1969 V8 Convertible beetle update- door repair

[zbhover]

Hey Guys Its been a little while since I had time to work on the V8 Convertible Beetle Project but I was finally able to get a few hours out in the garage. Next I wanted to start working on the doors, the bottoms were rusted out of them and the lower hinges were locked up, etc.

Below are a few pictures from my last update, but you can see the rest of the pictures on my website at:

www.v8beetleresource.com/vwbodywork7.html




Next I wanted to repair the doors for the bug. The bottoms of the doors are rusted out pretty badly, and I don't have the money to get a good set of doors for the car. So instead I'm planning a little Frankenstein surgery to fix them. Here I have the drivers side door all stripped down to just the door itself.





I don't have any extra convertible doors, but I do have a few 1968-1969 hard top doors, and two of them are in GREAT shape. As you can see the inside panel of the doors are different, but the outside of the doors are the same except for the top of the door. Being that the bottoms are the only thing rusted out of my convertible doors I'll be able to repair them.





So next I very carefully laid out the lines where I wanted to cut both doors. I had to be sure I wasn't going to cut too much out and make the doors shorter, and it would also be a pain in the butt if I didn't cut enough out and made them longer and I had to keep trimming them. I highlighted my lines in red to make it easier to see what I was doing.








Next I carefully marked out the outside of the doors, again I highlighted my line in red. I wanted to espeacially be carefull on the outside of the door, as I didn't want to have to fill in any gaps from cutting out too much metal.





And here is the inside of the doors after I cut them apart.













All the carefull measuring and cutting really paid of, the two halfs fit together almost perfectly. I just had to trim a bit here and there to get a perfect fit!





Then I put a couple clamps on it so I could stand the door up and get a good look at both sides of it. I think so far it has turned out real nice, of course the cutting was the easy part..... Now I just have to be sure I don't work the crap out of it welding it back together....





I was going to clean the paint off of the joint and go ahead and weld it up, but I noticed a couple places inside the door where there was a bit of surface rust, that I could only see and get to with the door cut up. So I'll be taking the door to work and cleaning those spots up with the glass bead blaster. Then I'll spray some epoxy primer on the insides....... Then it will be onto welding them back together again. I'll be sure to make small tacks in various spots to help control the warpage. Then I'll mix up some homemade epoxy filler and smooth everything out before epoxy priming the door........ etc.............


Thanks for looking!

Zach B

V8 Beetle Site:
v8beetleresource.com

Hovercraft Site:
zbcreations.com

[v8square]

Zach. You need to start your site again. This site is t-o-t-a-l-l-y dead!!!

[zbhover]

First let me say sorry to taking so long for another update, and I also forget to take some pictures along the way. I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on the beetle lately, and when I did I didn't always remember to grab the camera.


Since the last update I got the two halves of the drives side door welded back together, got it stripped, epoxy primed, and installed some new stainless hinges, etc....

You can also see the update on my website at: www.v8beetleresource.com/vwbodywork8.html There are a few more pictures there, plus the rest of the project at: v8beetleresource.com


I started welding the door back together with just a few spot welds here and there to make sure it looked good, so far so good.
As you can see after getting a few welds on there I put them back on the car to make sure the profile of the door still matched the body.




I think it looks pretty darn good considering I cut two doors in half to make one. Now I just need to slowing start adding more small welds spread evenly across the door to try to keep warping to a minimum, this is where I forgot to take some pictures.....




Here is the inside after a little grinding, after grinding the welds I took the door down to bare metal to get a good surface for the epoxy primer.




Here is the inside of the door after I primed it with SPI Epoxy Primer. I have herd nothing but good things about SPI's Epoxy Primer and clear coat.......... I'm sold now, the primer sprayed great!




The ouside of the door turned out pretty good too, I just put a little bit of filler across the weld area because welding it cause a bit of a flat spot in the door. There is also a small low spot in the door handle area, but it won't take much filler to blend take care of that. While I was welding I also welded up the trim holes.
You may have also noticed that the hinges are no longer on the doors. They were rusty and sloppy so I decided to replace them with something else.




