Some kind of tar on floor pan/chassis...
 

Ok, So here I am with my dilema. The chassis and floor pan is coated in some kind of tar or something(*might* be stonechip, but I kinda doubt it, as it does not have that 'grain-y' finish). You might think that I should leave it like that, as it is properly 'sealed' the chassis against rust. Problem being that I managed to remove SOME of it, and found that there are little rust spots. So I dont believe the coating was a good idea.

Now, here is my REAL problem... It is a real PITA to try and get off. I tried using one of those wire wheels on a grinded, but instead of 'cipping' it off, it just kinda melts it and smears it along. I have tried paint remover, but it only seems to 'attack' the very top of the coating, the rest seems to be untouched. So I am not convinced that paint stripper is going to remove it all. My next resort was a heat gun and a scraper. This did help a little, but it is going to take AGES to get most of it off.
I now know why my employer didnt want to get back to me with a price on how much it will be to sandblast at my work. He knew that this pan had that stuff on it(I bought it from him). And today he mentioned something that sandlbasting will not move the stuff without something being done first(removing MOST of that crap).

So to the people out there that have had similar products on their chassis, what have you done to remove it? I would appreciate any/all help...... Go on! Let me learn from your mistakes ;) :D

zeroaxe, is there anywhere near by that can dip your pan in large vat of chemical stripper? If you are replacing the floor pan halves, cut those out and just worry about stripping the rest of the chassis. Have you tried aircraft stripper? Thats just the name of it, i use it to remove powdercoating. You can get it at paint and body supply houses. Hope this helps ;) .

Are we talking about the inside or outside? I used a wire wheel on both sides. I burned through a total of 4 of them. Ended up with those little wires EVERYWHERE! Eastwood says if the coating is thumbnail imprintable you can use this stuff http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...emType=PRODUCT

Then there is this stuff http://www.classicchromeco.com/por15order.htm look at the bottom of the page.

I have not used either of these but I will next time.

Mike

I have never tried this but I have heard that the inner tar board can be removed from the floor pan with dry ice. You might need a lot of dry ice but it may help in the hard to remove spots. You are supposed to put the dry ice on and let it sit. Cover it if you can. After it sits for a little bit you may be able to just chip it off. The cold temperature is supposed to make tar board and maybe your under coating brittle enough to easily remove.

when i had to remove the tar board from my floorpan, i found out, after trying everything else, that the only way to really get it off is to cut it/chip it off then go over the whole lot with paint stripper and slowly wipe it away

it takes ages

so dont think its a five minute job

wrenchnride247,

Unfortunately I dont know of such a service here(close to me) in France. I will ask the wife to help me if she has got a minute, as my (reading)French is just about non-existant(heck, I can barely get along speaking French!) to see if she can help me trace down such a company. The other problem that I have got at the moment, is that my current employer seems 'scared' to share too much info with me. He is a VW-nut too, that is his business. But I get the idea that he might think I want to open my own business and be his competition... He is a super nice guy, but these last two months or so, I get mixed vibes from him and his wife(it's their business), and I am afraid to say that I might be without a job for the second summer in a row end of June...... So getting him to 'reveal' where he gets his supplies from is difficult(it is extremely difficult to find a 'normal' paint supply store here<closeby> in France)

<hint hint> If there are French members active on here, would you perhaps be able to help?

MikeVW,
I will have a look into the products you mentioned. I might just be in luck finding a supplier in France to supply these things.

EASY RIDER,
Thanks for your input too. I actually forgot to ask the wife if she has got an idea where I might be able to find dry ice(local ice cream supply store, grocery sotre etc).

fastdub,
I have been thinking about the very same thing today. I can either try and 'chip' it off until there is only a VERY thin coat left, apply paint stripper onto the rest and power wash/wife it off, *or* once there is only a thin coat left, see if my employer will THEN give me a price to sandblast the rest off. I just wish I could get the thing dipped in acid or something to get it properly clean!


