Rustbusting a VW / Westfalia camper (Joker)

One of our club-members recently bought an '81 Vanagon Westy. At first glance this bus looked quite good. However on closer examination a number of problems emerged. The picture below shows the drivers' side which apparently has a little rust bubbling from under the paint. Does not look too bad .... Wrong, it's very bad. The rubber strip and the vent-grills were only there to hide some really bad rusty bits.

A look on the inside reveals the extent of the problem. After removing the rubber strip you can actually see through the panel from front to aft. The inside surface of the panel is also badly rusted and holes are starting to appear everywhere. As you can see the vent-grills served no purpose other than to hide rust. The horizontal reinforcement-bar had completely disintegrated. The cause of all this is water seeping in through the utility inlets. It then runs onto the floor and into the rocker panel. All of this happens completely out of sight (it's hidden behind the kitchen unit). Over time the rust will eat away the 'precious' metal that makes up the rocker and lower side. In this case some PO slapped on a thick layer of bondo and paint so the problem looked less serious but nothing was done to attack the source of the problem. Something that happens all too often.

The only cure is total replacement. First the inner part of the panel is cut away using a cutting disc. Then all the spot-welds have to be drilled out (use a special spot-weld drill-bit) and the surfaces cleaned up really good (use a grinder and flapper disc). This is the most important, boring and time consuming part of the job! It is not particularly difficult and will save you lots of $$$$ as compared to having it done by a real body shop. The inside frame member that supports the floor (inside the rocker panel) was still in acceptable state. Only a small part in the forward section had some rust so it was ground out and a triangular piece of of metal was welded in.

The rocker-panel extends inwards about 6 inches. This actually shows you that a sliding door can be fitted on either side of the bus. A little pie-shaped piece closes the gap. This part was welded in first. The replacement panels are all genuine VW and will cost about you about US$ 250 in all. The fit is near perfect (but you really have to grind away all of the remains of the old parts! And I mean everything to the last millimetre. I repeat EVERYTHING!!!).

The lower section of the door-pillar also had some rust. I manufactured a repair panel by hand with nothing more than a bench-vice and a hammer (first time I ever did such a thing). It's not perfect but good enough. VW only sells the complete pillar which is quite expensive.

The end-result as seen from the outside. Most of the welds are on the inside. The panel is attached along the floor and vertical seams with lots of 'butt-welds'. Access to these places is not a problem, actually the welding probably was the easiest part of the job. Note: the window frame has not been welded together yet. This turned out to be fairly easy as well.

This picture shows a detail from the overlap. We choose to make the seam as short as possible. Because it is largely in the 'crease' it will be fairly easy to make it invisible (a little bondo works wonders). The picture was taken before welding the two pieces together. Actually these are the only welds that are 'in sight'. All the other welds will not be seen after the works is done so it does not really matter if they don't look 'perfect'.

The finished job from the inside. Note: the horizontal reinforcement bar has to be 'glued' in place, not welded (that will definitely warp the panel as another club-member found out!), only the ends are welded to the vertical pillars.

Note: This job was carried out by two very inexperienced amateurs in about 3 days. The owner of the bus (a photographer by profession) did all the laborious cutting and grinding. I (a computer programmer) did all the welding (the fun stuff). Neither of us had done a similarly sized job before. My welding skills are really limited. However we could draw on the experience of two club-members who had done the same thing before (but they do this sort of work for a living).

All in all it was easier than expected. I hope to be able to show a picture after all the painting and fitting of the ancillary equipment is done.