Mountain Goat
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Billy the Kid - first timer's resto projectI thought some of you might like to see the story of our resto project on our 1973 bay "Billy the Kid"
We bought Billy sight unseen on ebay last July. Probably not the smartest move but once we had decided we had to have another Kombi, emotion took over and before we knew it, he was ours!
He wasn't running and had dings all up each side but the rust situation wasn't as severe as it might have been. We were probably a bit lucky there. Internally the kombi was in a real mess. The guy who had had him before us was a paver I think and had fitted him out with shelving all screwed in everywhere through the back and had spilt lots of concrete and sand over the floor which had been allowed to sit and in one spot the floor was pretty well rusted through.
 It looks fine in this pic, but that was before I removed the fiberglassing which was filling in all the holes. 
The exterior with the dings down the sides was a bit of a worry. The first thing we did after we had him trucked to our mechanic's place at Verrierdale (Mick Budge - Sunshine Coast Qld - The idea was that Mick would rebuild the motor while I drove out there in my spare time and worked on the body) was to grind the rust out of the dings and remove the loose cracking bog from a few other dings. Luckily the rust didn't go right through anywhere so we went back to bare metal and then refilled the deeper dings and started that long, tedious process of spray filler, smoothing out all the panels. In retrospect I wish that I had learnt how & done a lot more panel beating, used less filler etc, but the truth is I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I really just wanted to get the van on the road as quickly & cheaply as possible. Initially I had no intention at all of attempting the actual paint job myself...but that all changed 
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Piratekombi
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Thanks for that - it sounds like Billy is now in good hands! We have bought a second kombi and are in a similar situation (we are torn between quickly fixing it for the road, or (more likely) doing a longer but much more rewarding job...) - so keep the pix (and story) coming...!
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Brookie
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As well as members that are inspired by these stories and photos it probably makes many lookers think about doing their own Kombi or even buying one if they haven't one already.
It also gives prospective buyers a chance to see what can be done.
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66split
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good to hear you are having a go at it yourself. not only does it keep the cost down but there will be much more satisfaction when you are finished, step back and look and be able to say " i did that"  looking forward to more progress pics
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Mountain Goat
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Progress was slow...
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Mountain Goat
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but gradually...
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Mountain Goat
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it started to come together...
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Mountain Goat
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finally, some colour!
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splitty60
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moutain coat
you have done a great job on the bus
patrick
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Piratekombi
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Ooooh, looking good... inspiring work Mountain Goat! - keep it up!
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Scotia
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what a difference, keep it up you're doing really well.
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Mountain Goat
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Sorry I have my photos a bit out of sequence.
I didn't get started on the painting until after we had the motor rebuilt by our awesome mechanic Mick Budge out at Verrierdale (Sunshine Coast qld).
We brought it home then and had planned to get it painted really quickly, unfortunately, with no carport and the longest wet season we have had in years it seemed to take forever!
A few photos above show the progress out in the weather on our driveway until our wonderful next door neighbour took pity on us and let us move it into his garage
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Mustard Man
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Hey,
Gotta do that all on mine soon too, look a bit shabby now.
What engine do you have in there?? Love the twin carb set up.
Also, did you have rust issues under the front window....how'd you deal with that?
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Mountain Goat
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Getting the new windows in & new rubbers on the old glass
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Mountain Goat
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Hi Mustard Man:)
There was some rust in the sills when we took the windows out. Originally we weren't going to but the side windows were leaking so we didn't have much choice. Most of the rust was just on the surface though. I just wire brushed it like crazy and hit it up with rust converter, then xtroll then the paint. I AM a novice though and I am just really hoping that was enough. The windscreen on the other hand was way worse than the side windows. In some places I made small holes in my efforts to remove the rust.... and I wish i had had the money and know-how to weld a new bit across there...as it was, I gave it the rust converter/xtroll treatment then bogged it  .... I am expecting to have problems down the track with this but at least with the amount of xtroll I used and everything else (new rubber, etc) I will hopefully have delayed the cancer for a while.
good luck,
Cheers Denise
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Mustard Man
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Yeah, that sounds about right, i think if i took my front window out, i'd loose about an inch of metel to rust here. Getting a quote for someone to take it out and fix it up soon.
Common problem so i've heard. Anyway. Great work there!!
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