My Beetle Restoration

With the body off of the chassis, I can now get a good look at its condition. Here is my initial assessment of what needs to be repaired or replaced:

Floor pans: I guess the most obvious things that need to be replaced are the floor pans. There is almost nothing left of them except the outside frames. My current intention is to replace them with them new panels made by Wolfsburg West. These are thick and heavy-duty and seem to be the best ones available.

 

The Napoleon hat: The Napoleon hat or front chassis support panel on my chassis has suffered a lot of rust damage and must be replaced. These are difficult to remove due to the amount of welding where it is attached to the frame head and tunnel and have to be cut and ground off. New replacement panels are available and inexpensive, but often do not fit well and have to be greatly altered. I may buy a new one and see if it fits well enough to use. Donor parts are difficult to find, so my only option may be to use a new panel.

 

The frame head: The frame head has quite a bit of surface rust, but seems to be structurally sound. The bottom plate, however, does need at least portions of the plate replaced. The rear corners are rusted through where it attaches to the outside ends of the Napoleon hat and these areas will need to be replaced. Replacement bottom panels are available and reasonably priced, but it is a lot of work to remove the original one and a lot of welding to install the replacement. Right now, I’m not sure the extra work is necessary. I may just purchase a replacement panel and then make the decision. I can at least use it to cut out portions to patch the areas that are rusted away.

 

Front axle: The front axle is covered with road grime, oil, and dirt. In some areas it is more than an inch thick. I cleaned some of it off and went through and loosened all the nuts and bolts. Until I remove it, clean it up, and take it apart, I will not know what condition it is in. Same thing for the steering box. No surprises so far with the front axle and its components.

 

Pedal cluser: The pedal cluster is completely rusted solid and isn’t worth trying to rebuild. I tried spraying it with penetrating oil and letting it soak in, but I could never get anything to budge. Not only is it rusted solid, but the aluminum base has disintegrated. I’ll look for a used one worthy of rebuilding.

Brake system: I haven’t pulled the brake drums on any of the wheels yet, so I don’t know what condition the internal components are in. I’ll take them off soon to get an idea, but my plan is to do a major assessment of the brakes after the structural rust repair is done to the chassis. I do plan to replace all the brake lines and hoses. I don’t know if the master cylinder is usable yet and will not until I pull it off and take a closer look. My guess is it will need to be replaced. The brake fluid reservoir has a lot of surface rust, but I think that once it is media blasted, treated, and painted it will be fine.

Cables: The cables for the clutch, accelerator, choke, emergency brakes, and heater lever will all be replaced. They may not all need to be replaced, but I don’t want to chance having any of them break later. It will also be much easier to replace them now while the body is off. I will clean out and lubricate any guide tubes before replacing any of the cables and will also replace all of the seals where they enter and exit the frame.

It's been 7 years since I've done anything notable to the chassis. Even then, not much. It is amazing how fast time flies by and how much life can get in the way and steal your time for many years. In the last half year or so, I have been eliminating all of the obstacles in really getting started on this project - lack of the proper tools, lack of working space, deciding just where to get started, and devising a plan on just what to tackle first. After careful consideration of whether to start with the chassis first or the body, I have decided that since I have so little good metal left as reference points, I may as well start with rebuilding the chassis and try to get it as close to the accurate factory specifications as possible and then build the body to match it. Since everything on the chassis that touches the body has to be replaced and everything on the body that touches the chassis has to be replaced, I may as well get started on the chassis. Besides, I have replacements for the floor pans, Napoleon hat, and the frame head bottom plate and don't have to make any major purchases. I have also decided to remove a large section of the tunnel bottom plate so that I can better assess the damage to the tunnel and facilitate replacing the areas of the bottom lip where the insides of the floor pans rest. There is a lot of damage there where water was obviously pooled there for a very long time. Anyway, that is the current plan and I'm moving forward with it.

First, I decided to cut off the outside sections of what is left of the floor pans. These are the areas that bolt to the heater channels. I am tired of hitting my shins on them and they need to be removed anyway.

Before:

After:

Next, I removed the inner areas of the floor pans. Except for a few strips along the tunnel here and there in the middle and front, there was only floor pan left in the rear on both sides. Finding and drilling out the spot welds was challenging in some areas as they were barely visible and it is amazing how just the smallest amount of weld will keep the panel from breaking free. It is so nice to finally have the floor pans removed! After that, I pulled the accelerator cable, the clutch cable, the heater cables, the choke cable, and the emergency brake cables. I cut the emergency cables off just past the shroud since I will need to access the brake mechanisms to detach the cables on that end. I coiled the removed cables up and placed them in a bag to keep them for future reference. This way I can compare them to the replacements once I purchase them.

