I know that the rule is buyer-beware when it comes to buying 30 yr old cars especially from individuals, but it seems to me like this guy almost went to more trouble to hide the rust than it would have taken to repair it.


Ah well....here are the pictures.

After I pulled off the passenger side rocker, I grabbed the screwdeiver and decided to start poking around. I hit under the jackplate and to my surprise and consternation, the screwdriver drove right into the material just like it was foam....and ya know why? BECAUSE IT WAS FOAM.

I took a picture to document the fun and started picking away. Almost the entire jack plate had been formed out of foam, smoothed out and then painted to make it look just like a real one. Shouldn't be a real tough fix, which is kinda what perplexed me. Why go to such trouble to hide a relatively easy fix? Intentionally concealing something like this seems almost criminal.


Oh yeah....found a similar, but far smaller occurance on the driver side but not at the jack plate.

Maybe we've had a post on this before, but do you have any Perplexing PO Puzzles you'd like to post about?

It's incomprehensible shit like that that gives these cars a bad name!

WTF Makes you wonder how he did repairs
on his home

Gives the cars a bad name?
ROFL
I would never hold any of this rust stuff against the little might mighty 914.

Gee, its a testament to their manufacture that they last inspite of the rust/foam/spackle/aluminum foil/sheet metal creations I have seen on this site.

Crazy.

At a friends body shop we were putting floors in an old beetle. when we started ripping everything out we found that the po had fiberglassed in some old skateboards.

Where did you purchase this car?

Northern Indiana....Valparaiso, if I remember correctly.
I'm not sure he did it, or knew about it, so I don't want to throw names around.

That would be funny if it wasn't such a sh-tty thing to do!

PO

maybe he was trying to save weight!

nathan

Yeah... some people's ideas of "rust repair"

Did some grinding on the roller I bought last september...
Crappy rust repairs on the driverside floorboard and inner long

Makes you wonder... IF you take the trouble to weld in new sheet metal, why don't you cut the old rusted crap out first? It isn't THAT much more work and your repairs would last

Oh well, the real asshole is me, I shoulda know better

Luckily, it ain't too bad and there's enough solid metal left to work with

cheers,

Jeroen

I looked at car in Tulsa for sale on ebay a few months ago that had the same look to the jack point. I didn't poke around, but it looked "strange". thought this could have been the same car. Probably not. This guy had spray painted the tires black. looked great on ebay, but we laughed hard when we saw it up close.

A guy I knew used Stop Signs to repair the floor in his Bug.

In my 1971, the longs were filled completely with expandable foam...

hilow folks,

look at this crap ...

That's what the PO left over for me.

Sometimes it's harder to remove those f***ing welding attemps of various POs than to repair real rust holes.

benno

Hey Benno,

Looks like you're having fun there
Is that the /6 ?

cheers,

Jeroen

I've got what is quite possibly the worst front clip ever. My car is too long! I didn't look closely enough, I just assumed that the front hood needed it alignment. It isn't long enough! I have the front clip that starts immediately in front of the struts and runs from side to side. I thought that inside it was a bad seam sealer job. It turned out to be really ugly fiberglass work. Now I have to find somebody to cut it off and put it back on. That should probably get it about right given the trimming needed after cutting.

Does anybody have someone to recommend for this in the Jackson, Mississipp area....Southeast?

-Matt

hi jeroen,

yes , that's my beloved /6

benno

On my Ghia, the PO repaired some battery-tray rot. . . . right on the 45-degree angle where the flat tray angles down to the rim of the compartment where it meets the decklid (hood-door). Instead of replacing the panel, or welding in a patch, he bent the metal to meet, so instead of a nice smooth, straight, 45-degree angle all the way across, it's 45-degrees on the right-side, and about 25 on the left side, (where the battery sits) - and he smoothed it all out with bondo. The result of this is that the engine cooling sheetmetal sits about 1" higher than the floor of the compartment on the left side than it does on the right.

Oh, it's functional - because the seal fills in the gap nicely. And if you close the decklid, you don't see the uglyness. Even if you open the decklid, most people don't notice it unless I point it out. In fact, at first, I thought my engine-tin was simply crooked or bent. Then I thought maybe the transmission fork was bent (and the engine thus oriented a tad clockwise). When I got underneath with a flashlight, and took a look at the welds, I finally figured out what the sneaky bastard did.

Maybe not easier than an actual repair - but not a whole lot more difficult certainly. I mean - if you're gonna paint the whole car anyway, why in Wilhelm Karmann's name would you DO a thing like that?!