1970 VW Bus - Westfalia Resto

Man, really enjoying following your work on this. Doing the old girl proud. Making a no-doubt really hard job look way easier than it no doubt isn't. Kudos mate, have at it.
 
Spent the weekend getting half ass set up for powdercoating. I’ve wanted to have a go at it for a while and with all the suspension/undercarriage stuff going on I figured it would be worth my while to go for the extra durability and ease of powder.

First part was a good result but had an issue with the size of my oven (which is a fb marketplace $5 toaster oven). Then I went ahead and blasted the torsion bar covers and coated them. Very happy with the results.
 

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Maritime said:
Nice, that will be so much better than regular paint.

Yep, I'm really happy with the finish. The best part about it is the time savings. Media blasting is the same, but with the PC I give it a wipe down, shoot the powder, about 30 minutes in the oven and once the part cools its ready to install. Much faster than 3 coats primer, 3 coats paint and 24+ hours to cure.
 
Looks good! I have an oven I got from work work well, I have the hrbor freight gun, just about ready to buy a better one. What powders are you using?
 
Looks like it turned out really good! I like powder for small parts. It's a bit more durable than spray paint and the whole process is easier than setting up for spraying paint.
 
cbrianroll said:
Looks good! I have an oven I got from work work well, I have the hrbor freight gun, just about ready to buy a better one. What powders are you using?

Yeah I got the HF gun, have heard its just about exactly the same as the Eastwood gun, which is more expensive. Seems to work great so far. I'm using Eastwood powders.

Rider52 said:
Looks like it turned out really good! I like powder for small parts. It's a bit more durable than spray paint and the whole process is easier than setting up for spraying paint.

Yes, this is mostly why I wanted to get it set up. Its much easier to do 1 coat of powder and a 30 minute cure (while I can prep the next part) than 3 coats primer 3 coats paint etc. Plus the Bus has a lot of moving parts which will fare better being powdered.
 
Been working on patching up the crusty fuel tank shelf. I had to replace some metal and it totally sucks welding inside there. Might as well be blindfolded. The last piece I did I ended up cutting some of the inner bulkhead out as it had some pinholes, welding the piece up from the back. Just need to reproduce the outer piece and weld it up, fill a few pinholes on the shelf and POR it.

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I've been putting off making these lower wheel well pieces for a while now. Not sure why as they are pretty easy. Cardboard template to get the fitment and then transferred to 20 ga. I had to get a little creative recreating the bead rolled features as I don't have access to a bead roller. I do have a 3D printer so I modeled a small stamping die, printed hollow shell in PLA and filled the void with epoxy. The parts warped a bit from the heat released during the curing of the epoxy, so next time I would add some structure inside the print to keep it more rigid. I lined them up by eye and used the vise to stamp them.

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Awesome, those "bead rolls" look good!

Powder is king! I'm 100% with you on the time savings, durability is great too, but going from newly built part to installed in under and hour is where it really shines!
 
SONIC. said:
Awesome, those "bead rolls" look good!

Powder is king! I'm 100% with you on the time savings, durability is great too, but going from newly built part to installed in under and hour is where it really shines!

Yep, I love that. Was it you that built an "extender" like a plywood box to bake larger parts in a residential oven? I've been cruising CL for an oven so I can do wheels, etc but it would be nice to be able to do some of the longer parts.
 
advCo said:
Yep, I love that. Was it you that built an "extender" like a plywood box to bake larger parts in a residential oven? I've been cruising CL for an oven so I can do wheels, etc but it would be nice to be able to do some of the longer parts.

Yep, done it a couple of times standard foil backed hard foam insulation works OK for a couple runs, it will eventually deform from the heat but it holds up well enough for a couple wheels.
A light gauge steel box with some fiberglass insulation on the outside works better.
 
The weekends activities


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I've been focusing on the camper top lately, I want to get this thing knocked out so its ready to install as soon as the roof is painted.

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The original wooden nailers for the pop top were pretty dry rotted, one plywood bow was busted to pieces and the other was delaminating. I pulled the entire frame off and sanded down the fiberglass tape that they used to bond it. I got a bit too aggressive in one spot but already repaired it with some G/flex and 5oz cloth.

First things first, I pulled an 8' mahogany board off the lumber shelf and milled it down to just over 1/2" (same thickness as stock). I ripped the strip down to size and put a 17* angle on the saw to match the factory piece.

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I was able to cleanly remove the forward plywood bow so I used that as a pattern to trace onto a piece of ash I had lying around. Cut the two of those out with the jigsaw and then cleaned them up with the sander. I laid them out and glued/nailed em with some 18ga brad nails. I did make a stick to lay these out (back to my cabinet making days) and I can make a drawing to lay this stuff out if anyone is interested or thinks it'll be of use.

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The next day I pulled some weird cutoff scraps I had from a project a few years ago. Stuff like this is why I have a big ol' scrap pile and never get rid of anything. These pieces were the perfect size to make up the spacer blocks between the nailer and the camper top.

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Glued and nailed all the spacers right in place and I'll get this frame epoxied onto the camper top tonight.

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Over the weekend I got the bottom side of the pop top squared away. I cut 2" strips of 5oz fiberglass cloth to mimic the original design. I used 5:1 epoxy with a west system 406 adhesive filler to thicken the epoxy for better bonding. First, we wet out the pop top, then put the strips in place and made sure they were saturated. Then I applied an even thicker mix of epoxy to the wood frame itself, flipped it and nailed it in place. I hated to nail through the top but due to the shape its impossible to get a clamp on most of the areas. I'll flip it over and fill all the nail holes in tomorrow which is no big deal.

Once the frame was epoxied in place and secured, I cut some smaller strips to fold over the blocks along the edges.

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Once everything was fully cured, I sanded all the glass down with 80 grit, cleaned and sprayed all the wood and new fiberglass with primer, followed by 2 coats of Rustoleum Gloss White oil paint.

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Sat afternoon I went and harvested some parts including an extra steering box, steering column and wheel and some other misc goodies.

Yesterday, I went over to another buddy's place and picked up 3 extra dual port heads to hopefully replace the cracked one I found when I tore down the engine.
 
Nice work man, really nice. Not for the first time (and undoubtedly not the last either) I'm reminded how a restoration on these old busses should be done. This is gonna be a peach 8)
 
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