Club 80-90 Forums

Never knew you could weld over vactan? Good news. Nice to see another happy customer of those boffins at Bilt Hammer Laboratories, i swear by their wax and Ferosol zinc primer. Excellent work as usual Metalic NB do you prefer Sabbath or Purple?

RAMMSTEIN
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Oh mine got', catchily named such after an airline disaster. Great live shows apparently.

Well, welded the lower front in this aft

decided to gas the upper seam, was going to lead it but maybe next time as there are different ways of securing this item

not the most attractive of welds but does the job, so enabling me to grind it back to a definative line

seams brazed

they dont have to be 100% filled and this is easier and better than trying to mig it from the rear
ground out and the brazing finnished over with the die grinder, reason will become evident later......

now it just need a sand over and a smidgen of filler

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glad to see it coming along nicely kev.

ready for dubfreeze?

I'll be there
...and it is coming along nicely your right.

Well you can't but I find if areas are all cleaned up and done with the vactan, just prior to welding you remove enough to get a good weld then treat again as soon as metal has cooled, allowing it to seep into as many areas as you can. I still occasionally see someone insist it doesn't work but this is nearly always around seams where you can't clean out corrosion easily or because there's as much rust on the back of the panel. Vactan can't fight with that sort of scenario.

Its still a brilliant rust checker that can buy time on a vehicle covered in rust spots and seems to work great even without primer - for a year or more. For a test I painted the bolt on my fathers garden gate which was completely rusted. That was two years ago and its still jet black and rust-free - amazing stuff.

waltraud wrote:Never knew you could weld over vactan? Good news.

Err? I weld straight thru the vactan and weld thru primer, or either on their own, have you been having problems doing this, i only ask because this is how Ive always done it
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Well, finnished the metal side of the front and planished it off

doing it this way is a bit more laborious btu it means I dont have to cover it in filler save a touch in some of the weld voids, protective primer applied and now it looks a little more like it should

the rear has had seam sealer applied and then dosed with dynax


spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding which type of repair to do next so am setting about the nsr wing and area as this appears to be the worst of the obvious rot
Never fails to amaze me how so called proffesional builders/converters can use such poor practices,here the very nice inner window decor panal was affixed to the outer skin with bathroom type silicone, this stuff has no place on these vans here,there are proper products for this job,

heres another pick of the water track that has run down the inside of the panal and rotted the bottom out, not forgetting that this is a replacement factory wing so not 30years old, it wasnt helped by the absence of any rustproofing either

anyhow the window surround is a minor repair, here is the inner wing area


what the last lot had done is to chop out the easy bit they could get to and then tack the new arch in over some of the remnants of the old with short mig tacks
so I have removed this

I will cut this rot out of the load floor and remake the profile
on the front edge they just tacked it over and covered with more bath sealant

this is from the inside

in effect it just covered it and they gobbed it over , so I will cut all this out and add new metal,
I figure a lot of this will have to be removed too.....

and theres a bit of work to do in here, same both sides

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crikey.. it all seems so overwhelming, kinda scary.
I knew this repair here would be extensive, but the reality is worse than I could have ever imagined.

these pictures are priceless Mike

Thanks

It is going to be 80+% new metal at this rate

Amazing work and a fantastic thread

zed wrote:It is going to be 80+% new metal at this rate

Amazing work and a fantastic thread

I bliddy well hope not, I aint got enough steel in sstock.....
Ahh,kev ,just think how near you both were to nature and the road as you travelled and slept,always makes me laugh when vans are advertised with a little rust in the seams etc etc , and usual for a 30 year old van etc etc,
I would have poked the same holes in it at Elvington, btu think you may have been a bit pi***d at me if I had,but it was sort of obviouse, soon be better though
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Bathroom sealant
Cheap and cheerful. For maximum profitability.

Well maybe the 13th today but thats not my problem,had a great time, started by removing the obvious rot and cutting back to good metal followed by the miserable removal of vw sealant


this area is causing concern

so out with the rear of the inner arch

then ,, well it had to be done


it shows what should be there and as this progresses I will try to show how and why it goes together in a certain way which might help if your doing some of this area
shiny metal now

I need to spend 10 mins and go E D I T and make some notes on the next lots of picks so will posts this for now
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right,

the new bit is the small lower panal that is a favorite to rot its marked in red, the remnant is outlined in red
the area in pink is the part that is welded to the inner base and will be removed, .note that this and the lower part are not welded to each other but are welded to the rear 1/4 panal (part of which is shown in yellow) you will see the old bits of spot weld.
what happens is the upper rear 1/4 panal is spotted to the pink bit and the lower panal(red ) is also spotted to the upper 1/4,
whick is why these parts have the lips or cut outs depending on your viewpoint,
If you are just removing your lower panal then make sure you remove all the old parts of it as if you dont you will end up with a seam that is too large and will also hold a nice rusty old bit of panal as well, this applies to any panal joins .
this is the new bit made in a decent gauge mof steel

trial fit
before fitting I found that the last bit of edge had a bit of rust on it that would be silly to leave

so cut it out and added a new bit

happy with this part now so a welding we go

I have drilled 3 holes, this is so I can weld through this to the 1/4 panal from under as its a bit awkward getting to it inside and there is a specific order in which is has to be welded together
this is a tiny bit of angle lip, it will be covered after the longer bit of inner loadbed is done as this is the order it was built in

this area now welded and a coat of weld thru added

ditto

hope that lot makes sense,beer now
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