A customer visited us part way through his VW BUG restoration. The first major part of the mechanical overhaul is the gearbox. As you may see from these images the BUG is quite elderly and showing its history. The case is heavily contaminated with surface dirt and is starting to show chemical erosion, quite common on aluminium castings
After being underneath a car for probably 60 years or so, it was in good condition. No cracks, or stripped threads, just the odd scrape here and there.
As usual, we blocked any threaded “blind” holes. We have found that any amount of cleaning after blasting will still leave media inside the threads. This makes things time consuming during the rebuild phase. You must stop work and start running taps down holes to clean the threads. You could also find debris could get dropped inside your nice shiny engine or gearbox
Once cleaned, the castings are now bright, and the serial number and even casting numbers revealed, this enables the information to be recorded in the restoration manual (yes, we are anoraks that do stuff like that)
If the owner thinks it necessary, areas that are showing signs of corrosion scars in small patches could be sanded and manually finished with polishing equipment, personally we think this shows the history of the vehicle and should be left – each to his / her preference.
We hope to see more of the car as the work progresses and will let you know when we do.
We found this link to an International VW BUG Club that seems very informative https://www.historicvws.org.uk/