I decided to get a couple sets of Speedway's Stainless Budget Hinges, they are skinnier than the VW hinges so I also welded a little more sheet metal in to make the hinge holes in the door smaller and I welded up the extra hinge bolt holes too.
one leg on it is 1/4" think and the other is 3/16" think, I think these will work great for replacement VW hinges. The hinge slot in the door is about 3/16" wide, so that leg will be the one that gets mounted to the doors, It looks like this makes the hinges go on upside down compaired to what they were ment to be, so I will just put the hinge pins in the opposite way. It looks like they'll work great this way.


I used my dewalt 4.5" angle grinder with a cut off wheel to trim the hinge.




Now I just need to mark the holes to drill and tap, They'll look a lot nicer than the old rusty vw hinges.




After doing the top hinge I did pretty much the same thing to the bottom hinge, but again forgot to take pictures.....




The old hinges had counter sunk rivits holding them on, instead I'll be using high strength serated head Stainless bolts, and to strengthen the door where the hinges will bolt on I cut some 2" wide x 1/8" thick stainless backing strips.




And here are the Speedway Motors stainless steel budget hinges assembled on the door.




I think the stainless hinges really turned out nice..... Now I just have to do this process all over again with the other door, but atleast now I know what I'm doing...... LOL

[zbhover]

I Started working on the passenger side door a few days ago, and just finished doing a little welding and grinding. Just like the driver side door I cut the rusted out bottom out of the convertible door, and cut the good bottom out of a hard top door, and welded the two together to make 1 good door. I also welded up some trim holes and removed the hinges, etc...

Check the update out at: www.v8beetleresource.com/vwbodywork9.html for more pictures, below are a few of them.

Or check out the whole project at: www.v8beetleresource.com



The passenger side door wasn't rusted as bad as the driver side, so I didn't have to cut nearly as much of the bottom of the door off, this should make it a bit easier to repair. I started off making my marks at 4" on one side and 5" on the other side.






Then I flipped over the door and marked up the back side. Just like the other door I'll cut just above the mounting holes for the door panel.





Next I removed the hinges from the top of the convertible door, and the bottom of the donor door. They are rivited on so first I drilled out the rivits. I started with a 1/8" bit and slowly went up untill I drilled out the heads.





Then I pulled the hinges out. The rivits are countersunk into the hinges so it takes a bit to pull them out. I used a wide plastic pry bar against the hinge and the edge of the door. Later I'll flaten these spots out and then weld the holes up I won't use.





Next I started welding the two halves back together again. Use small welds spaced out to help keep from warping the door.





If you haven't done any body panel welding, the inside of the door is a good place to get some practice, since it isn't a big flat surface, it won't warp as easy.





Next I moved back to the outside of the door, and slowly and evenly added more and more small welds. You can also see a bondo surprise that I found on the lower right side of the door, it looks like someone dented in that part of the door and filled it with bondo. I took it all out and hammered out the dent the best I could, after I epoxy prime the door it should blend right in with a little epoxy filler.





Then I moved back to the inside of the door and started filling in the welds. And finally I got it all welded solid, now I just need to do some grinding and maybe touch up with a few more welds here and there.





Here is the front of the door all welded up, while I was welding I also welded up the trim holes, made the hinge holes smaller for my stainless hinges, etc... I also flattened out the old hinge rivit holes and welded up the ones that I won't need. After all the welding and grinding I'm left with a bit of a flat spot in the seem of the two doors. After spraying the door with some SPI epoxy primer I'll be able to fill that in with a little epoxy filler with no problem.


That's it for now, I'm hopping to get the door stripped, cleaned up, and primed with some SPI epoxy this weekend.

[Carmen Dottoli]

WOW nice work man!! Beyond my "Rasberry Patch" welding skills.