1967 VW Variant.

Sounds like the universe conspiring to bring you back Jim🤣🤣

Ideally you would want a separate clean workshop spraying area. But unfortunately thats a dream situation which I dont have. I have a very cluttered workshop with 2 vehicles in it at the moment, along with many woodwork machines, car parts, and the sons own workshop and tools. So its always going to be cluttered unless I invest in an inflatable spray booth at some time.

I have hung up large polythene sheets before to isolate the spraying area I have . And its manageable. But at the moment I have chosen to spray primer as a means of protecting the items in the winter conditions. And because I also have all the welding,grinding, cutting tools out at the same time, it just makes things more awkward.

Good thing is I am on the last item, passenger door to finish prime, so things should get handier from then on .

Looks like the stuff alright. I just need a source closer to home for 3m products. Thanks for posting.

What you think might be a decent enough surface on an old wing, that might be suitable for 600 grit sanding to prep it for a coat of primer, could be a road to disaster if you are not careful. here on this wing you can see the OK looking top coat is sanded off to reveal a spiders web of rust below it running through the primer coat. This all needs to be removed to bare metal for the best chance of keeping future rust at bay.

And here is the left hand door hung for safe keeping until I get a chance to shoot another coat of primer on it.

Yeah thats been done. The reason I stopped at the spiders web of rust for a picture was to show what could be beneath an ok appearance of a decent old wing surface. Had i just cleaned up the top layer of paint with 400 grit wet n dry, you could end up spraying over what you thought was a decent foundation for paint, where in fact you were covering up rust, allowing it to re appear in years to come.

I have nearly finished making the repair panel for the bottom edge of the rear wing. Its in a bad way, but no replacements available at the moment anywhere. And if they do become available its 500 euro plus 200 euro for a wing that may need some repair. So its a repair on my own for the time being. I mocked up the piece and will finally dolly the bottom edge when its on

No I never had an oxy acetylene set down through the years, it would be handy now alright. I have the piece welded in now, nearly. I just have to chase some pinholes, and a few larger as the existing metal is in a less than ideal state. If I cut out the entire rust of the wing, then the big end of the wing would be gone. So i am playing at preserving as much as i can to maintain the shape, and deal with any rust holes that appear with the mig spots. Its gonna have to do until I do get a wing. I could get the son to make a fibreglass mould from this existing wing. mmmm.

I welded up the wing repair, and tomorrow will chase a few pinholes and hang the wing and then shape the bottom edge and the corner of the wheel arch and see how it looks.

Body and floorpan and chassis are seperate. Body lifts off from all the other components, yes you could drive away the chassis and floorpan..

[img]https://i.imgur.com/XlYcdA9.jpg[/img]

Here you can see the rear axle suspension unit, and gearbox, you can also see just behind the suspension damper, the shock absorber.

Second picture shows the front steering beam and suspension unit, as well as the steering box. You can also see the beam mounting brackets, one left and one right. Each one has 2 bolts to attache it to the chassis front position.

The steering control arms are mounted onto the end of the beam which houses the suspension torsion rods.

Here is a clearer pic of the rear independent suspension unit as it is attached to the car chassis. But the hubs and gearbox, universal drive shafts, are yet to be fitted, but can be seen on the right of the picture primed iron oxide red.

This floorpan is from the white fastback, but is an identical one to fit on a the blue variant. And the beetle is not the same as this at all.

The main problem I had with checking datum points on the white fastback was......................the lack of them, they just weren't there. Virtually all the bottom 12" of this car had undergone UK mot repairs. Which meant a patch on a patch on a patch, and so on and so on. The rigght hand sill alone had 7 layers along its full length of the sill. So when it was ripped off, there was nothing and all the original lines gone,

Same at the front edge of the body that sits on the napoleans hat area, and the back edge along under the seat.. And the entire floor pan edge to refer to for some indication of lines, was also gone. All rusted out. So more or less this car was repaired on the fly with referrals to pics on the pc, and images into cad programmes to measure points of reference. Overalll it worked well and i ended up with a solid body with all rusted metal cut out. But there were "WTF" moments too on the way.😁

Not to forget parts coming in from the US attract mega amounts of duties from an post. And your wing would be in some state after being fekked around couriers possession all the way fro the US.

Beetle, baywindow, splittie parts are readily available, new old stock or new. So no problem in working on one of them. Type 3 variants, fastbacks,and notchbacks are an entirely different species. There are one or two small repair panels for small wing and headlamp repairs, as well as back wheel arch repairs. As for anything else, happy hunting.