Happy Birthday!

Well, yesterday was the Bug's 37th birthday. We celebrated by patching a few more rust holes. We are well on our way to finishing the areas that need to be repaired on the driver's side. Once we get these parts finished, we'll be able to replace the heater channel.

See this rusty area?



This is the firewall area in the front of the car, near where the driver's left foot would be. It is completely gone.

This is sort of what it should look like.



I took a piece of aluminum foil and made a template of the passenger side. Steve flipped the template and cut out a patch for the driver's side. Here is the patch, held in place with a C clamp.



Here it is, welded into place. Doesn't that look much better??!!



Now, we went around to the same area, just on the other side of the firewall. This will need a nice patch too.



Steve, preparing the patch...waving at a neighbor.



Here's the rusty part, being cut away...



And now the patch is welded into place.



Here it is, all finished. Nice!



Steve welded another piece into place in the back near where the heater channel attaches to the luggage shelf at the bottom. I didn't get any good pictures of that.

Now he just needs to seal the welded areas with seam sealer.

We only have one more place to repair...in the driver's side front wheel well, before we can replace that heater channel and lower it back down onto the chassis.

I cleaned up.



I also had to place duct tape over the fender bolt holes. Apparently some kind of bee, I think a miner bee was trying to make a home in my car's insulation!