fibreglass welding ........very skillfull ...and with beetles quite common too .....in the 70's there must have been a lot of fibreglass welders ..

Made most of yesterdays sunshine, pushed her outside and stripped out the interior and carpets....to find lots of seam sealer


Both rear arches are like this as is the rear cross member and where the heater channels meet the rear quarters......going on what i'd found out side this wasn't a good sign so set about digging it all out!!
Some of it turned out to be and inch or so thick

Under the sealer I found more bad news as expected.....alot of work has been done to the car in the past but none of it has been welded in properly it all only spot welded then made to look good with sealer, even around the seat belt mounting points



Basically it has a lot of repair panels put in that need to be finished properly or started again, Where the front end has been replaced they bulk head has not been welded to the inner arches and you can see daylight through it



The day did however have some positive points to it as i found that the floor pan is a good nick and only need one new repair and previous repairs putting right

So now i'm undecided, should I take the body off or not???

i reckon take the body off , you most the way of stripping the car down to nothing so the body off wont be much more work .

I agree, if you do find plates stuck wielding the body to the floor pan, they are only going to be tacked in anyway!!

Come on Dave, get her off and show us your underbelly!!

Theres only 2 repair sections that have been welded into the floor plan and they don't need alot to put them right...

And i've found repair that i need to do but would be easier i spose if the body were off........

depends how quickily you want it on the road and how good its got to be ....


but in any case ...its a lot easier to do good repairs with the body off

Recon thats the way to go then, think it mite be best to sort out some of the welding inside it first just to put some strength back in her, before I lift the body to stop her twisting

Just keep the doors shut

The past few days have been taken up breaking the donor car




and yeaterday was a non start as the welder wouldn't fuckin work properly so stripped it down to find that the gas was escaping at the switch so fitted it with a complete new lance and done a few test runs, works fine now

So then had to grind off the welding that I had started and gave up for the day!

Today I was determined to get some work done on her, got a few hours this afternoon so pulled the lump





Then i bit the bullet and took the body off





The pan looks pretty good Next up is to pull the box and the beam and strip all the paint off the pan

doing it propery dude ...nice one

you need a bigger workshop lol how do you manage in there ??

Managed to coivince me brother to bive me a hand, lifted donor onto trailer ready to go scrapers!



And lifted the body outside so i can crack on with the pan



Pan looks pretty good gonna take beam and box out then strip the paint and crap back to see what she how bad she really is

look at the size of those axle stands, make mine look like buscuits