Before:

After:

With the old floor pans removed, I just had to place the new floor pans on the chassis to see how they look and check the fit. I purchased the Wolfsburg West floor pans and I have to say that these are of very high quality and the fit is amazingly close to the factory originals. They are 18 gauge and currently cost around $195 each side. The pressings also closely match the originals. I can't tell you how gratifying it is to see the pans on a car that had almost no floor on it since I purchased it. It's a small thing, but it feels like a major one and is the first real progress I've made toward getting this car restored. There is so much left to do, but I feel encouraged and am hungry to get more accomplished.

The Wolfsburg West floor pans ship without the rear cross braces and jack points welded on so that they can ship by regular package shippers like UPS. Be forewarned that a package this large and heavy will be thrown around by the shippers and you will likely have some damage to the edges of your pans. I had just minor bends that should be fairly easy to straighten out. Wolfsburg West warns that damage is possible and likely. The box was 68"L x 22"W x 8"H and weighed 63 pounds, including a frame head bottom plate. The rear cross braces and jack points were in a separate box and the frame head bottom plate was placed inside a flattened box. I placed the pans back in the box to store them until I get to the point where I can actually fit and weld them on.

After a three year hiatus, I am finally back to working on this car and more specifically, the chassis. The shop is still in disarray after building out the interior, but it is done enough that I can get back to work on the 1960. This is also the parking spot for my 1973 Super Beetle that can be seen in the background of my images.

When I moved to my current location two years ago, I fastened the tunnel bottom plate down to the tunnel with self-tapping sheet metal screws to strengthen it and make it easier to move. It's been in this state until now and has been lying around in the shop. When I pulled the bottom plate back off to get started, I found that mice had been inside of it. But fortunately, they didn't cause any issues other than some poop and acorn shells. The protective coating that I sprayed on the inside also kept it them from causing any rust or other damage. I cleaned and disinfected all surfaces. I test fit the frame head bottom plate and the Napoleon hat just to refresh my memory. It will need a lot of fettling to get the pieces fitting well. The frame head bottom plate is a modern aftermarket part and is quite a bit different than the original. The Napoleon hat is a donor part from a mid-1960's Beetle and is very close to the original.

I took a couple of pics from the underside to show the fit of the tunnel bottom plate and Napoleon hat.

The next step is to weld the tunnel bottom plate back onto the tunnel.

Many years ago, I test fit the floor pans after removing the original ones. At that time, they fit really well. Since then, I have removed and replaced frame head top cover, removed and replaced the frame head bottom plate, removed the tunnel bottom plate and replaced the tunnel rails on both sides, and repaired the tunnel bottom plate and welded it back on. So basically, I have replaced everything that touches the floor pans and more. Consequently, when test fitting them now, they fit a little differently. I have tried very hard to get everything to fit as it did originally, but by using a combination of donor parts, aftermarket parts, and parts that I fabricated, there will likely be a lot of areas that require some effort to achieve a proper fit. Also, I am replacing the rear cross braces for the floor pans as well, which could be a difficult task as they are shaped very differently than the originals.

I put the floor pans in place just to see where the problems are before I replace the rear cross braces. Right now, the fit is too tight on the front by the Napoleon hat and also in the rear by the cross braces on both the left and right floor pans. On both sides near the tunnel where it flares out to the forks, there are big gaps between the pans and the tunnel. We'll see if these issues still exist after the cross braces are replaced.

The cross braces are attached to the tunnel by spot welds and seam welds, and on the outside they are attached to a support brace from the torsion tubes by spot welds.

I removed the original cross braces by grinding down the spot welds and cutting through the seam welds.

The old welds and rust was removed so that I can test fit the new cross braces.

I put the cross braces and floor pans in place to determine the fit. The cross braces are 1/4" longer than the original ones and don't fit against the tunnel well at all. This pushes the floor pans further out, making the gap between the pans and the flared portion of the tunnel way too big. Going to be a challenge getting them to fit correctly and to move them in the needed 1/4".

Before I fit the cross braces, I decided to remove the transition plate that goes between the two cross braces over the top of the tunnel. This plate has been bent down and the easiest way to straighten it out is to pull it off where I can access it from the underside. So, I removed the plate, straightened it, sandblasted it, sprayed weld-through primer on the areas to be welded, and sprayed regular primer on all other areas. I also cleaned up and primed the area under the plate that is difficult to reach with the plate in place.

I then welded the transition plate on, ground down the welds, and sprayed over this area with primer.

