Toasty Goes Under the Knife.

[Towel Rail]

Hey folks,

I've had a couple requests to mirror my Thing restoration thread from the Samba here, so I will.



In short, I bought my 1974 Thing (dubbed Toasty McThing due to the extra gas heater) in 2005. It's a fun car, and people love it, but it is incredibly rusty and the mechanical issues have piled up, to the point where I could no longer drive it in good conscience. The final straw was when I began to see light through the floor.




So my plan is to tear it all the way down and do a ground-up restoration. I plan to take my time and do everything right, but I don't want to turn it into a perfect show car that I can no longer drive. In fact, I will be taking many extra steps to make it as rust-proof as possible, so that I can continue to drive it in the winter. In the end, it will get an adjustible beam, 7.0x15 tires, an Eberspaecher heater, and a new 1776cc engine with dual 35 PDSITs. And a crank-start.

The first step will be to strip down the body enough to remove it. Then I will restore and rust-proof the pan before tackling the body.

I discovered a lot of rust and expanding foam as I started to dig in under the PO's attempt at rebuilding the rockers:



The PO tried to reinforce the critical areas of the body with sheet metal and pop rivets. I'll need to drill a lot of these out before I can go much further:



Here it is after taking off the windshield, hood, rollbars, and top:



The pans are mostly solid, but for some weak areas along the outside edges:



Took the gas tank out:



Here's the replacement 1961-1967-style tank I will be using. I'm flirting with the idea of expanding the tank as shown, to hold a couple more gallons:



More rust. Note where a body-to-pan attachment point used to be...



So now you're caught up. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, but I think if I can keep the tasks simple enough, I'll be able to keep making progress.

- Scott

[Kubelmann]

I am also with one of my Things under deep knife. Your project is more challenging than mine. Looks great. Thanks for the post.

[Towel Rail]

I haven't been able to do much lately, but some neato parts came in!



Once my credit card cools off a little, I'll put in an order for outer skins, possibly NOS parts this time. Althought the Danish ones ain't too bad!

- Scott

[Towel Rail]

So it's been a while, but my garage has gotten cold, and it's all too easy to dote on one's daily driver.

I've gotten some leftover bed rails from my folks, which I'll use as reinforcements to keep the pillars from moving relative to each other when I remove the body from the pan. I'll still need some more angle iron to do it right, but you get the idea:



BTW, Mackeson's and U2's "Zooropa" album are good. Over and out.

- Scott

[Towel Rail]

Didn't do much today. ("Today" meaning the tail end of yesterday, if that makes any sense.) I disconnected the engine wiring, and drained the brake fluid from the front circuit. I spent an hour removing one of the rear fenders. God, that sucked -- the body panels behind it were really crusty, so when I got the fender loose from the body, some of the body metal had come with it! Yep, this cancer patient will need a bunch of cosmetic surgery to prevent certain psychological damage!



Closeup:



And here's why we inspect/replace steering couplers every so often:



- Scott

[Mattt]

Scott(Towel),,,,I don't know if you are looking for replacement sections, but I might have a front "firewall" section that would help you out with rust repair. That pic showing the complete lack of metal in front of the passengers feet is CRAZY! Us CA guys really don't know rust!!!

[Towel Rail]

It's crazy. Much evil has been lurking underneath the riveted patch panels:

[Kubelmann]

I recently found the same thing behind my back seat on the edges and in the corner of the outside rear of one of the rocker panels. Once I started digging i found a number of old riveted repair. Found the same thing all over m both my pan halves once i started to dig and grind. I ended up with two new pan halves. Turned out perfect. Once you start digging you uncover some weird stuff on these old cars.