PIETER: My whole family has Volkswagens.
The three kids all drive Volkswagen.
My wife drives a Volkswagen.
All classics.
I’m Pieter Grabijn.
I’m a Volkswagen restorer.
I live in Nes aan de Amstel in The Netherlands.
Today we are working on a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Type 34.
This one was built in 1964.
When we start the restoration of a classic Volkswagen it’s
basically taking off the doors, interior glass out.
This one is very good shape.
No rust on the sills or the corners on the rear.
My son, Pieter Grabijn junior, he is also involved with the Volkswagen hobby.
It’s nice to have him involved with classic Volkswagens
so he knows how to maintenance them and restoring them.
This car is going to be my wife’s 50th birthday present.
I hope to have the car finished before the party.
The specific thing of the classic Volkswagen is that it’s built on a floor pan and a loose body.
That’s what we’re going to do, take off the body of the floor pan.
The first step of fixing this left fender is to see where the rust is and how far it’s gone.
You take off the body, most of the stuff is still there.
You can start the engine and if you put a seat on it and a steering wheel it’s even driveable.
I’m restoring the left front fender,
measuring up the bad spot to cut out the sheet metal to make it exactly fit.
I’m using the metal cutters to cut out a .9 millimetre sheet metal.
We are bending it and working it to have it fit into the car.
Then we used the shrinker to have it bent.
We’re using the headlight ring as a reference to have it fit properly.
You cut out the bad part with the angle grinder.
We notice there’s little pin holes in the headlight bucket so we have to repair that first.
We’re drilling out the spot welds to get the bad piece out.
I’m grinding off the rust of the headlight bucket before welding.
Cutting off a little sheet metal to fix the headlight bucket
before we keep on going on the repair on the front fender.
We are welding it in with the MIG welder.
We are welding it straight together without overlapping.
If you overlap it will get foggy in there and it will rust again quite fast.
We are using the MIG welder spot by spot because I don’t want the material to heat up as much.
Otherwise it will bend or warp or expand.
Using the file to finish off the hot spots out of the metal and then using the sander
to make it all smooth.
The next step for the restoration of this car is getting it back to
bare metal and then it’s ready for paint.