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Date:         Sun, 17 Apr 94 20:55:01 -0400
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Randy <thewoz!wort!randy@netcom.com>
Subject:      battery tray replacement story

If anyone remembers, I'm the guy with the '76 bus with the rotted out battery tray. I posted asking for solutions to this problem and got a bunch of replies. I did the work this morning so I thought I would post a summary!

The battery tray was completely rusted through -- there was a battery-shaped hole in it and the battery was just about to fall through. The rest of the quarter panel looked pretty ratty and there had obviously been some bodywork done to it in the past with a little new rust showing through. I opted to buy a replacement steel battery tray from Bus Boys in CA (something like $45 -- a little more than I wanted to spend).

A friend of mine's brother does some welding on the side so he agreed to weld the piece in for $50. It's a good thing too because I got two estimates for the work -- both were $200-250. Anyway I took everything apart and the guy helped me cut out the old metal. We tried a grinder and a pneumatic metal cutter but it was too hard to maneuver them in the enclosed space. What we needed was a small cutting disc for a power drill but we couldn't find one. We finally resorted to THE TORCH which was messy because the undercoating kept catching fire while we were cutting (man you shoulda seen that, scared the crap out of me).

I then ground down the metal and ground off as much rust as I could to give the guy a good surfact to weld to. A sand blaster would have been the right tool for the job because of all the nooks and crannies, but I had to use an angle grinder and sanding disc. I couldn't get some of the rust off but we decided to weld it anyway.

The replacement tray was exactly the same size as the original, which made it really hard to fit into place because parts of the old tray were still in there and there wasn't much room to maneuver it around. Rather than cutting everything out we left some of the old tray in to give us something to weld to -- if we had cut everything out maybe this would have been easier. So we ended up trimming and bending the replacement tray pretty significantly so that it would fit including rolling up two corners and cutting two notches for body seams. Still we needed two 3-pound hammers and a variety of drifts and chisels to get it in place.

The welding was messy because the replacement part was galvanized steel and was coated with primer. Even after sanding off some of the surface it was hard to weld. The guy told me what he did was run the welder over the surface of the metal several times to strip it of any coatings or treatment and then attempt the weld. Even then he burned through the metal in several places. The welds on the inside of the quarter panel were pretty good, but the heat caused the body putty to melt and the paint to blister and peel. Between that and the fire damage from the burning undercoating my quarter panel is kind of a mess. But I had to sand it down and spot paint it anyway so it's no big deal.

Now the part is only tacked in so I'll have to get some sort of sealant to put around the edge of it and also get some undercoating for the bottom of it.

Anyway it took about 5 hours including taking both of the light fixtures and the rear bumper off and dismantling parts of the fuel injection wiring and air cleaner to give us access. If I were to do this again, I would definitely NOT try to repeat this! I think I would just treat the rusted metal with Pour 15 or something and install a fiberglass matte replacement or something. Even if we had had the right tools (cutting disc, sand blaster) it was just too much work for a not very satisfactory result.

Randy


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