Thanks fellas for the input! If there is someone else whose mistakes I can learn from, please feel free to share them ;)

Hi

I used some bitumen chassis paint on my old bug, real heavy duty stuf, only problem was when I had a fuel leak it washed off. What Im suggesting is try all the stuff you have in your shed, kero, turps, thinners etc until yo find something that works.

Steve

zeroaxe,

I didn't know you were in europe. It may be difficult to find strong enough strippers over there. I think they may have more restrictions on public sale of the "good stuff" :( . Not positive though.

Steve C,

You might be onto something here. Isnt it funy that (sometimes) the answers we are looking for is right in front of us? I shall see if I can give it a sot tonight.

wrenchnride247,

You are right on the money there. When I lived in the UK(unfortunately I wasnt back into Bugs then), I could just about find anything/everything that I was looking for. But here in France EVERYTHING is always so difficult. The regulations etc is real tight, and the 'normal' stuff you might be able to find somewhere else, is real difficult to find here..... :confused:

I used chizels to remove both the tarboard and the undercoating....undercoating flaked off pretty easy
tarboards...came off in strips...the remainder chipped away easily.

takes time but got done fairly easy.

Yep, that's what we did with a bug we are fixing up for a raffle. We used screw drivers and a rather dull chisel. I still have the blister on the palm of my hand 3 weeks later! Try tapping on the stuff with a dull chisel, it breaks it loose from the metal, making it easier to remove. Good luck!

Henry

Well honestly, the only luck I am having at the moment is with the electric heat gun and a scraper. It took me an hour and half to do 1/4 of the floor pan!!!! :eek: Guess the rest is going to be MUCH fun! And it seems that my suspicions were right. My boss didnt get back to me with a price to sandblast the chassis, because he knew what was painted onto it. Now that I am talking about getting this crap off, he seems more willing to get me a price on the sandblasting! Hmmmm..... Why not just tell me in the first place that I need to remove the stuff first? That is how misunderstandings/miscommunications cause unnesesary problems....

If an electric headgun works would a propane or acetylene torch work better? :D

Mike

Hi Mike,

Not really, but I see your logic! :D The problem seems to be that when I heat it too much, it kinda melts(which is normal I think :rolleyes: ) and you scrape it, it then smears into a very fine film or tar. You take the majority off, but there is that little bit that stays behind. If I warm it up just enough, I can scrape it quite clean. I recon that is the reason why it took me that long to do so little.

The other reason is I dont have a Oxy set-up :laugh: If I had, I would probably cut the floor out, lol.

Hopefully today I can get some more done.

I found it works best if you heat the scraper, not the tar.
Then it comes off in bigger sections because you are slicing it off.
If you heat the tar it just turns into mush and globs up.
This works good to get tarboards off in one piece if you have a long scraper.
Then you just have to clean up with laquer thinner, acetone, varsol, etc.

Good tip! :agree: I will give that a shot. I hope to have some time tomorrow afternoon to work on it a bit more. Either that, or I continue grinding some weight off of my Type IV's conrods :D

I just did this two weeks ago.. it took me and my friend, with two chisel and 8 hours of classic rock to get it off.... and i'm still not done now its just me with a heat gun and a metal brush working away at the left overs hopefully by tomm she'll be ready for aircraft stripper... all I can say is go at it till you can't anymore.. then do it tomm...

Well, I have been shipping away on it (pardon the pun) and it is just about done. I am trying to clean up the patches as much as possible to do some welding. But this MIG welder of mine is really frustrating me. Cant seem to get the setting/s right. And the wire doesnt seem to want to roll/feed properly :mad:

Next appointment is with the stripper! :laugh: Sandblastiung that is :agree:

I run my MIG welder on #1 for amps and 20% on wire feed with .023 gauge wire for thin sheet metal. I have a Miller 135 welder. Make sure you have the right size tip in the gun for the wire size your running, and the pressure on the drive wheels that push the wire thru the cable. To check the wheel pressure put the tip of the gun on a piece of wood (so you don't arc off), and pull the trigger for a second. If the gun gets pushed up off the wood by the wire then your ok. If not, tighten the drive wheels and try again. Also some MIG welders have two different size groves on them for different size wire. You must have have a mix in your gas cylinder of 75% Argon and 25% CO2 for mild steel for MIG welding.


