Wow.. A long time - Bus Update

It has been a long time since I posted on this blog. I had a baby about 1.5 years ago and it totally changed my timing. I've been in love with my daughter.. She makes me so happy, but as you can see, she required, or demanded I should say attention.

But, I have been building my bus and I am also trying to build a business at the same time.. So, it's been very slow.  I recently got some nice Deluxe Horn buttons in. They are a pretty good reproduction of the original (Batwing and 3-Spoke VW steering wheels only) considering, who wants to pay $500 for a NOS button that will crack at some point from the sun?  For only $130, you can have the next best thing.

This comes in two colors, black and Ivory. You can check it out on my site:


To Purchase

Anyways, enough of that.  Let me explain what has been done. My Bus nose is still cut off. I'm in the process of building a Bus tipper to deal with underneath.  I've also started straightening out my deck lid and rear bumpers.  I've been using a shrinking disc for the deck lid. You can follow this series on youtube for the update.

Deck Lid Repair

This is my pressed bumper repair. I have a small collection of this process in video as well. This was very tedious and it is still not completed yet. The object is to restore without using Bondo.

The first video, I'm sort of brainstorming how to tackle the problem, but it comes to me atlas.

Pressed Bumper Repair


Related Videos:

Nose and A-Pillar replacement

My prep to fix the front noes of the bus.  Here I measured the replacement panel that will repair the crushed bus nose shape.  The panel that I cut is 8 inches (20.32 cm) high. The replacement panel is it a tad bit higher, but I rather grind it up to cover my imperfect cuts that normally run a bit high and low. I used the blue tape as a guide, trying to cut on top of it, or skimming it.  With all the sparks, it is very hard to tell. That is why I made sure that I under cut the piece. If I made a mistake, the whole replacement would be roughly $600.00 USA with shipping and it would require my retro-fitting the earlier bullet turning signals.

The bottom nose was removed. I tried to input the replacement part and as expected, it is to low to insert.  The main goal of this repair is to replace the A-Pillar below the floor.  I needed access to see what was beneath it all.  The secondary reason was to replace the damaged nose.


Please stay tuned..

Closing Crap up! - Updated

I had to go a little medieval to get the side rocker panel in place, bending the B-pillar closeout plate with my Ford's scissor jack . It worked perfectly. The top lip of the outer rockers had about 1/8 of space that needed to be balanced out.   See the next photo and you'll understand that it was indeed successful.

As you can see, the panel lined up beautifully.  I've added the tack welds to hold the panel in place and I also added a few spot welds to the bottom to keep it in.  I ran out of gas today for my MIG welder.  Picking some up tomorrow and finishing the closing.

Here is the side bead welded across and down. The warpage was minor for such a long piece of metal. I had to jump around the line so that one part of the metal did not become too hot at anytime.  Just need to grind down the slug and prep area for priming.

The Front Nose - Damage

(p1)

(p2)

 I purchased a new 8 inch nose replacement panel to repair the center nose that normally gets smashed in at some point by some driver poor at parking. This is the Green Stuff.  It comes with a weld-thru green primer to prevent corrosion.

This is a very used front nose panel that I purchased online (p2). The unit was advertised to be used as wall-art, Go figure!  Who in the hell would use a split bus nose as wall-art?

Anyway, I had other intentions for it. I needed the section to the left of the light bucket and to the right of the bucket (p5).  The area to the right of the bucket, on my current nose was damaged (as seen in p1). The complexity of the curve didn't allow for me to straighten it out by a stud hammer. So, rather than using filler like how it was originally setup, I'll cut it out and replace it with the downer.

(p3)

I had to remove the rusty bottom, it bothered me greatly, even though, it was not my area of interest. By blocking out the areas that I want to protect with a marker, I let the cutting begin. Please see my cutting videos at the end of of this section.

(p5)

(p4)

Photos p4 and p5 shows the downer areas sized up to the location in which they will be graphed. I will attempt to repair the left-side of the light bucket with a hammer and dolly before cutting it and replacing the sheet metal.

Please see videos on the next page ->

Before and after

This picture, I was finished trying to repair the inner rocker. As you can see, after trying to weld in some metal over rusted parts, I cutaway a piece because I realized it should be completely replaced.

Here is the inner rocker being size up for welding. The small weld holes have been drilled in (not in this picture) and ready for welding in.  I just need to make sure the side by the dog leg can be closed up right.

Deck Lid Update

Work space and Metal Shrinking disc.

Today, although the lid is feeling a lot smoother than it originally was in the beginning, after talking to a few professional body people, I realize I made a huge mistake.  When I applied the stud puller, it required that I bend the metal even more because the stud metal that was embedded into the panel doesn't shrink with a metal shrinker (neither does welds).  So, I needed to hammer the stud higher than the surface, grind them off and then hammer then back down.  Well, this caused more distortion, which is making a tougher shrinking job.  Here are some of the picture form my work today.

Side view of the (right-side area (right from rear view))

Dykem to find highs & lows

Top view of highs and lows.

After a few more hours of shrinking the high spot and raising the low spots with a hammer, it will be soon there.

This is a photo of the side view.  It shows how smooth the metal really is despite the blue dye that makes it seem really lumpy.  To the hand, it is very hard to feel most of the valleys, this is why I had to dye to see it with my own eyes.

Photo Update: 7/10/2014

Photo Update (3): 7/12/2014