How hard and how long to repair this

[Lord Pikey]

Good morning all,

I recently bought a '91 Vw california. Upon diggin around behind the cabinets i found a bit more rot that i bargained for. So i decided to strip the interior and remove all the rust while at the same time treating the chassis with POR15 to hopefully give the van a much longer life.

This is what i found. The bad areas are the rear inner arches and a couple of points on the sils.









The arches and sills id like to pay someone to do, but i really have no idea of the likely time or cost. Can anyone point me to a ball park figure?

The smaller stuff i am going to repair myself once i collect my welder from the UK at Christmas.

Edited by Lord on Wednesday 12th November 08:49

[paintman]

Really needs to be shown to a couple of repairers & get quotes.
Problem with corrosion is that you often need to do far more than you first thought. (I have a 1986 RRC!)

[Lord Pikey]

cheers paintman. My issue is, is that i live in Munich and dont want to get taken for a ride. The prices Germans pay to repair the simpliest thing is hillarious out here. I am trying to arrange for it to be seen my a couple of garages to get an idea of prices. It could work out cheaper to drive it back to the UK i think!

[CDP]

Lord said:

It could work out cheaper to drive it back to the UK i think!

Or Poland?

[RC Developments]

As said further up the thread the rust on the surface can often be just the beginning. I would say there is close to 2 days work to do the repairs properly.

[Lord Pikey]

Ouch. 2 days is about 1500€ at Munich prices. I may teach myself to weld at this point. Its been 15 years since my sheet metal training as an apprentice so i hope i remember something

Yesterday i found T4 inner wheel arch panels online which is a relief (when i had looked earlier in the year on uk sites i couldn’t find any), its got to be easier to make the patches up from pre-formed metal rather than sheet work.

I have 8 months untill the van is needed for a 2 month tour so i can take my time if needed and learn a new skill in the process.

decisions....decisions

[paintman]

Get a mig. With a proper bottle. And one of the self-darkening masks. Its easy to learn.
Some pointers here:
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/

[steveo3002]

yah get your own mig and learn on some scrap pieces

remember mot patch ups can be pretty shoddy from the average garage , its not hard at all to do much neater work than than that

[shoehorn]

CDP said:

Or Poland?

This,
My pals driver/cleaner went home to Poland for a 2 week family visit.
He took his Chrysler voyager gearbox with him which over here he was quoted £400 to repair,
He and it returned,we fitted it and it works perfectly.
The repair cost him £30!