Hello everyone, my name is Rusty and I am 14 years old. I am currently in the process of rebuilding a 62 beetle. Once the beetle is finished I have a 63 11 window split that will be my long term project.
Here is a picture as found…



Here is a couple of pictures when I got it home…





And one after a wash to clean it up..



I also have a '76 aussie kombi camper that I was going to do before I got my beetle and split kombi.

Cheers Rusty.

Nice looking project, keep up with the updates!

Thanks I will post photos as I get things done!

Rusty.

So my bus had sat sideways in the shed for over 2 years while I saved money and collected parts for the front and rear ends. I have put a 4.5" skinned knuckles narrowed beam under and did a straight axle conversion on a type 3 rear end.

With the help of my dad we put the rear end under and the beam under.This was the first time this bus has had a front and rear end under it in 25+ years.


the rear...


The front...


up in the air...!


we slowly brought it down lowering it onto wheels in various stages...


on the ground

Here is a short video!
https://youtu.be/2UiHmQtZUbg

The wiper switch hole in the dash was badly damaged so i cut out the bad section and made a new piece to weld in. Its not completely finished and will need a bit of refining but pretty happy with it.

The bad..




Repair section I made..

At the start of the year I decided I wanted to make something useful at school in year 12 metal work this year. After some thinking I decided I wanted to build a rotisserie for my bus.

After searching the web at different designs I settled for the two 12 sided hoop design as it would best suit/fit the location I plan to work on the bus in future.

This is the basic idea of what I am aiming for...


So with some research and a fair bit of thinking and measuring, I had an idea of how I was going to build the two hoops.

I started off by cutting 24 (12 for each hoop) 580mm lengths of 50mm X 50mm X 3.0mm RHS with 15 degree angles on each end. (the 15 degree angles will join to make a 30 degree, 12 x 30 degrees= 360 degrees)

Ground a 45 degree on the end so the welds would penetrate better.

I then cut 4 lengths of 20x20 RHS which would be tacked into place to hold the top, bottom and side pieces square.


With it all square and tacked I placed the other pieces in place, and when I was happy I tacked each join.


The steel for the second hoop was laid over the top of this one and when they were exactly the same I tacked all four corners of each join and then fully welded the joins.

On school holidays at the moment and wanted to get something achieved on the bus, so I decided to tackle the broken engine lid hinge mounts. Took a little longer than I had expected but it came up not too bad.

A few shots to show the damage and what needed to be repaired...

Started by cutting out, repairing and welding the hinge guide/ outside sections



Then I started to fabricate the sections for the inside. From factory the tapping plates are spot welded to the hatch. For adjustment purposes I decided to create a cavity for a tapping plate. The OG tapping plates were buggered so I made a couple of new ones...

These sections proved to be very fiddly but I got there eventually. All welded in and ground back

Some good work going on there Russell

I've got a bus called Rusty and an Aussie wife.

Steve

Nice work. Have you any more photos of the bus?

With the hoop frames made I then started work on the front and rear mounting locations and got the supports welded into place...

Front...


Rear...


I tack welded equal lengths of RHS between the mounting plates to keep them square and straight when welding them to the rotisserie frame. The rear plates are offset and not central to the hoop as I wanted to have more clearance around the rear wheel arch...

To make for easy installment and transport I chose to join the hoops with a sleeve style method with plug welds on one side and a bolt through the other side of the join...


All of the welds/joins/mounting plates etc were cleaned back and painted with a colour matched blue to the existing RHS...


I separated the rear hoop into a top and bottom half with the sleeve joins to make the installation easy...


The front hoop was joined in 4 locations which will make it possible to disassemble part of the front hoop while attached to the car, to remove the front doors for dogleg repairs etc...


The main part of the Rotisserie is completed however later on down the track I will add RHS supports which join the two hoops together and also supports to rest underneath the chassis in the centre. Very happy with the outcome of my year 12 school project from last year.

Nice metalwork