Make sure you have a good ground,and you have clean paint free and grease free spot you are welding. On the thin sheet metal you can't run a long bead or you will blow right through it, or warp it. You must do small quick tacks and space them out over the length of part. Then go back and fill the gaps, spacing the welds out again. This is how i've been welding thin sheet metal with my MIG welder for years. Hope this helps out.

I used the brute force method. I used this pry bar thing (kind of a mix between a chisel and a crowbar) and a very large hammer. I found that the stuff is fairly brittle in most areas so by place the sharp edge of the pry bar on the side of the tar and hitting it with the 3lb sledge, it broke section off.

Well, the bottom of the chassis wasnt laid thick with this crap like the top was. A quick scraping motion/chipping motion removed most of the stuff at the bottom. Maybe the product kind of broke down over time, being exposed to water/mud/craop on the road etc. Either way, I am not complaining!

I am trying to get the welding done on the chassis, but the MIG welder I have got, I just cant get the settings right to weld the chassis. I am pulling my hair out here. At times, I can get a perfect seamless spot weld. Other times with the exact same settings, the weld doesnt want to penetrate and just leaves a little 'ball' on the surface(although the 'ball' fused prperly to the surface)....

I am now currently on the look-out for a better MIG welder. A mid-range welder. In the region of 175+ with independable wirefeed dial(which my current welder has got) and AMP dial(not like the buttons I have now. I have a "MIN - MAX" and "1 - 2" switch, which I just can figure out properly :mad: ). At work, I work with a mid/high range MIG welder, and I can do proper professional welds with that machine.

So wish me luck that the wife agrees to let me buy one(it is halfway there already...)

Are you welding sheetmetal to sheetmetal? or are you welding the floor pan to the tunnel? About what thickness are the materials you're welding?

Hi

My welder has the same series of buttons, from the welders manual I worked out these settings. Make sure sure your shroud is in good condition, it can hamper the gas flow making for crap welds as if you wernt using gas at all. I also soak my wire in WD40, its a penetrating oil for rusted bolts, this stops the wire from rusting in the machine, rust will ruin the liner in the hose going to the gun. I also have a clothes peg hanging on the wire that grips cotton rag and wipes the wire before it goes into the wire feed drums.

Steve

The picture

Hi Mikey,

At the moment I am trying ot patch up little holes in my floorpan. So I am using/welding sheetmetal to sheetmetal. Like I said, sometimes I get a perfect fuse of metals, but other times, without changing anything, I get no fuse at all. Just the little 'ball' that fuses to one 'side' of metal.

Steve C,

Thanks for the good tip/s! I shall go and soak my reel in WD40 now :laugh: I am being a bit daft here, me thinks. I looked at your posted pic, but for the life of me can not figue it out(forgive me, sometimes I can be a dumb@$$ :rolleyes: ) I searched for my manual that came with the welder, but cant find it. And even if I did, I will have to figure out a table if there was one, because the Fench language is not fluent yet... :( I can take a pic of the AMPs etc on the front of the welding machine if that will/can help shedding some light on it?

Thanks fellas, I appreciate the input/help! :agree:

PS. I wanted to mention that I live by the following motto:
"One day, I will save someone's life with WD40!"

I ALWAYS have a small can of WD40 with me, especially when I ride with my motorcycle. Never leave without it! Did you know how well it works getting bug-splats off paintwork!? :laugh:

I'm going to look into liquid C02 next time. Maybe that will do the trick. Give it a quick shot, then just break the crap off with a hammer.:laugh: