I thought I'd share a few photo's about my bug, the Green Meanie. I brought her back in June where she'd been laid up outside a farm building for the best part of 9 months after failing her MOT on rust (no surprise there then 😀). This bug belonged to a friend of mine a few years back and it was sold as he'd just taken on a bay window which needed money throwing at it, at the time I'd just brought a Hearse as my daily drive so I had no spare cash to buy the bug with. My friend told me that the new owner had called him as he needed to shift the bug because it had failed it's MOT, he'd brought a different car to use so the bug was laid up and needed shifting. The new owner had eBay'ed the car where it sold for £410 but the winning bidder didn't materialise. So I took a friday afternoon off at work (wife had gone to Liverpool to see friends........He face was a picture when she came home! ;D). I found the bug, spoke to the owner and had a quick look underneath. On the face of it there didn't seem to be much in need of repair, but I've learnt that bugs like most old motors can be deceptive when it come's to welding! The owner wanted £500, I went away had a think, called him back & made an offer which he accepted. The bug drove home without too much trouble, bit sluggish as she was in need of a good service. The bug came with an extra set of EMPI 8 alloys & a chrome firewall, which were sold as I prefered the Centreline wheels & don't see the point of chrome firewalls as you can't clean the dam things.
First job was to inspect what needed doing, he didn't have the failure sheet so I put all for corners on stands and had a good poke around. The obvious area's were the lower panels on both heater channels were fugged, framehead lower panel was rusted in the centre (I think it's smacked the road too many times due to the drop :🙂) and I noticed some area's on the inner wings front & back that needed doing.
Here's what I found on initial inspection;
Bad corrosion on the Framehead lower panel
After cutting out the rot I found only the lower panels on the heater channels were duff, the rest was solid
Also found rot in the inner arches back & front.😬 & there were some very small holes in the floorpans that needed patching
The twist in this story is that I got the car thinking that a mate of mine would be able to help out with most of the welding as I'd never welded before. Sadly this didn't happen so I was left with a bug with holes & no clue on how to weld. :-[ I got a 2nd hand Clarke gas/gasless mig from a friend for a good price so thought "sod it, I'll give it a go". I did some reading on the technique and found a very useful mig welding UK website, this helped massively! I started by doing some practise welds on some old steel, when I could lay a weld that looked like a weld I set about welding the bug. I was hoping for it to be welded in a few weeks with help, but on my own I didn't set a time for completion, anything that didn't take would be re-done until I thought it was right kind of thing.
I started with the simple area's first, the floorpan had some holes in so I tackled those first as they were straight lines and relatively easy to get to.
After many weekends and evenings the bug slowly started to take shape and there were no holes where there were holes before 😀
Framehead lower panel..........I must confess this wasn't welded by me, it was welded by a chap I know of old (into his Mini's). I was leaving the framehead till last hping that I'd be confident of being able to do it but I didn't so it was done by my friend.
With the welding work out of the way I set about checking over the rest of the bug, found the following that needed addressing;
Front lights were not working
Handbrake was literally stuck on the whole time
Rear tyres worn
Needed oil
The not so important stuff
Exhaust system had surface corrosion, needed paint
CD player wasn't working
Needed a dam good wash & polish.
The front headlights were the next job, upon inspection we (myself & a mate who's good with electrics) found that the headlight switch was duff, the main beam operation on the indicator stork was faulty and a mass of cruddy wiring, bodges and bad earths were to blame. To save time messing about the decision was made to rewire the front end and just replace the couple of duff wires at the back (the back end was fine, only a few brittle wires which were replaced). One saturday afternoon, a few metres of wire, new switches and several mugs of tea later everything worked, another job ticked off of the list. Following weekend the rear tyres were changed for new ones, exhaust system cleaned and painted in high temp resistant paint. Chrome work (which was covered in flakey black) was cleaned off and repainted. CD player fixed, blown fuse......Probably the easiest repair on the whole car! Fitted a pair of genuine rubber mats (got a bargain on eBay with them) as there was no carpet or anything in the bug. Cleaned and painted all four inner arches,Added a few stickers to the bodywork after a wash.
I hadn't addressed the rear brake problem as I'd had alot on during the week before the MOT (when I was hoping to look at it). So she went in as she was, I did say to the tester that she'll fail on the rear brake and asked if it could be done whilst it was in. The only failure was the rear brake, the cylinder was leaking and the brake assembly had been put back wrong so the shoe has constant contact with the drum :🙂 ???. This was done and a certificate was issued. I asked what he thought of the welding work, the reply was "Not the prettiest I've seen but it's certainly solid enough and nothing's been missed".................I felt a little bit of pride hearing that.
Here's the 'Meanie' today...........
Jobs still to do include front passenger side wheel bearing (needs changing), Speedo is duff so needs a replacement fitted & a sub wiring in.
Long term work is to source another engine & do a strip down & rebuild as the one in the Bug has some end float. 😬
Dungbug Casual Dubber
36 posts · joined Dec 2009 ·
