glad to see someone willing to save an old rabbit! I know of a fellow who stumbled across a MINT >150,000km turbodiesel rabbit. but then promptly drove it all winter (total saltfest here in ontario!) and now it's all rusty. The car had been owned by a crazy old german guy and stored the last 9 years. So frustrating to see an old diesel classic like that just getting bent over.
I've been working on a guy's syncro lately, long list of work including changing the supercharger. (the replacement volksport overhauled unit failed within a minute of running, and now it's a normally aspirated G60. Don't buy from them!) The day after returning the car to him, he called saying he could see some sort of hole in the body. He brought it back and popped the hood.
this can't be good, I thought.
The top of the driver side strut tower had sneakily rusted where the undercoating hadn't been properly sprayed. (that vw factory worker must have had too much beer and oom pa pa the night before) Most of the spot welds had torn away. It was quite a mess. The poor guy was quite distraught, having had already commit and spent $$$ to fix up the old syncro before this happened.
Anyway, with 8 hours, a heat gun and a scraper, 1/3 bag of blasting sand, some sheet metal, and a really irritating-to-use-upside-down welder, it's good to go again.
pics!
strut removed, looking up/aft
up/fwd
underhood
End result, properly sealed with rubberized undercoating
It's usually not as bad as it looks. Fix em, don't scrap em!
Nice job Scully. Looking forward to the finished pics!