Date:         Mon, 7 Jan 2008 19:17:57 -0500
Reply-To:     craig cowan <phishman068@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         craig cowan <phishman068@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      A Day of Vanagon- Seam Rust repair/auto paint
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Well guys, today was a wonderful 60* day here in PA, so i spent my day on
vanagon projects.

So while i had the wire wheel out and mounted to the drill, i thought it
would be great to try my hand at some rust repair on the body. I started in
a very inconspicuous area, under the sliding door track. I ground it down to
shiny (but in parts pitted) bare metal, so far no holes. I'm then going to
hopefully come back to it tommorow with somekind of primer, i've heard of
self etching primers being important. Than after a coat or two of primer and
a little sanding, i'm not looking to get it perfectly smooth and not worried
about using any kind of filler, i'll be painting it as close to the VW flash
silver body color as i can. I'm told that there are places where you can
have autobody paint mixed up and put into aerosel cans, but i'm not sure
where these places are. The only place i know of is paintscratch.com, but
i've heard that NAPA does it. Anyone know for sure on this? Alternatively, i
have a decent spray gun so i might be able to get a local body shop to mix
me up a bit, mask off the sections in question, and make the seams not look
rusty and the car look decent up to 3 or 4 feet away!
Any input on my methodology? I just want a repair that can at least last a
few years, and looks better than the previous owners HORRIBLE idea of using
silver POR15 to paint the seams (on the outside). It looks terrible, and
just held the water in.


I've been cleaning up a pretty good set of steel coolant pipes i have, wire
wheeling them to the bone and rust proofing/ painting them up. I also went
to replace my speedometer today with a replacement that has a funcitonal
odometer, but after taking out the stock speedo, i was able to rip it apart
and fix it! I removed all the gears, put them back in line, and epoxied the
axle in place therefore giving me a functional odometer and trip meter.
While in there, i fixed and lubed the cables (that had kinks in them) coming
from the heater controls, and now their silky smooth! I also repaired the
mirror flop i had going on on both sides of my vehicle with rubber gaskets
from the home depot, and tightened up my muffler mount that was shakin like
mad. My sliding door has been having some trouble latching shut, i think the
bearing is bad in the track....but it randomly keeps fixing itself, and it
fixed itself again today. Another day of vanagon will follow tommorow.

-Craig
'85GL