Project Phoebe - a diary and some advice seeking

[Mrs8925]

Phoebe came to us on 1st May 2019. Although she had an MOT until late June, we knew she needed some considerable bodywork and a good old clean and tidy up.



A few weeks of tentative driving to loosen her up after standing for 2 years, she failed the MOT and took her place on our driveway ready for some TLC.




Fast forward a few weeks to now when we have a free long weekend and some childcare lined up, we shall be cutting back the filler and seeing what's what. Will do my best to keep a diary on here of how we get on.

[Mrs8925]

Between getting her and now, we have taken the hideous bull bar off the front, stripped and repainted the front bumper, washed the cushion covers and replaced the revolting foam inside, tried to work out the electrics, replaced the pop top roof seal and given her a jolly good clean, including cleaning and regreasing the sliding door runner - yucky job! We do have a new rear bumper ready to be painted and put on too.

[Mrs8925]

So... rust repairs. This is what we can see so far.

First up, two near side wheel arch repairs and a suspension mount repair...

First question of the thread: does anyone have any advice please on reconstructing the inner wheel arch? How's it shaped? How does it weld into the surrounding bodywork? If anyone has done this before, what's the best way to make it up? As one whole panel or as a few parts?

Thanks in advance.

[RogerT]

My word, you’ve a few wee jobs ahead of you.

I’d suggest you spend time looking at restoration threads. In detail and repeatedly, and have a think about whether you want to go further. (I hope you do!)

It looks very familiar to me, both your B and C pillars look likely to be gonners at the bottom ends, probably inner and outer parts of the pillars. C pillars form part of the support structure above the suspension mount. Your sill will likely need attention too. I’d suggest sort the structural parts before the arch.

Learn to weld. Do you have somewhere to get the van under cover?

And don’t be disheartened, a lot of us have been there.

[Mrs8925]

Thanks Roger. Hubby can weld, albeit at a novice level but we're willing to give it what we've got and hope we don't make it fatal...

Unfortunately though we can't get her under shelter at the moment so its going to have a to be a fair weather and childcare dependent jobby.

My daily driver took priorty the first two days with replacing top mounts and a machine polish ready for an upcoming show but today has been van related. Mostly assessing what needs to be done...

Just removed the "inner wheel arch".

Oh my gosh. We think it was once a road sign, covered with a few fibreglass sheets and a tonne of filler.



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[R0B]

Was a previous owner called mrsbodgit

[oli8925]

Long suffering Hubby here

Some more pre-pics once we'd taken the interior trim panels off. We knew it was bodged and would be a bit of a challenge when we got it, but I suppose we were naively hopeful it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Obviously it is/was.





And as Jen says, today was our first day getting properly stuck in. Most of the outer arch was torn away without the use of any power tools, once the mastic and seam sealer let go and the filler cracked that was it



You can see here the fibreglass boards that were shoved up into the rusty recess in order to filler against. Riveted to these boards and the internal structure was the ?road sign that made up the inner arch.


After which, we were left with this





I roughly cut away the lower rear corner for now as the edge of the shelf is rusty anyway and the lot will be replaced, but I wanted to see how bad things were inside


Other than a bit of surface rust it's thankfully pretty solid.


Tomorrow will be spent stripping off the underseal and seam sealant and unpicking the shelf panel so than I can repair the edges of the surrounding panels and offer up the new shelf. I need to go away and do some research to work out how all the holes would originally have been filled by VW. I assume the rear floor (around engine lid) stops at the internal structure, and the inner arch is a separate panel? Also need to take a look at the vertical structure of the rear of the inner arch as we have a few bits of rust left welded here and there that don't give the picture.

Obviously the big job that needs urgently is fixing the area around the swing arm mount, however I'm not quite sure of the best way to put a jog together so that I can remove the mount and get stuck in. Once I do there are a few different panels that need repair around the inner sill, and I guess the wooden floor will need to come out which is a drag as I really don't want to disassemble 30 year old cupboards. Surprisingly the C pillar area looks pretty solid still.

As well as that little lot the B pillar/front arch is shot and will need a fair bit of repair. As the front arch section is holed as well I feel I may as well get a proper arch section rather than just a poor fitting skin and replace the whole lot and tackle the door step while there. And finally the mid-point on the C pillar is holed by the sliding door latch, really not looking forward to trying to remake that section!

[slowcoach]

Crikey

[Swebby]

Think I would have sunk a keg of my homebrew after discovering that lot!

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[oli8925]

A slightly slower day than I would have liked but more progress (read holes) made.

While Mrs8925 stripped back some more underseal


I spent far longer than should have taken to unpick the corner shelf panel, but eventually out it came. Before going any further I thought offering the new panel up would be a bit of a mojo boost, but instead I'm pretty grumpy about the fit


That's quite a gap to close up


Not happy. We bought this from Just Kampers who say on the website that it is a JK manufactured panel, and the picture shows all the detail of an original piece. What actually turned up is a Magnum panel (I remember them from my Mini days, they were rubbish then too) which doesn't have the same level of finish or detail, not that it would have been a deal breaker if it fitted.

Can I just check on your opinions? The seams are exactly where the original came off, all remnants had been cleaned off - I haven't got this wrong have I? The fit really is that bad?

We're unsure what to do now, we need to get some more panels anyway so would like to try a different one but don't want to get stuck with the same rubbish. During my reading last night I came across Schofield panels - are they well received? Or Brickwerks appears to have a much bigger selection than the others. This also extends to other panels, our rear quarter and corner panels are Klokkerholm, but not sure there's much other choice, and our front arch is a Klokkerholm skin but we're now going to get a full arch panel so need to know whose to buy.

Back to the van, the engine compartment left side panel, for want of a better description, was holed and very pitted. It could do with an entire replacement but I don't want to get this involved yet, so I chopped most of the rot and have made a CAD repair piece which just needs to be fettled and transferred to metal.



As you'll notice we have a hole in the chassis rail too. Easy to patch, but could someone in the know please confirm the metal thickness? 2mm? And is that inboard bolt hole underneath the rust hole a factory thing?

With a bit more cut out I made a start on cutting and planning the repair of the rusty flanges of the inner structures. I still have no idea what's going on here, the front section of the D pillar in between the outer and inner structures?

[RogerT]

Gordon Bennett! I was initially thinking you were better off with rust than me, then I saw your wheel arch. Jaw dropping!

Chassis rail, I was advised 2mm by metalmick8y for the closure plate underneath, and the upper portion of every chassis rail ive checked on mine measured 2mm as well.

After seeing that, at least nothing else is going to be a surprise for you...

[RogerT]

Bolt holes - for towbar fittings (legs inside chassis rails.

Panels from Brickwerks, or better still, Alan Schofield.

For pieces you can’t make, read http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/70135/panels


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[oli8925]

Bolt holes - for towbar fittings (legs inside chassis rails.

Panels from Brickwerks, or better still, Alan Schofield.

For pieces you can’t make, read http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/70135/panels


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Ah, one of my favourite threads. The number of times I have read, and reread, that thread. I'm currently rereading it again.

Thanks for the advice, we'll place an order with Schofield ASAP.

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[oli8925]

Keeping the momentum going didn't really work, weddings and RetroRides' The Gathering somewhat got in the way. I squeezed in a cheeky hour with the van yesterday evening despite being 'on holiday'.

Still struggling to get the shelf panel to fit without gaps at the flanges but with a bit of beating it should be fine.


Offered my CAD template up to the remaining hole and transferred it to metal. It's not too far off but will need a bit of playing with and my skill level isn't high enough to make this an invisible repair, but nevertheless metal is better than rust. I'm pretty sure this sheet is 1.2mm rather than 0.9 which does make a bit of a difference when trying to force it into funny shapes. I've got a bit more beating to do to it but I'll probably get it close, tack it in and then continue in situ until I'm happyish with it.



I was also trying to work out the correct orientation of this infill panel, if someone could please confirm this is correct? The original was more or less nonexistent.


I guess this also means I'll need to weld a flange onto the exterior corner panel to join to this. Why do the repair panel not include all the original flanges???

Unfortunately the floor repair panel I bought has the wider ribs. Does anyone know if the narrow rib sections are available?

[TheDocmeister]

9000 Aero in the background? Almost had a double take!