Pepper

And on to the reason she’s not currently on the road…

Spring 2009 was set for her MOT, so off we trundled down to the MOT station where she failed. What on? a couple of silly little things like headlight alignment etc, and two holes (one on either side) just above the spring plate at the end of the heater channels. No major problem i thought, just leave it off-road till the summer until i can get someone to look at welding it up, get her MOT’d and off i go…..

…or not.

I figured I’d save some time for the welder (and therefore money) by stripping the carpets out and prepping the area to be welded myself:

Interior Stripped, Note 944 half leather buckets and primer patches here there and everywhere.

So out came the grinder, and immediately it was clear that something wasn’t right. Starting on the driver side, the small hole that started out as 5p sized quickly grew and the fibreglass covering it came out in chunks. Soon I was down to metal. Not solid metal, but instead a plate that had been mastic’d, riveted and fibreglassed into place allowing the surrounding good metal to rust away.

One of the chunks of fibreglass hiding the bodge

The bodged in panel under the fibreglass almost ready to come out

The remains of what was once “good metal” hiding under the bodge.

After a desperate prod at the passenger side with a screwdriver it became clear this mess was duplicated on both sides. Sitting in the newly stripped interior of my bug trying to work out how, as a student, i could afford the repairs i soon started to notice bits of paint along the heater channels that didn’t look quite right. Sure enough a “firm” prod from the screw driver revealed more fibreglass.

And that’s when I stopped taking pictures. I must have sat in the naked beetle for half an hour staring into space trying to work out what the hell to do before my dad tapped on the window for dinner. He poked his head in the door and instantly i could see from his face he thought the bug was scrap. But I was determined, defiant that I would repair her. Somehow I would get her back on the road again….

Step forward a couple of days and I had decided that the only way forward from there was to take the body off the chassis to gain proper access to the bits that needed attention, and to survey the chassis – paint it etc to ensure longevity. So i did my research on how to split the two, and started removing bolts, disconnecting the steering column, removing the fuel tank, wings etc. I started on the passenger side body to pan bolts and they came out surprisingly easily, but moving round to the driver’s side this was not the case. The first bolt I came too sheared. Not a good sign. The next one, two, three, four, five etc just spun and spun and spun. The captive nuts had rusted free from the channel closing plate. After a quick strop I had a look inside the bug to see if there was any way i could stop them spinning – knowing full well they were enclosed in the channel.

Remember those patches of funny looking paint along the heater channels? Well a further prod revealed that very little of the vertical section was connected to the bottom, and with a screwdriver, metal shears and some pliers (no power tools!) I was able to peel the inside edge up enough to gain access to the reverse of the bolts:

Using  just hand-tools I had access to the bolts

The front of the channel was just as easy

Now that all the bolts were free, the body should have just lifted off the chassis, but once again things weren’t to be as easy as that! A quick lift on both ends indicated no movement, so I started looking for a cause – double checking all the bolts were removed, nothing was caught etc. Then I took the running boards off and was confused as I couldn’t see the lip between the body/chassis that I had been expecting….

The next day I went to look at a potential donor body (one of the possible routes I could have gone down) and whilst there checked the body/chassis join. Instantly it was clear that mine had been welded, this beetle had a clear difference and mine seemed to be one piece.

Back at home I realised that grinding the seam weld off the drivers side without damaging the edge of the pan would be impossible, and seeing as the channel needed replacing anyway I decided to cut through what remained of them to split the two (intending to remove the remains of the channel once the two were split, with much better access)

Cutting through the driver’s side channel (I actually did this with metal shears as the metal was so thin, and it saved wasting a disk!)

The passenger side had been joined using a spot welded panel held in with yes you guessed it, more fibreglass! This was a lot easier to remove, as just using a hammer and chisel removed the welds, allowing me to bend the panel out of the way:

Removing the spot welds allowed me to bend back the plate

Now that this was all free I had one last attempt at lifting the body off the pan before the pan before having to return to uni in September. Something’s still holding it down but I’m not sure where…

And that’s pretty much up to date with Pepper. This is how she once looked:

And how she looks today:

Safe to say I am absolutely, totally and completely gutted…