it needs new heater chanels, parts are cheap, labour a little intensive, give brackley bodyworks a call, in the northgate area of brisbane, hes right into vws

Dude, shame I'm away on world travels or I'd fix it for ya May not need a new channel either.

I would suggest $40 on a cheap angle grinder with 1mm cutting discs and chop a section of the rust away to see if the closing plate is OK and also remove the running board to see if the outside is OK.

The orig channel is made of better thickness steel than repro parts and only Hookeys in the UK make well fitting thick closing plates.

ask Custom VEEdubs in Stafford for a quote of repair and replacement or Das Rueb Haus on Goldie. Not many VW specialists left these days.

Rob i am at Alexandra Hills and am willing to look at it for you and give you a recomendation on the best repair method , not to mention i also have a mig welder and am a sheemetal worker by trade and have done all my own sheetmetal on our Baja Bay Window bus

Give me a call for a chat and i'll see how i can help you

Andrew 0411556744

Dude if you can weld stainless then plain steel is even easier.

Now you can do the repair without splitting the body/chassis but if not done before then even 6 inches of seperation will make this easy.

if the outside is sound then drill out the spot welds on the outer part of the channel closing plate and cut front and rear off. Get a hookeys panel as the fit is excellent even if it's twice the price of the brazilian panel. Line it up and drop the body down so you can get the bolts in front to rear and with a bit more aligning you can plug weld the outer edge of the closing plate to the channel.

With that done you can now make up the repair sections for the rusty inner part of the channel once you've cut this back to solid metal. then seperate the body again and weld your repair panels in. Then paint and screw the body back on, maybe with a new piece of seal for the repaired area