I haven't been on here much, but figured I would add a build thread on the buggy progress.
Some earlier pictures of cleaning out the years of rust & junk built up in it.

More pics from a little while back.
When I was dressing down the motor & found that one side was full of a huge rat nest & the other side was full of old wasps nest.

These are from a few weeks ago I was getting the body bolts out so we could separate the body & pan at a recent shop day. I didn't plan to reuse that roll bar, so I just hacked it up to make it easier to work with on getting it out with the angle iron it was welded too. It was seriously rusted from years of sitting & probably a bit from the ocean sand/salt mix that's been in between the fiberglass & angle iron for decades. I spent a couple weeks in the few spare moments I had grinding the nuts off the rusted bolts from the bottom on the side. Then I would get a couple of bolts out from the top every couple of evenings when I could sneak out there & work on it. Some were so rusted that neither sockets or wrenches would fit them. A 3 month old baby, a 5 year old & a wife really cramp my shop time though so everything moves slow around here.

Rusty angle iron & a piece of the roll bar.


Not going to reuse it so I just cut it in two.


Angle iron out & down to the rubber seal they had between the body & the angle iron.



Might be able to use this as a pattern for a new piece, but this angle iron is long gone...

I had a shop day a few weeks ago & we made some decent progress on it in a couple of hours. When a few guys had showed up the first thing we did was get the rest of the angle iron & roll bar out that was holding the body on. It has been glued down with silicone or some other adhesive & I couldn't get it off by myself. After that we took some crowbars & separated the body/pan seal that was glued on. It was glued on both sides. :/
We cut cut a couple of wire & the speedo cable that I missed in the prep work & got the body off. Once that was done one of the guys went to town on cutting out the pans. Glad I had the help, with my jacked up back it would have taken forever for me to get all of this done alone.

Body & pan separated now...


I should be able to get some sanding &prep work done on it when I don't have time to work on the pan


Body off & ready to gut the pans.


One side half done.


Most of the way done now


Sawzalls: they're not just good for wrecking stuff in the house.

Square stock is almost rusted though here. The driver side isn't as bad, but the holes are soft enough on that side too that some nearly pulled through there as well. Not sure if it was crap to begin with, or if the sea salt & years of sitting just killed it. Either way, I just cut all of that out & it will get flat steel floors & I'll use some solid square stock for the outer edge of the frame rather than going back with stock pans.


Same here & the bolts/washers nearly pulled through in these spots.


Holes are soft pretty much halfway back on the outer support.


For the most part the back end seems fairly solid though.

At some point, I will need to buy a welder & source some good steel. Thinking about using 1x2 or 1x3 square stock for the edge. For now I have my hands full with grinding & wire wheel prep work.

Welcome . board has been a little quiet, where do you live?

Let me know if you need a windshield with frame. I got one you can have if you need it.

I'm in the DFW metroplex area. Watauga/Keller area to be more specific. I fixed my location on the profile.
I will eventually need a windshield frame. I had one, but a family member gave away a project bug that I had stored back home & the windshield along with a complete engine, several progressive webber intake systems, buggy headlights, gas tank & a bunch of other parts that I had stored in the bug went bye bye with the bug. Even though I specifically told them to empty everything out of it before they took it.

Ok, an update on progress. I've been cleaning the pan remnants off over the last few weeks on one side. I only have 30min-hour a week to work on it, so it's slow going. Due to a lack of a compressor & air tools, I've been doing it all by hand.

Here's what I'm working with & what I'm doing. We initially did a hack job getting the pans out so I had to remove the rest of the back part of the pan, outer pan support where the body bolted on & then clean off the rusted strip that was still spot welded on down the length of the tunnel.




Back piece of the pan all cleaned off now.



The rest of the pan cleaned off the lip