Crusty Rusty

["Morten T Nielsen" <morten-n@gmx.de>]

Hi All

I am starting in the military on monday, and I really wanted to use the Scirocco as transportation to the base which is about 300 Km. away from home. It's only in the weekends I'm going home, but It would still be nice to drive such long runs in the Roc'! BUT - Since I started doing repairs to the lower A-pillars It has been nothing but rust repairs...All you US residents should be glad you have such fine weather (Well...some of you do...). When I was through with the a-pillars I was going to attach me front wings back on...but then I noticed some flacky black metalŽat the bottom of the front door pillar. - today I angle grinded all of the left side of the car right off...I have bought 2 new rocker panels and I hope to make it in time for my start. ...I just hate this. I know that in a year or two the car will probably be rusty again because it's VERY hard to remove ALL the rust. Some panels you can't even get at...what are you supposed to do to them? Exsample: Down at your feet there is an angled plate...this is NOT the bottom of the car. Together with this plate and the real car bottom they form a nice little room...perfect for rust traps. And you can't really cut too much in them because the front jack points are just below (Way to go Volkswagen...)
When I removed the sill/rocker panel there was a fair degree of rust on the actual structure. I'm going to try to repair that tomorrow. The trouble is...for some rust it seems like you can just use the angle grinder with a brush. But there's probably still rust in the metal. It's very hard to tell which kind of rust can be brushed and what should be cut away!
Tomorrow I'm hoping to have the inner structure replaced with solid 1mm gauge steel...that should give mr. rust something to think about. In addition to all the grinding and cutting, I'm going to use paint with zink...anyone have some experience about such paints? It should be very preventive of rust.
Well - the only good thing is that I actually could buy some original sills/rocker panel for a 76' Scirocco...

By the way...am I supposed to overlap when welding in the new sills? I have cut the body in a way that leaves 4 cm. for welding. One could probably weld with the plates mached right up against eachother...but the preparation of the bodywork would surely take ages!?! The bottom of the sills will just be spot-welded on like the originals.

Huh - I guess this is what you'd call a good rant? - just had to :-)

Cheers

Morten Nielsen
76' Scirocco TS


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