Bella - 1958 Australian Beetle

POR 15 queen is what your user name should be

It has to be said, Lucy ain't scared of the odd drop of Por-15, but hey, if it's gonna help keep her fleet of Vee-Dubs on the road..........I must admit I intend to wire-brush the pan of the Cab and do it in Por-15 inside and out at some point soon.

Just caught up on the thread looks good!

I must say I lurve the seats!! is it white and red or cream and red??

HMMMMMMM inspriation!

POR-15 is the paint of the Gods! It's going on everything!

Seats are white and red - or at least I assume they are under the dirt

got a couple mins to work on Bella yesterday so I rubbed down and painted the insides of the rear wings with shiny POR-15. I'll take some pics later or tomorrow.

After today I've only got 1 exam left and that's in 2 weeks time so I should have a bit of time to do some work on her. Would be nice to get all the POR-15 done and the wiring all in... perhaps even see if she starts!

middle of the exam to hey! what are you studying?

Marketing. You?

Mechanical engineering with composites

That sounds... erm.... difficult and something i'd be crap at

Right got a new bits done today. I pulled out the carpet in the bulkhead area - no nasty suprises there - all lovely and solid Removed the master cylinder and the headlight dip switch. Rewired the dip switch. Wired in the ignition switch and headlight switch - pig of a job - half the wires are too long, half of them are too short :rolleyes: so much for a RHD loom....

And then I found rust the bottom of the a pillars has always looked suspect, and when I bought her, the chap said about them. So today I gave the insides a good poke with a screw driver and made a nice hole.... and a load of bolts and stuff fell out The channel is 100% solid around it, and the outside of the inner wing and a pillar. What I think happened was when I got her, the bonnet never closed right because they'd fitted later bonnet struts with springs - obviously rain had got into the bonnet and ran down the a pillars. A couple patches should put it right tho

Righty - a few pics. Sorry for the terrible quality - it was quoite gloomy in the garage and Joey was in the way so I couldn't get in Bella for decent pics so just had to aim the camera where I thought I was trying to take the pic, and hope for the best!

Anyway - driver's side rust:


Pass side rust:





Lovely solid bulkhead:


And painted the other side of the framehead in primer ready for - yes you got it - POR-15!


Also replaced a couple brake lines and put metal ready on the dropped spindles.

Righty - drop spindles are painted and so is one of the front wings - ran out of POR-15 so need more before i can finish the other one.



I also did some welding. Behind the beam there was a couple little random holes:





And some drilled ones in the inner wing:





Bit of weld later:









Grind them down and cleaned up the inner wing ready for POR-15 when the new stuff arrives:





Then I decided it would be fun to start on the brakes - so I removed the hub:





Took all the brake parts off and the backing plate. Gave that a clean (is it ok to paint this or is it best left?), and removed the spindle:





Just gotta work out how to get the other bits (king? link? both??) off the spindle and swapped onto the dropped one. I can't work out how to do it tho!

Been out in the garage again for an hour or so today.

Got a bit of paint on the backing plate and the drum:


Pic of the painted spindles from yesterday:


Put a load of primer on the inner wings - every little helps!




And got the drum off the pass side - this one came off really easy - didn't even have to adjust the shoes!



I started to remove the spindle, but I had to stop as I gotta be at work at 2. Pic of how she looks as a whole:

Been out working on her this morning before work.

Painted the inner wings n black and the frame head. They need another coat so I'll do that later today or over the weekend.






One of the brakes are assembed - just need to work out how to get the springs back on which sit on the shoes- they're not so fun!!!


Bit worried about the star adusters tho - nothing seems to have a thread on it, so how do they adjust?

Brilliant pics, gona be such a wicked ride back on the road.

i got to say lucy fair play to you and steve ....your always out working on the vw`s and you seem to enjoy it,keep up the good work

Cheers Andy - we do like working on them sense of achievement is great! Plus we can't afford to let garages do much on them

Just need to be able to get her on the road then Steve can actually get to drive Joey cos I'll be driving Bella I think he's regretting putting me on the insurance for him

vwbeetlebum wrote:

Brilliant pics, gona be such a wicked ride back on the road.

I hope so! I'm not into the whole rat look thing myself, but I think a few people might want to kill me if I painted her at the mo - so I'll leave her as she is for a few years methinks.

Enjoy it for what it is dude, the beauty with rat look is its free, then when you have enough or get bored get a respray, its a win win situation.

Indeed! And she's in good enough condition to be able to respray with not much work - so it's all good

Pics from today. Only got time to work on her in the afternoon cos we were house shopping in the morning (if anyone wants a massive 3 car garage with a 3 bed house at the end of the garden in Bristol, let me know ) anyway - I degreased the arms from the beam and the other backing plate and hub and put some primer on them:

Looking good you can do mine next

you've done a good job on yours!

Finally got the springs on the shoes - I used Steve's man strength


Coat of black on the backing plate and drums - not as bad as it looks in the pic - the flash makes it look bad and it was still drying.... honest!


Arms:


Brought the windows, rubbers and trims in to hopefully get them fitted.

Fitted to the rear windows:


Just gotta put the centre clip bit in when the windows are in the Bug.

Rear window with rubber on:


Trim fitting tool was useful:




Just gotta fit the centre bits:


Had a disaster with the front one tho - didn't fit at all! So we've come to the conclusion that the ebay seller may have lied and it's not the right type!

nice one dude wondered how them do flips work

Shamrockez wrote:

(if anyone wants a massive 3 car garage with a 3 bed house at the end of the garden in Bristol, let me know

PM on it's way Lucy..