Saturday 28 October 2017

The good, the bad, and the ugly of restoration

The notchback restoration is going very well. The body shell is at a workshop right now getting the last of the repairs performed (the repair sections are all welded in place now) and while they were at it, the rear apron was sliced off and my spare NOS one was installed. I hadn't planned on that but screw it, it's now perfect and reminded me of the panel van restoration performed 20 years earlier where we did the same thing- replaced the rear apron with NOS.



I also have a number of items off being sorted out for the interior. The seat bases as well as springs have all been chemically dipped and stripped and etch primed by Minus Paint. The springs are now painted black (not that anyone sees them!) and the seat bases and back rest frames are being correctly painted in the 2 x stages of grey that VW decided to do on my particular model during late 1964. It is an odd finish and once completed I will post up some images to show how odd (yet correct) it is.



The original door cards are off at Dash-Original being attended to. The lower grey ones are being re-glued with their super duper glue (original material etc being retained as it's impossible to replace) and the upper panels (front and rear) have been stripped back to the cards ready for new heat seamed vinyl to be created and glued onto them (the original white top vinyl pieces are good but not good enough so a couple of us 1500 chaps decided to strip them and use these as the masters for a number of reproductions to be made).



And of course I have a few small items under restoration at the moment such as the original horn with pieces being painted, hardware now plated and gaskets etc replaced. All simple but time consuming tasks.



Updates have been pathetic from me but I can assure you some good stuff is about to be posted (VW related). Let's just say that my black car's Flat-4 BRM's are sold and will be replaced by my own wheel design shortly.



Isotropic rem polishing