Hello,

New to this whole beetle thing, is there a supplier anywhere who sells a rust repair panel for the lower windscreen corners or the whole panel which the wipers come through. Its a 67 so the earlier style panel, havent been able to find a rust free one in lots of wrecker searching.

Coming at this fom Minis, wher eyou can get enough new panels to make a whole new shell, surely someone does this for beetles also?

Cheers Chris

Talk to Vintage in Sydney 02-9789-1777

Talk to Classic Veedub there cheap for Brazilian parts

Hey Chris, there's a guy here in the northern suburbs (actually I think he might be in Gawler), who will make rust repair sections for any car, any make. Comes to your house, measures whatever section you want replaced, and custom makes it.

Quality of his work from what I've seen is very good (made a mate a set of 4 mudguards for his 1932 Ford Tudor hot rod) for an excellent price. Happy to grab his details from my mate tonight if you're interested.

AyeBee that would be aweseome, beause it doesnt appear to be a commercially available part.

Cheers Chris

Sorry for the late reply Chris, the guy's name is Shane Dale, and his email is:

csdale@adam.com.au

I've got a phone number for him too if you need it. My mate seems to think he's from Gawler as well. Nice and local for you.

Regards,

Andy

CJ_DT I am in need of the same panel,(passanger side) mine is a 67 aswell.if you get one made can you post the outcome. I would be very interested geting him to make me one too. Cheers Gary

Thanks Andy,

I have emailed Shane and will see how it all goes, and Gary I will post some pics of the results if it all comes together.

Chris

give mick motors a call, we just bourt a hetaer channel (dansk) quarter panel and two battery sections off him. good proces aswell!

Hello, Thought Id let you know how it all turned out. Was unable to get a commercially available piece to weld in, so had Shane (mentioned above) make me the rust repair panel.

Very reasonable price, and very good job (I had him do it near enough is good enough as opposed to a file finish type job and it was damn near perfect)

First thing was to pop the windscreen out, which with the old solid seal wasnt that easy, ended up cutting the rubber to stop me smashing the screen. That reavealed the extent of the rust, bad on the drivers side, pretty good on the passenger side.

Rust on the driver side;



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Patch panel in place to trace around so I dont end up with a hole bigger than the panel;


Started by cutting out all the rusty metal. Removed all the rust and back to solid steel;





Straighten the screen lip I bent being too over eager removing the spot welded lip

[img]http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/11/ernierust010.jpg

Trial fit, then remove all paint near where ill be welding;



Drill some holes in the lip for some plug welds;



Tack weld it in, then slowly work my way around. The gap on the middle end is wayy more than I wanted, and I distorted the panel in the middle ever so slightly on the welding when I blew a hole and welded it up. That said it tapped back to just about perfect, and will only need a tiny skim of bog.




Overall I'm happy, not a body work person at the best of times, but it came out fine by my standards. And it no longer has a rust hole. Just got a few more to go.

So where is the best/cheapest place to get a set of seals for windscreen etc, and how does 67 aust model translate into the american models if I hit up ebay US?

Hello CJ_DT if you dont mind me asking what did he charge for that panel ? Cheers Gary