[SkidmoreGarage]

Thanks! 503 is my favorite as well. I got lucky when I found this one.

Now that I had gotten it running well enough to drive around (fingers crossed on the carb tuning!), I took on another interim project. It was supposed to be a quick refresh (tune-up, wash, and wax) and sell my in-law's 2003 VW Eurovan Camper. They are worth a bit in decent shape, so I figured I'd help them out.

Big mistake, it was a rust bucket from a handful of Ohio winters! It would not have made it another year out there. I was hoping for $12k and after a thorough inspection I don't think I would have gotten $6k. It was a basket case, rust everywhere, rear brakes were dead, wheel bearings were dead, springs were broken, abs and traction control lights were on, exhaust was rotten and broken in half, they had backed into a pole, the back hatch wouldn't open, clear coat had failed on the roof, and did i mention rust?

And this is where it makes a relevant turn. I did an inventory of what it needed, and did a quick cost-benefit analysis. I realized that this would be a great low-risk opportunity to teach myself the skills to tackle similar body and rust repairs on my truck (and Vanagon) and get this van back on the road. I hadn't done rust repair or bodywork before, but I figured with Youtube I could figure it out.

I had some false starts, for example having to buy a mig welder (Hobart 175) when I realized that my tig (or my skill) just didn't want to weld thin, dirty, and corroded metal with factory coatings.

I also underestimated the scope of what body panels needed to be replaced, and got lucky in finding a guy locally to cut the whole section out of another van. My initial plan was to replace only sections using custom patches, but I found that this really wasn't practical. In the end, I only made the replacement inner rocker from steel sheet.