MAX
MAX Jill's VW camper. My mission which I must accept for peace and moderate nagging is to get Max roadworthy and refit the interior
We spent about a year looking for a VW camper that we could afford and was not totally rotten round the bottom 6 inches. We found max in the local free ads, Residing in Brentwood about 10 miles away. When we arrived to have a look at him I could not believe the condition of the body, Hardly any rust underneath and that's mostly surface rust. He had the usual bodged rear quarters, Two new front wheel arches the n/s one is the wrong one oops and the welding is crap. The two front seat belt mounts are rusting away along with the bottoms of the cab and sliding door. He had been stored in a transport yard and had suffered a few "kisses" from his larger brother's and sister's, all along the off side and his front panel has a nice dent. But he was cheap and a good base for us to work on.
Max with his bum in the air after removing his engine. So the engines out and time to have a good crawl around underneath with a hammer and see what we can find. Belly pans are ok even managed to look inside them with a small mirror and SHOCK HORROR no grot or rust nearly fainted, But on closer inspection it looks like the sills and belly pans have been replaced relatively recently. Found a nice rusty bit on top of the near side chassis leg in the engine bay so cut it back with the trusty angle grinder and made a repair section and welded it in.
BEFORE AND AFTER
The next bit to be attacked was the seat belt anchorages. I attacked them with the angle grinder and cut back until I had good sound metal. As the holes which resulted were not that large I fabricated my own repair panels from 16g sheet for the main panel with a 1/8 inch spreader plate welded underneath and a captive nut plate welded to that.
The two new repair panels on the bench. These were welded into the holes, By tack welding every couple of inches and the seam welded all round spreading and alternating the welding to minimise any heat distortion. The panels were finished with seam sealer and a coat of primer for now.
The two seat belt anchorages finished in primer.
Next on the agenda was a couple of rust spots on the near side cab floor. These again were attacked with my favourite tool and cut back to good sound metal. I made cardboard templates of the shapes and cut them from 16g sheet steel, Then tacked and seam welded them in again finishing with seam sealer and a coat of primer. The picture on the left shows the two holes middle bottom and upper right.
THE CAB FLOOR FINISHED AND PRIMED WITH HAMMERITE BEIGE (PINK) PRIMER
The off side rear quarter showing the area where MAX was "kissed" by one of his larger sisters in the transport yard. I knocked the dent out as best I could from inside the engine bay and have skimmed the result with body filler ( varies in thickness but the maximum is about 1/8 inch deep). I need more practice with the hammer hehehehe. Decided to have a good look at the bottom of the panel as I thought it was the normal rust worm damage and found the panel to be in good condition and what I assumed to be rot looks like blow through holes from when a new battery tray was welded in and what I thought was rust in the panel turned out to be a welded seam (Area cut back about half way between the top "kiss" and the bottom of the panel next to the panel line), Which had some surface rust blowing the paint. So I assume that a standard repair panel had been used at some time in MAX's past, I intend to just make this area good for now to get through the MOT and then decide if I will replace the whole panel from roof line down.
We have put MAX's front up in the air and pressure washed the underneath off after removing the pan under the pedals etc. Think the new pressure washer is too strong, Look what we found on the beam ends oops, The offside end is not so bad but it is not pretty either. We were going to take the beam off after the MOT to lower MAX's front end, Looks like it will be before the MOT now, Once it is off I'll have to decide if my welding's good enough for a repair job or if it's a new beam time. Wish I had left the 1/2" of muck and crud on the beam. Niki our daughter became the proud owner of Max at this point and decide to fit a new beam and renewed all the brake components including the disc's along with the shock absorber's.
Niki has since fitted a JK roof cap to Max's Devon pop top to cure the leaks and I have fitted a new front panel to him for her. If you want to see some pics and words on these jobs please visit the WORKSHOP pages.
