just picked up my new bug and I was thinking of wire brushing or sanding pack the surface rust on the body and hitting it with some kill rust or cold galvnit (thats what its called isnt it?)Would that be a good idea?
and with the holes in the floor pan (stupid leaking battery), same deal and maybe rivet a panel over the hole and seal it?

Looking for some ideas for temp fixes to stop it getting any worse before i get round to cutting the rust and finding a friend with a welder and some spare panels.

Cheers Guys

Palms

Removing the surface rust, treating it and painting it with something will make it look a bit better untill you can strip it right back to a bare metal shell and restore it.

The plate over the holes in the floor is definitley only a very temporary fix.

Cheers mate

Dont worry, its not a long term thing promise! just dont want her to get any worse.

you can buy rear quarter floorpan sections (which include the battery tray) for very little money - dead easy to weld in too - got mine from mick motors

sounds like a bit of a rat.. fix hole, slam it n drive it..
now parkin it at the shops wont be a bother at all..

Thanks Battybat, yeah i reackon thats the next thing to do, but I didnt want the battery falling thru the floor whilst i'm driving The new floor panels come with the seat rails attacted dont they?

H, rat is not the word for it. this beasty is great when i picked her up, the seat belts werent attached, the speedo was working and the key ignition is dead so some has wired up a start button. Drives side door panel was missing and the passenger side was screwed in with a couple of odd screws!! Couldnt be more rat if ya tried!

reading through the posts a bit, am I right in thinking that I should fix the heater channels before removing the body to fix the pan?

You will probably have to fix the heater channels when you take the body off the pan

have a look at this!

http://www.nb.au.com/battybat/beetle 

http://www.nb.au.com/battybat/beetlefloorpan 

it's my record of the body rebuild! started of with a bad pan, then when I took the body off I found all sorts of nastiness - heater channels, inner wheel arches, front firewall, rear wheelarch/heater channel

you can actually buy just the rear quarter, from the seat rail backwards, then cut out the old section and weld in the new - I left as much metal as I could round the edges though - wasn't at all sure of the quality of the replacement panel - very thin - and I wanted as much reinforcement as I could get - take a look at the floorpan web gallery for pics

welders are very reasonable now - paid $500 for my 120 gas/gasless miniMIG - well happy with it toonn[ Edited on 14-8-2005 by battybat ]

I'll have to take some photos of the floor pan as it is now.. i mean i know there is some bad jobs out there but this seems pretty unique.

looks like a previous owner has bottomed out on a stump/curb something and pushed a section of the pan under the rear seat passenger side up? nice job finished off with a massive big hole...nn[ Edited on 12-8-2005 by Proud_Dad ]