Another thing I decided to do while the cross braces were off is clean up and prime the torsion tubes and arms. These were heavily rusted and had a lot of recessed areas that are difficult to reach. I used a series of wire brushes, rust removing abrasive wheels and discs, rust removers, and finally a rust converter. I then sprayed them with primer. This took many hours to accomplish, but I am glad to have that done.

After many hours of fitting the cross braces, I was finally able to prime the cross braces, the support braces from the torsion tubes, and the areas where the cross braces will be welded to the tunnel. I then welded on the cross braces and ground down the welds.

After many hours of trimming and fitting the floor pans, I prepped them to be welded on. I punched holes in all sides that are to be welded on, except near the passenger inside rear corner where there just wasn't enough of the tunnel rail to get a good complete weld. I will just weld a few short stich welds in that area. After the holes were punched and deburred, I removed the EDP coating around the top side of the holes and sprayed the bottom side areas where the panels overlap with weld-through primer.

On the tunnel, cross braces, and Napoleon hat where the floor pans will be welded on, I masked them off and sprayed them with weld-through primer.

I put the floor pans in place and did a final check of their fit. I used a measuring tram during the fitting process to make sure that the body bolt holes were at the correct distances. To keep from having to constantly looking up the measurements, I wrote the measurements on masking tape and placed it by each hole. I was able to get the measurements fairly close. Some were a little wide, but the welding process will pull the pans in toward the tunnel. I have a diagram with the correct measurements below.

I started welding on the passenger floor pan first. I had some difficulty getting the heat and wire feed tuned in at first and had to drill a few welds out and try again to get a secure weld. I also had to drill all the holes for the spot welds to 3/16" diameter and to drill down into the tunnel rail just a bit because of the thickness of the combined tunnel rail and tunnel bottom plate. I had some issues with getting solid welds to the Napoleon hat on this side as well, so I ran a stich weld down that area just to make sure. The welds to the cross brace were way easier as the metal was the same thickness on both pieces and much thinner. The driver side floor pan was a lot easier as I had then figured out much better welder settings.

Grinding down the welds was a lengthy job. My welds were tall, and there were a lot of them to grind. The welds that are in-between the tunnel and the seat rail were particularly difficult to get to. I had to use a finger sander and had to lean over the pans to access them. It was also a challenge to not take too much metal off to get the welds even to the pans. I always tend to overdo that. They are not pretty, but they are done.

I remembered that there are four tabs that are needed to hold down the rear brake line along the tunnel. My car only had the rear most tab when I got it, and I removed it years ago and put it somewhere where I would not lose it. I haven't found it yet. I made four tabs and welded them on.

I cleaned up the weld areas on the top side and then sprayed them with primer.

I flipped the chassis over to clean up the weld affected areas there.

When cleaning the weld areas on the underside, I noticed a little rust exposed on the support braces from the torsion tube. I coated them with a rust encapsulator.

I then cleaned up and sprayed the weld areas with primer.

I almost forgot about the accelerator pedal bracket. I welded it on and sprayed it with primer.

Update #1: I did forget about installing the battery strap stud and battery strap hook that attach to the strap to hold down the battery. I first installed the battery strap stud which required drilling a hole at the rear of the passenger side floor pan, just behind the stamping in the pan for the battery. I then welded the battery strap stud on the bottom of the pan, ground down the welds, and sprayed the weld area with primer.

Wel, I thought I was finished with the battery strap stud until I flipped the chassis over and realized that I had installed it on the wrong side of the chassis. So while I have the chassis facing up, I decided that I would go ahead and weld on the battery strap hook. I first drilled holes in the plate of the battery strap hook and sprayed the weld areas with U-POL Weld #2 Copper Weld Through Primer. I then welded it onto the floor pan, ground down the welds, and sprayed the area with primer. Lastly, I removed the battery strap stud from the wrong side and repeated the previous steps when I welded it on there. I also filled in the hole where I incorrectly installed the battery strap hook, ground down the welds, and sprayed the area with primer. Now I am done with floor pans!

Note: I considered for a long while whether or not I should install the standard jack points onto the floor pans. I have them as they came with the floor pans. But for several reasons, I decided not to do so. These are just not a very good design by VW and often damage the heater channels when the floor pans cannot support the weight of the car put on them when jacking up each side of the car and they bend upward into the heater channels. I just repaired one of the donor heater channels that was damaged this way, and the side of the channel was bent and torn. I'm just going to invest in a good scissor jack and use that instead. I can use a scissor jack on a better reinforced and sturdy area of the chassis should I need to jack it up while on the road.