where they end, at the currently imaginary A-post.

 

They will get some tubing, to carry this onto the rear suspension. The cowl support structure will also land on these rails

Every part of the Volkswagen frame, forward of the firewall, will be replaced, Due to rust damage, poor repairs, and poor initial construction work.

 

It will need a sturdy crossmember at the firewall, and one forward intermediate as well. The pan is 0.032”   while the tunnel is 0.065”. The rails are 1/8” but the new forward floor pan and crossmembers will be from 0.050”.

 

I still don’t have a MiG welder, but I’m about ready to start cutting things up and tack it all together with the acetylene torch. OK, the truth is I could do the entire job with acetylene, but I really want a MIG.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Ulu

[Plymouthy Adams]

I am still an old die hard torch man myself......just get the right size tip for the metal you welding and let the big dog eat....I have a MIG and have really never used it....but I have a plan to build a small 28 x 75 weld table and will more than not use it then to do this task.   Also just grabbed metal enough I think to build a good stand for my pipe vise I wish to fabricate.

[Ulu]

Aftermarket “stock” repair parts for this frame are widely available, but I am not building a stocker. No need to duplicate mass-production work here.

 

String first, then tape, then paint…

Then, nibbler, drill, sawzall, grinder.

 

The drops.

 

Then a new mock-up & soon more trimming.

 

 

 

[Plymouthy Adams]

progress......everyone likes that in a project.....that frame looks more like it should be for the style body....hard for me to imagine the fit before your mods...

[Ulu]

It was an abomination. The whole build, from stem to stern. The pan did not fit geometrically, structurally nor aesthetically.

 

I am digging this idea a lot but I have to take the torque capacity of the missing beetle shell and develop that back somehow. A stout ladder frame will do it, but will add weight.

 

Rumor has it this car is 100s of lbs  lighter than a beetle, but it won’t be when I get done. I’ve lopped off 3 pounds and added about 50 in steel. 

But the stiffness I am adding will pay off big time. Right now the car is flexible and I guarantee it will not hold the road in a critical situation. Small bump will send it in to oversteer or slight crowning into understeer. I can just see myself drifting off the road.

 

This is a section at the Napoleon hat shaped crossmember It is doing nothing but hide rust, and needs to go. You can see new heavy underplating of the pre-decomposed VW corpus. It hides lacy internal stiffeners & rotting lap joints a-plenty. This is a main beetle body mount. On my kit the whole business is dunnage.

Then I must open that front frame head, defeat the rust, & rebuild it somehow into a substantially better structure.

Next mock-up underway:

This will also help close off the corner of the floor and will act as the floor ledger, once brought down into position.

These are .090 stamped steel, & will brace and box the rails back to the big crossmember (that doesn’t exist yet.)

 

Fit-up is all wonky & I need to bob the hat some more, but it’s too late to run the grinder. 

[Ulu]

Pre-bob, fender removed, shows the Volkswagen wartz.

It is difficult to see the cowl flange, because it’s painted flat black and it fits down in the pan, but there are five 1/4” holes you can see that bolt it down.

 

Fender on, wartz off!

 

(“On” meaning on blocks and a sledge handle prop.)

 

The fender hides the cowl (not installed) which hides the tractor frame, and you can just see a tiny bit of rusty steel peeking through the fiberglass notch. That was the notch they had to make to get over that dayum Napoleon hat (that they should’ve just cut off and thrown it away!)

 

Anyhow the cowl flanges have nothing to sit on now, and I must bob them off. Everything will then bolt straight thru the garden tractor frame.

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Too much life is getting in the way of my fun! I have not been able to work on the cars as much as I would like.

 

Time to break out the demolition tools and run amok, eh?

Anyhow I finally bobbed off the floor pan, and chiseled off some more rusty metal so I could see what was underneath, and as expected, it was more rusty metal.

I stuck a chisel through a hole in the frame which was concealed by the mount where the brake cylinder was.

 

ALSO

It amazes me how a guy would lay down a half inch fillet weld on 16, 18 & 20 gauge sheet metal. ?

 

 

[Ulu]

OK, I am back on the case & I collected some new used steel today for my frame. Here I am leveling, stringing & establishing a Centerline, before I start cutting anything more.

There’s about a quarter inch of twist in this chassis taken across 4 feet of width. That’s probably not bad for a roadster

 

Anyhow the frame is also a 1/4” short on the driver side. There’s lots of weld draw on the tunnel. It will need relief cuts during the setup process.

 

 

[Tooljunkie]

As long as you are more relentless than the rust, you will win the battle. 
thats what i see here, a battle. 
 

i have had several mig welders over 30 years. I would never be without one now. My latest is mig,tig and stick. I have no idea how to tig weld. Some day i will connect the gas..

[Ulu]

4 minutes ago, Tooljunkie said:

As long as you are more relentless than the rust, you will win the battle. 
thats what i see here, a battle. 
 

i have had several mig welders over 30 years. I would never be without one now. My latest is mig,tig and stick. I have no idea how to tig weld. Some day i will connect the gas..

If you have been welding for 30 years and you have never used a TIG welder you are going to kick yourself in the butt for waiting so long.

[Tooljunkie]

2 hours ago, Ulu said:

If you have been welding for 30 years and you have never used a TIG welder you are going to kick yourself in the butt for waiting so long.

I have tried a little, having difficulty wrapping my head around it. Its lift arc, will take some time to figure out. 

