Well, I haven't completely fallen off on this project. I have been working on it but haven’t posted any pics or progress; so a quick update on what I have done in the last 2 weeks.
Once Sam and I got the body off, we removed all of the sound matting on the pan and started sanding the pan to see what damage was actually there. Fortunately not much except a hole I put in it with an air chisel and it being really thin on the 1/4 pan; battery side. I also discovered the emergency brake cables (one of them) was frayed pretty bad. Other than that all looks well.
I purchased 2 new emergency brake cable lines and a new 1/4 pan. I'm thinking in a few weeks I will trailer the pan portion of the car to a local welder to have the 1/4 pan put in. I'm not really in a rush since I don't need to have the car back together anyways.
So while I was tinkering with the car I decided I would take the front end off. Well after debating for quite some time which bolts needed to be undone for a piece by piece removal, I elected to remove the brake lines and the 4 front beam bolts and just take the whole darn thing off.
Well considering since I have been sanding on the car I would also sand the front beam and associated parts. Well after trying my hand at sanding all the rounded and nook and cranny pieces, I decided to purchase a sand blaster. I will tell you the darn think works good but the amount of time you have to put into pressurizing, depressurizing, loading media, filtering the media, etc... is not worth the 2-6 mins you get to actually media blast. So that went back to the store.
After researching some I found a local guy how will blast the body (inside & out) for $350.00, do the fenders, deck lid, and hood for 20.00 apiece, and do the pan and frame for 100.00 or 150.00 (he said he would have to make a judgment call on that). I'm thinking I will be heading that route here pretty quick.
As for the front end, I took it down to a local VW shop and had them look at it because I discovered one of the beams was pushed in a little bit. It was recommended to replace it, so I now have a new front beam. Since I don't have all the required tools to remove all the parts from the original front beam, the shop is going to disassemble it for me and return the usable parts back to me so I can get them blasted as well. I currently have on order drop spindles and slotted disk brakes to go on the newish front end.
That pretty much bring this up to speed, I will post some pic a little late so you can see what I'm doing. You know a thread is worthless without pics!
