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:
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.
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.
Just finished painting up my manifold and I realized it had a crack in it. Not sure how this will impact things, but air cannot be a good thing. I am not sure why this cladding was added to the manifold and how likely that crack penetrated down into the system.
Ok, I got the wheels prepped by polishing the lips and peddles. They are now ready for enamel dipping. I will update the photos when I am done with the dual paint schema. There is one of the center caps that needs to sanded and re-polished, as it has some pitting on it. Also, one of the caps is not the older 3-pronged caps. I am searching for a replacement. I believe one of the wheels that I have coming in today should satisfy that and move my search down the road. Let us see.
This is just pictures of the things that I worked on today, without much explanation. Removal of partial front panel, removal of doglegs (passenger fender) and final paint removal on front Porsche Fuchs wheel.
I am looking to polish a set of Fuchs wheels, but I am looking for an extension shaft for my standard grinder/polisher. If you know where this exist, please let me know.
This distorted photo above shows the space that between the lower nose cut and the picture that follows. Getting the inner structured install is going to be a challenge.
Sizing up the new inner structure. While it is not that same as the original in shape, it will serve the purpose. I will document my steps once I have both pieces installed.
Inner Structure from the inside
Here is a view from the inside.
Inner structure from the side view
Repairing mount for Inner Structure
I cut out the lip where the inner structure is mounted. I used my plasma cutter as I was majorly frustrated from removing the spot welds to the valance in the front. So, I welded in and filed down the new replacement piece.
Here is why I used my plasma cutter to originally remove my inner support panel. As you can see, the section was really rusted up due to the prior crash.
