500_19B's Bugeye resurrection

[T-Steve]

Everything is looking fantastic. I sometimes forget how great WRB can be.

Even the little alloy coolant tank is cool. Thanks for showing all this stuff.

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[DrTrae]

Heck yeah, that's all looking great. I'm contemplating recovering my headliner and sun visors in black, and painting or dyeing all the plastic bits black. We'll see..
Did your fenders have the holes for the JDM side markers already, or did you cut them in?

[iafyock1]

That looks like it has come a long way!

[500_19B]

Thanks for the comments!

As for the JDM side markers, I had to find a replacement fender, and I ended up with a pair of fenders from a JDM car. I like the additional side markers, but I would not have cut fenders for them.

Have not had much time for the bugeye in the past couple of weeks due to other tasks. One of which has been doing rust repair on my nephew's '07 Legacy Spec B, so at least one job was Subaru related!

Anyway, I finally had some time to work on the bugeye on Sunday and started with cleaning the driver's side rear door glass. This window had remained in the door shell when it went to the paint shop in the lowered position, and stayed there until just recently, when I hooked it up to raise it to install the door handle etc.

I now realize that the shop did not seal up the door shell very well when painting, and I could feel a lot of overspray on the inside of the glass. I had to clean it away with a razor blade, which was time-consuming, but not difficult.

However, I then saw an area on the outside of the window with highly visible scratches:



It is hard to fully capture it in photos, it looked quite a bit worse in-person.

I am certain that these scratches were not on the window before, so I am not sure when they happened. That said, I was a little disappointed and worried that I would have to find a replacement window.

First, I decided to try the Eastwood glass polishing compound, which I had used before on a very minor scratch in glass, and it did work. I was afraid these scratches might be too deep though. The kit from Eastwood includes the compound (in the form of as dry powder that must be mixed with water), a backing pad (around 2.5" in diameter, I think) and the pad, which is some sort of dense mat.



For this job I needed the oomph of the rotary buffer.



The compound is much more abrasive than polish for paint, so it was necessary to completely cover the car in thin plastic sheeting to make sure none of the residue would end up on the paint. I left a little opening for the area I wanted to work on.

I used the polisher at 1000 RPM and started working. One must keep the polish damp and the glass cool. At first, it looked like I was not getting anywhere, but I kept at it and after quite a long time, I could see it was getting better. Eventually I was able to get it pretty much perfect. Although this was most of the afternoon on Sunday, I was happy with the effort and result.



With not much time left after that ordeal, I just added in the new window "felts" and the new door seal.



The inner guides ("felts"?) were in pretty good shape (replaced them anyway), but the outers were more "used". Here are the new and old outers for comparison.



It was easy to pop off the outers once the inners were unbolted.
Popped on the new door seal. I could feel the difference between the new and old seal. They are kind of expensive, but I will replace the other three too, just will space out the purchasing.





So, one window is properly cleaned and had new guides. I expect I will have to clean the other of overspray in the same way, but hopefully I won't find more scratching to deal with.

[monkeyposeur]

Cool, I've need that part number for those felt guides.

I have only tried at a junkyard so I didn't care if I destroyed it, but it is hard to get those door belt molding pieces of without bending or breaking them. Any tips?

Edit: Also, did you tig or mig weld that quarter panel on? I'm doing a sedan quarter conversion on my bugeye wagon and seeing how people are going about it.

[500_19B]

The part numbers for the window glides are:

Outer: 61256AE010

Inner: 62304FA001

For those side trims at the base of the window on the outside, after bending one, I realized an alternate way to remove it was to gently pry the end cap off and then I was able to slide it out and then get those clips off after.

I MIG welded the quarter in. I would probably have TIG’ed it if I still had a machine available at the time. I used to make custom bicycles as a hobby business and I had a very good Miller TIG machine, but I sold it when I moved as the new place did not have the necessary power. I ended up with a small Lincoln 110 V MIG machine for “around the house” work, so this is what I ended up using for the quarter. I had a lot more experience with TIG, and it gives you so much more control that I figured it would be my preference given a choice. However, after doing the quarter and now the rust repair on my nephew’s car with the MIG set up, I am not so sure…

On something like a bicycle frame (especially a custom one, made with high strength, thin tubing etc.), the weld cosmetics are very important (naturally the mechanical quality of the weld is too). On a car body, either way, you will be doing some finishing (sanding, glazing etc.) after welding before painting, so the cosmetics are not as much of a hurdle, but distortion of the sheet metal is the bigger factor. If a panel takes a wave, it will take a lot of work to get it out, and you may not be able to get behind the panel with a dolly everywhere to boot.

In many cases, you put less total heat into the workpiece with MIG as you are melting the filler (which is also the electrode) in one end of the arc (not on the workpiece), and the parent metal (i.e., workpiece) in the other end. In TIG, you are first melting the parent metal with the arc, and then dabbing the filler metal into the molten pool, where it melts (so all the heat FIRST goes into the workpiece). However, the reality is that working carefully, one can control the heat in either method.

Although TIG has precision and control advantage, the plus for MIG is that it is super easy in any position. This became apparent to me when I was working on areas such as the butt seam on the bottom of the rocker: I could just lie on the floor and weld, one hand holding the torch and using the second hand for steadying. If I were to TIG that joint, I would have needed to figure out how to work the foot pedal and how to dab the filler in from that position, which I think would have been quite a bit harder than TIG from a more conventional position. The pedal issue could be solved with a TIG torch with hand control for amperage, although I have no personal experience with those, but I think they lose some of the fine control you get by dividing up the different tasks between hands and foot.

There is no right or wrong answer, but knowing what I know now, I would only choose TIG if I had good ways to get the work area (height/angle etc.) set so I could get a comfortable position to work the pedal and feed the wire.

The ultimate would be if one had a multiprocess set-up.

[monkeyposeur]

Thank you for the detailed response!

[500_19B]

A lot of extraneous stuff has been going on.

I unexpectedly found myself in the hospital for a few days. Thankfully all is OK now but I am behind on everything.

Prior to all that, I had finished up the welding on my nephew's car and was starting on the finishing glaze and primer. This weekend we will get back into that, and then hopefully finish the painting next weekend.

The job on the 911 is almost finished. While the rocker arms were out, I sent them to be re-bushed and to have the shafts polished. Now I am part way through putting it all back together. All the hard part is done, it is just reassembly.



In between all that, the poor bugeye has not been getting as much attention as it should. However, have managed a few little items.

Finished up routing and clipping in the front wiring harness and put the horns back on.



At the same time, got the front markers in place.





Previously I had installed the rear wing, but I subsequently noticed an area on the rear trunk lid where my polishing job was not up to snuff. The only way to properly deal with it was to removed the wing again, address the trunk lid and reassemble. A lot of work for seemingly no progress! Anyway, I also now have all the little details on the trunk underside (wire harness clips, bumpers etc.) all finished too.



With the main power steering lines now in place, I finished tightening the new hose clamps, but in the new sealing washer and put the weird plastic spiral back in.



Yup, very little progress! But, better than none I guess.

[D-Rodman]

Beautiful work, your car is going to be a gem.


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