1971 Beetle Cal Look school project

Week 4 - body off!
After a couple of lessons where students were distracted by trial fitting a 6-point roll cage to the car (better to scratch the paint on this one than the orange one while we're checking out exactly where it fits!), we finally split the body and floorpan this morning!
The heater channel on the drivers side had been welded pretty much front to rear along the floorpan edge, so one of the lads got choppy with the angry grinder and freed them wherever he could. There were some rather horrible plates on the bulkhead but fortunately they'd not been painted so they'd simply rotted away and were really easy to rip apart!

We'd had the shocks off a little while ago, so once the wheels were on and the car was on the floor, we bounced the car up and down by the spare wheel well and lo and behold, the body came away from the pan! Then we had to stop to disconnect the brake fluid reservoir, which we'd forgotten about, and cut a couple of extra wires that were in the way, and the body went skyward on the lift.

My teaching assistant is by his own admission not a car guy, but he's keen to learn as much as he can, and both him and the other guy in the photo above were blown away when the body came off. The students reactions varied from "is that it?" to "that's proper rotten", with the general feeling being positive.
In the afternoon lesson we started removing pieces from the floorpan ready for soda blasting which will hopefully happen fairly soon!

As I keep telling the kids, I've restored worse! Bare metalling is the only way to go to find every little bit of grot, and I'm not completely convinced about acid dipping - I've heard too many stories about the acid getting trapped in the seams only to reappear 12 months or so down the line.

There's a soda blasting place local to school that have done quite a few Beetles, Porsches, Jags etc., and they seem to know their stuff.
When I spoke to them a couple of weeks ago we agreed that we would cut off the pan halves, remove the gearbox and beam and they'd blast it. Although the drivers side pan half looks like something that PG Tips might be basing their next design on, the passenger side isn't too bad at all, and could be saveable. The framehead is good, as is the bottom plate, and even the Napoleons hat looks solid. Blasting it before the pan halves go on will be a nice way of getting the edges perfectly clean and the whole thing ready for paint, which I also want to do at school!

The body is a different kettle of fish though! Bottom six inches all round, and potentially front quarter panels too. It's actually on the original heater channels, so it shouldn't be too hard to square up the body - I haven't braced it yet because I want it to move a little to line up the doors and tweak the front end where I think the accident damage may have twisted the shell slightly. It'll all get blasted as well but that'll probably be into the next academic year.

The good thing with it all being stripped and back to metal/holes, pretty much anything you do is moving forward

Just found this and immediately bookmarked it.
A good resto thread that transcends most other because its kids doing it.....I'm in.

Thank you very much, that means a huge amount to me and to the students. With four different groups working on it for two 1hr 40min sessions every week you'd think that progress would be swift, but these aren't your regular schoolkids! That said, my year 11 group this morning (two lads, plus me and my teaching assistant!) managed to get quite a lot done - pedal box out, master cylinder off, rear hub nuts off, rear drums off, handbrake cables disconnected and all of the bolts on the back end wire brushed and soaked in WD40. That's a great lesson for them, and I'm really proud.
In less good news, the automotive archaeology continues with the shell so that we can send our parts list to the generous folks at www.vwheritage.com - we knew the car had been hit in the front at some point, but it looks like it was a much harder impact than first thought, as the drivers side quarter panel has been replaced. It now makes sense why the fuel filler flap area has both a cable release and a finger notch! Unfortunately this quarter is both rusty and badly fitted, so thats a bigger repair than I'd hoped, but it just another challenge and a skill for the kids to learn. Photos of the gaps where there should be welds and the bent top of the bulkhead tomorrow!

let your boys see this

colm then done a porsche 914 older lad in the pic tiny now 10 has a polo ,this might give them a bit of an inspiration to help and learn , build there own cars ,keep up THE GOOD WORK

i cut the pans 1 out from the spine right around then use air chisel to rip along the spine busting the spot welds , safer less time more fun

Was thinking how jealous of your job I was, so thanks for posting this (and sorry to hear from your perspective)