Early before and after.

I'm finally finished welding all the missing panels in. I'm sending it off to the local paint shop next week for a quickie. Nothing special, I just want it presentable and to keep the rust off of it for a year or so while I drive it.

Pass side before.

Pass side after.

Drivers side before.Drivers side after.

I also took it for a spin yesterday. Now I know that three gears work...and one brake. The crunch is on for me as I sold my Subaru the other day and now I have nothing to drive until I get this thing on the road.

One boxer meets the other.

It never ceases to amaze me how clean this bus is as I dig into it. The I have yet to find any serious rust issues as I cut panels off and glue more on. Even the passenger side corner is remarkably rust free. There is little but surface damage even after it was obviously hit in this corner. To be honest, the donor panel has more rust on it than the original I just cut off.

This is the remnants of the donor piece where I cut my patch from. If you look at the stinger behind where the sheet metal was, you can see the large amount of surface rust. this is just getting to the point where it's in danger of rusting through. I decided to stick with the original support for just this reason. It's only bent up and can be straightened to match up quite nicely.

Here is where two boxers meet (my 40 year old VW and my three year old Subaru). Nothing inspires creativity like desperation. I thought for about twenty minutes on how to straighten the corner support out. I went through every scenario from beating it to death with a hammer to using a jack to push it back into place to just using the metal from the donor piece. Luckily, my eyes fell on a come-along in the garage that we bought to take down a tree and inspiration struck. So I swung my Subaru around and hooked it up to the bus. With a few cranks of the handle on the tool, the stringer bent back into place. It was a tug-o-war between the car and the bus. Believe it or not, the car won. Just as the piece was lined back up, the bus (wheel chocks and all) started to slide backwards. The little wagon never budged.

This is the final test fitment of the donor. This thing has clamps all over it to line it up. It's going be fun to see the final fit of this thing. There's even a clamp inside the engine compartment to help the donor piece line up with the corner. You can see the yellow end over the distributor. Also note that the reverse light hole is now cut out. It looks perfect and the holes line up level with the opposite side.

For this piece I'm going to use a combination of lap and butt welds. The bus was pretty wavy back here from the hit it took and the only way to make it look right will be to use this method in conjunction with some filler.

Next week I'll prep the interior with some rust bullet and get to work with the welder.

In reverse.

I started this week by cutting out the drivers side corner and fitting the donor. The hole for the reverse light in my donor panel was non existent because it's from an earlier model bus that wasn't equipped. My original plan was to use the original piece to trace and cut. The thing was so bent out of shape that it was useless for my purposes. So I ended up using paper similar to the thickness of what you would use to print business cards on your printer. Fortunately for me, the holes (right and left) are identical so transferring it over was really simple. I put the paper behind the passenger side holes and traced the pattern on to the paper making sure I properly marked the location of the screw holes and notches. Then I simply cut the shape out of the paper with scissors and taped it to the other side. Then I just traced the hole with a permanent marker and bingo it looked perfect. Something to note. Even though the light holes are on opposite sides, they aren't mirrored. Sort of like brackets on your keyboard.

[ ] = Mirrored (not how you cut them)

[ [ = Not mirrored (how you do cut them)

What it's supposed to look like.

What it did look like.
Paper in place ready for tracing.
The next post shows the final outcome.