How To Change The Fender On A 2000 Volkswagen Bug

Ok, then I finally cut the rusty rocker console off the drivers side of my 2000 Beetle this morning. Passenger side to follow.

Left and right rockers are on order from VW and volition be in next week.

It wasn't nearly equally bad a chore as I idea it was going to be. Using my angle grinder and a zip-cutting deejay, I made a vertical cut at each end of the rocker, then cut along elevation end to cease about an inch abroad from the body. I then peeled the whole thing down...you can see the rust and crap below...lol.

Once I had that out of the mode, I constitute where information technology was spot-welded along the superlative and drilled them out with a spot weld cutter. There are 8 of them...one on each side of those four rectangular openings. Once I had them drilled out, I cutting the caulking along the tiptop with a utility knife, and the top of rocker came off past hand with some slight prying.

The bottom seam was a bit more of a pain, and I used my air chisel on that one. I'd say in that location were 16 spot welds along the bottom. I broke them all off, but they don't come up nicely, and so I'll have to grind off the leftover metal lumps.

The practiced news is, despite how rusty the rocker was, the steel underneath all appears to be OK and everything is solid. There's a little surface rust here and there, but goose egg serious. I'll grind/sand the spots and embrace them up before I weld the new rocker in identify.

The just affair I'thou non sure of still, it how to re-weld that meridian seam. I gauge I'll accept to do it along the summit. Looks like VW used some sort of green adhesive along the meridian seam with the spot welds, and then used an orangish-ish caulking to seal upward the seam and make it pretty before painting.

You tin can see the spot welds in the pic below:

Aforementioned spot-welds afterwards drilling with spot-weld cutter:

I was a little worried about what I was going to find under the rockers, but everything is nevertheless prissy and solid under there, and for the well-nigh role, not all that rusty.

Passenger side rocker removal next, and then an 60 minutes or so of grinding and smoothing out some bumps and lumps, and I'll be ready to stick some new steel on the erstwhile girl.

Peace & Axle Grease,
Rem

Source: https://forums.tdiclub.com/index.php?threads/rocker-panel-replacement-on-new-beetle.378342/

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