Monthly Archives: June 2011

Cleaning Under The Rear Luggage Shelf – Round 1 – Engine Degreaser – 1966 VW Beetle Project

One of the reasons I wanted to remove the body from the chassis was to allow for easy access to under the rear luggage shelf.  I don’t think it’s ever been cleaned under there (see images), thus it’s extremely dirty.  It’s covered with 45 years of road grime,  grease, and oil.   Today I started by degreasing it with some Gunk brand Engine Degreaser.  What a messy job, especially when you’re underneath there working above your head.  It’s all dripping down on ya.  As you can see in the pictures, there is some undercoating on there as well.  The next step will be to get out my Needle Scraper 🙂 and remove all that too.  Then I’ll probably take out the steel wheel brush and clean things up further.  Finally, I’ll use the Master Series Mastercoat Silver rust preventative primer and AG111 top coat (just like I’ll do to the underside of the chassis/pan).   It’s a very hostile environment under here (gas fumes, road grime, etc.), so I think the ag111 top coat will be better than actually painting it with the body paint.  They paint bridges with this stuff!  It should do a great job of preserving this part of the vehicle in the long run.  Here are some pics (can’t wait to see it all shiny black down here):

 

You can see I cleaned a little bit already (bottom left of pictures)
prior to taking these first pictures:

 

 

Here are the “after” pics:

Removed Fenders Today – 1966 VW Beetle Project

I removed the fenders today.  I want to undercoat them because they didn’t get painted when the previous owner had the car painted.  Not sure why they didn’t get done (they were off the car when the car was painted).  Even if it had been painted,  I’d still want to put a very light/thin layer of chip guard undercoating on the undersides of the fenders.  It’ll actually help protect the topsides of the fenders from getting little star cracks in the paint when rocks from the tires hit the undersides of the fenders.  Maybe the previous owner had the same idea in mind, thus he didn’t see a need to paint the undersides.  Here are some pics with the fenders removed…