July, 2000 This jewel in the rough is the first convertible I bought. I paid $300.00 for it in 1990. In the deal I got some Karmann Ghia front seats, a motor and this fine piece of history. The body is in pretty good shape, although it will need pans, support rails, a new top, of

course all the usual stuff like new wiring, paint, other odds and ends. But its straight, with the exception of some putty in the front fender and most of the pieces are there.

November, 2005 I drove the car to work on Election Day, 2005. The ride to work was fine, although a bit exciting on the way home in the dark with those fine 6 v lights, no seat belts and everyone around me in a hurry.  It made me reflect on whether I'd tightened everything down.

It is certainly a different car now than when I started! Check out my efforts in bringing this car back to mostly original condition. I sold the car the following summer. The car went to a good home, to VW people who appreciate it!

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In 2002, I decided to commit some sweat equity to this car.  I'd bought it in 1990, and moved it to a barn at my parents.  It sat in there for 10 years.  We'd added on to our

house, including adding a garage.  I brought the car home, separated the body from the pan and started making battle plans.  This car was really a '66 body on top of a 1968 pan.  The PO had carved out the original mounting points for the pan, apparenlty decided it was not a job to tackle and quit with any attempts to retrofit the body to the newer pan.  So first on my list was getting the right pan.  This took several years, so the car sat on its rack for 2 more years.

I traded a Karmann Ghia for a '66 sunroof sedan. I planned to switch the pan, and other parts over.  The sedan's fenders are in better shape, plus it has seats and even the 1300 motor!  I spent some

time contemplating whether to just do the sedan and pitch the convertible. The sedan's roof was pretty badly dented, from hail to the typical junk VW caved in roof. Mostly the body was ok, but the heater channels were shot, much worse than the convertible. I decided to keep with the plan for doing the convertible.

I'd been to the Manassas Bug Out and had been collecting parts for the project.  I had new floorpans and went at replacing them with my new welder. 
 

Here's my Lincoln Mig 135 Welder. I bought it with the cart and the tank.  The helmet is one of those automatic ones, solar powered, much easier than the flip down ones. Thumbnails of pics of welding the floorpans are on the right. (Click on the pic for a larger view - click on it again to close it.)  In November, 02 I spent a lot of time getting the floorpans to fit. The floorpans come with the jack support the sedan uses, but since the convertible uses an opening in the support rails, these jack supports have to be cut off.  I also had to cut little pieces and repair some spots of the frame at the front of the car.  I put silicone on the top and bottom of the seams once the floorpans were welded in place, then I primed the seams.

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December 24, 2002 The next task is to fix the rear body supports. These hold the body to the pan. On the convertible, they had been chopped away as the previous owner had made a roughshod effort to remove them in order to make the body fit the 1968 pan - which doesn't have these supports.

So the plan is to cut this piece out, also removing the rusted parts of the support and replace them with the donor car's supports. Here, I'm grinding the old support out of the car.

Here is a pic of the piece cut out along with the matching piece from the donor car I'll use to replace the support.  Other pics show the completed job before priming, and the whole reason behind measure twice, cut once...


The other bracket on the right side, cut out, replaced and primed.

January 20, 2003 Before I start grinding away on what's left of the door sills, I added rails to the inside of the doors to maintain the integrity of the door openings. I must have measured 6 times but I still ended up having to shim the passenger side to get it right. I understand it is critical to maintain the correct distance so the doors

open and close correctly.

The door sills and heater channels show a ton of rust. The support rails are completely gone, there is quite of bit of metal missing at both sides. The plan is to add metal where needed, then replace the heater channel bottoms and support rails.

January 20, 2003 Here is the left quarter panel edge. I added metal on the inside corner between the arrows. At this point I've replaced the captive nuts that will accept the bolts of the running boards on this side. You can see the new heater channel bottom that will soon be welded to the heater channel.

This is the right side, at the bottom edge of the sill, beneath the rear quarter panel between the fender and the door. The white line highlights the added piece. This area was badly rusted so  took a 1/8" piece of flat steel, bent the bottom edge with the vice and a hammer, then welded it in.

This is a view of the heater channel cancer. This is the inside right, about at the back seat foot area, inside the rear corner of the door. The thumbnails show the new metal in the rusted out heater channel and the new metal on the bottom of the heater

channel, along with the new support rails on both sides of the car.

February 29, 2003 This is an area I've avoided from the beginning. This is at the left quarter panel at the leading edge of the point the rear fender mounts. I've been concerned about this area as it will be visible, not under running boards or fenders, etc. so the welds will need to be ground invisible. I considered putting

bondo here, but finally figured I'd rather weld in new metal and be careful. In this picture I've got the piece cut out.
The first pic below is the new metal welded in. The hard part of this was making sure the break in the metal at the point the fender attaches matched. The second pic is the new joints ground down, looking ok. Once the primer got on it, it looked good, but there is a low spot. So I guess bondo is unavoidable, but now there is metal there, hopefully keeping the rust at bay.

May, 2003 I forgot to take pictures as this work progressed. I cut the old bracket out and found the metal underneath gone and cancerous. So all that came out, then the new bracket was welded into place. (I regret not having pics of the new metal before I put the bumper bracket on, as it showed my increased talent of

welding much smoother lines!)


Other rust spots included the bottom of the well in the front under the spare tire.  Once these major spots were replaced, I moved to the mechanical aspects of the restoration. Click here to continue with brakes, painting, wiring, interior and top.