[Ulu]

I learned to weld with a stick first, then with acetylene torch, and then with the TIG and finally with the MIG.

 

I found it after welding with an acetylene torch that it was very easy to pick up a TIG torch. But I’m not good at it because I haven’t had any practice with TIG in 45 years.

 

But that is going to change very soon if the state of California doesn’t rip me off to bad over taxes. I still haven’t paid the taxes on this car and I need to go in September for sure or the penalties will be enormous.

 

I have been looking at a multifunction welder online, & it has some terrific reviews. Almost 900 of them. But it’s only $795.

 

This is OK for my purposes & it’s not industrial quality, but I think they quoted 60% duty cycle At 180 A, running on 220 VAC. That’s pretty impressive.

 

The main housing appears to be plastic and it does not have a water cooled TIG torch, although it does come with the foot start pedal. I’m not sure if it is a switch or a rheostat type.

 

For that price I’m not expecting a miracle.

 

The only TIG welder that I am really familiar with is a high dollar Hobart from the 70s, but it had everything. AC/DC & full pulse modulation, frequency control, voltage, plus start voltage, start delay timing, and things I don’t remember.  I never had to touch the electrode down: just get it close in, step on the pedal and go.

 

Also I did not have the task of setting that welder up, and it was dedicated to welding 0.060” wall stainless piping.

 

I had never welded much stainless and it made me look like a real pro right off the bat. The set up was perfect.

 

It will take a little practice to achieve that with my new welder.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Ulu

[pflaming]

Too bad I don’t know you were doing all this because I have a solid, none rust pan I have no need for.

 

[Ulu]

20 minutes ago, pflaming said:

Too bad I don’t know you were doing all this because I have a solid, none rust pan I have no need for.

 

Thank you, but I would still be cutting it up. The stock pan is sort of useless because it sticks out under the fenders collecting water & dirt.

 

I will be tossing all the nasty bits soon anyhow.

[Ulu]

I bobbed off the rear pans and did a bunch of cleanup on the used steel today. Here I use a cutoff bit to mark the opposite edge.

 

I recovered some heavy steel panels from a WW2 Navy desk. This will help me form a solid floor.

 

Good news: no rust found inside the multi-layer pan construction at the rear.

 

 

 

 

[Ulu]

I got out the monstrous 9” Milwaukee disc sander and a big wire cup and started burnishing the damaged areas on these frame rails. This baby will rip you up with just one little mistake.

Each of these rails had a crack in the same place, and probably a result of me doing wheelies on my dad‘s tractor. If you burnish the metal you can find the cracks and open them up for welding.

One of the rails cracked through to a square hole, and on the other one I drilled a hole to end the crack so I wouldn’t have to weld from here to China.

I only burnished the areas I need to weld and check, and I will send these rails out for sandblasting after I weld them up.

[Ulu]

One of these days I’m gonna have to learn a new song, but once again I have spent all my tig welder money on something else.

 

First my granddaughter had $$$ problems with her car, and then I spent a bunch of money on truck parts, and finally I went to the DMV and paid all my fees and penalties for the plastic car.

 

Anyhow, it looks like the stock market is still doing OK, & as long as it continues, then eventually I will have the money.

 

 

[Ulu]

I started setting the fenderless body up on steel rails, so I could square it up and build the subframing.

 

Things will need some tweaking to get square enough to measure.

 

The subframes will mount to the frame with rubber. They will be a bit small, and I will do the final adjustments by adding fiberglass inside the body.

 

The bumper is a structural crossmember, so I have it set up loosely for now. I will need to mod the rails for some clearance & build the rear rubber body mounts to fit.

 

When I got this car there were Six small bolts holding the front of the rear tub to the Volkswagen pan, but no body bolts to hold the rear of the tub to the frame. The original assembler just kind of ignored the assembly instructions at that point.

 

If that were the only problem . . .

?

[Tooljunkie]

Think i got this tig thing figured out. Yup, pay a buddy to do my tig welding.  
actually, i spent a couple hours pushing puddles around and managed to get a few pieces to stick together. One thing is the tungsten. It kept balling up. I gave up grinding on it and continued experimenting. The diameter is probably too small for the amperage. Will dig out my assortment and keep trying. I paid for the argon, and the lease on the bottle, so i should do my part and at least try. 
 

the plastic car is almost back to day one when it landed in a crate, no doubt it will be awesome when its complete. 

[Ulu]

I have lots of fab to do before any serious welding gets done.

 

I bought an electronic level to help with setup, but it actually is an electronic protractor with bubble levels attached. Useful, but not what I wanted. Right now I have a 2’ carpenters level, cheapie magnetic angle gage, and a magnetic torpedo.

 

Price and availability of steel has been very bad and so I have been scrounging for tubing and angles to do the set up. I managed to find some free stuff for jigging etc.

 

I was going to actually build an elevated steel table to do the body frame. Instead I think I’m just going to level up a set of parallel steel rails on the floor using epoxy putty and shims and then I will knock it off the concrete floor with a big scraper when I’m done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Plymouthy Adams]

yes...steel is at an all time high and recycle is also at an all time level and I understand this new drive there is yet a deficit in recycle projection.  My fabrication cost have gone up a bit but the shop I get materials...I shop  off the floor for falloffs and never have to buy full sticks.  full stick cost is the only method at three suppliers in the area.  So....pay to play but play at your own needs....mix and match materials and walk out a winner every time.