Scarlet's Metal: Nose

The continuing story of Scarlet, The 1963 Karmann Ghia Cabriolet

Here, on this page, the metalwork for Scarlet's nose repair is described, illustrated in 9 images.

This is a sub-topic to Scarlet's Metalwork, which can be found here.

AT RIGHT: Scarlet in mid metalwork...

Scarlet's main page is here.
Find her "initial rebirth" page here.
The previous step, disassembly, is here.
The next step, paint preparation, is here.

Repair Strategy

Damage to be Repaired

The nose was in pretty good condition, but had been "tapped" at some point - most likely when it went through the picket fence. Someone had done some modest hammer work to repair it but thankfully they knew they didn't know what they were doing AND the damage was modest, so they didn't do very much, but it was visible that someone had been in there in the past. The nose's prow ridge still had the original impact damage in it.

There was also secondary impact damage above the left side nostril.

In addition, there was some corrosion damage that had rusted straight through right at the spot where the right fender joined with the nose skin, way down low. My speculation is that it was caused by rodent urine running down from the airbox directly above - the geometry was right. Whatever the cause, leaving this unrepaired would have meant a rip was possible

Available Materials

Some new, heavy gauge sheet metal was on hand to fill the rusted area.

Performing the Repairs

As both sides of the metal are readily accessable for most of the nose skin, it can be brought back to proper shape with the application of appropraite hammers and dolleys. A specialty tool designed and manufactured especially for dinging the prow ridge back into shape served as a ready dolley for that task while more standard hammers and dollies from the rather large collection of such tools on hand permitted all the skin accessable from the trunk side back into shape without undue difficulty.

The large tomato sized dent above the left airbox was much more difficult because the back side is nearly not accessable at all. However, it was reached with a few specialty dolleys used as a hammer to tap the dent out. It was very slow going, but a superior repair was achieved this way, shrinking the metal back to very nearly its former shape exactly. This was time consuming and exhausting work, but at least it was also straight-forward.

The rust through at the bottom of the joint between the right fender and the nose skin was repaired with but-joint welds as pictured using heavy gauge metal. Also note that the lower nose in the area of this repair was wire brushed to remove corrosion and break through a tar-like black material that was soiling the skin. It was later completely removed with laquer thinner.

Do note that all skin repair was effected using butt-joint type welds - no overlaps! Overlapping is dramatically inferior... Also note that the metal was fully welded in the original style, not just tacked in place.

Unfortunately photos were not always taken, so some images we'd like to have - such as one of the damage at the interface between the right fender and the nose skin - are unavailable.

Images

Unfortunately, nearly all of these images are after-the-fact or work-in-progress. There's only one that's "before" - you'll know it when you see it!

AT RIGHT: A friend of ours decided to help out and wire brush Scarlet's skin for us. But nobody thought to inform him how to do the work, and so it resulted in the splotchy incursions into the original paint you see here. However, it did the job well enough at removing corrosion without resorting to chemicals or sanding.

Here, the large dent above the left nostril has been removed, but the circle where it had once been is clearly evident - it was half as deep as it was around as the dent was a near perfect half-sphere.

Left below: This image is taken looking nearly straight down from just behind where the headlight bucket resides, looking at the inner wheelhouse. The line running nearly vertically on the right third is the seam where the fender meets the nose skin. The hole through is what has been repaired in the other three images below.

BACK: Click here to return to Scarlet's Metalwork page.

Scarlet's "before" condition can be found here.

Scarlet's restoration is described here.