The 1969 Riviera by the name of Herman

[Herman ver2]

So I obtained this 1969 Riviera Microbus in September 2014. He has been in the wife's family most of his life... and quietly resting in her dad's backyard for the last 22 years. It has a few war wounds that need fixing but the plan is to create new memories with him and the wife. I hope to chronicle this restoration process here and hope for maybe a few comments and inspiration along the way.

Here's Herman, after we pulled him out of the backyard... to be delivered to my house.
[photobucket] [/photobucket]

This is my first posting... so I hope this works correctly.

 

[Herman ver2]

I unpacked the bus and started striping it down to see what has to be fixed... I also got to buy new tools.
I thought I'd start on the area that looked like it would need the most work.
So I took off the paint and filler to how bad the nose was from a past "bump".

 

[Herman ver2]

So I ordered some new sheet metal and started cutting...
Here is Herman with his nose removed and the new nose at hand.

 

[Herman ver2]

Another view of the nose-less Herman...

 

[Herman ver2]

After a lot of clean up and new custom made metal pieces on the lower valance area... I'm at this point on the nose.
Now, on to the left-side step area...

 

[Herman ver2]

Here is my new left side lower step.



I was excited to get this and the inner step piece in the mail, but excitement soon led to disgust when I started to test fit the new parts. First, I decided to fabricate a few pieces along the floor.

 

[Herman ver2]

Then I dissected the outer and inner step and started piecing them in... with more fabricated pieces to make things fit better.
It sucks that I have to cut up sheet metal that I just bought... but it will look a lot better in the end.

 

[Herman ver2]

So it's been a while since I've posted anything... It's also been a while since I've worked on the bus. But I do have updates.
I finished up the left dogleg, finished up the front lower panels, and smoothed out the raised section on the nose piece.
I ran into warping when I started welding the nose piece though... the replacement metal is so thin, so I had to fix that too. Now I'm looking into using body panel epoxy to affix the nose piece... does anyone have any input to this process?

Here is the finished dogleg area. I think it turned out pretty good for a Frankenstein job.
The outer curved profile of the new dogleg was different than the profile of the original... I'm guessing it was shaped for a later bay?
It's better now... it should match the profile of the door... we'll see when I put the door back on. :?



Here is what I did to make one of the outer dogleg pieces.


Here is the lower front nose before I glue the outer nose on.


Hopefully the epoxy process for the nose will be pretty smooth... fingers crossed.

 

[Herman ver2]

Yet another long stint of no updates... but some work has been done on this project.
The front nose piece gave me trouble when I mig welded the circle back in (the weld shrunk and warped the piece)
So I purchased a new front nose piece and was very careful when welding the turn signal fillers and the upper and lower pieces together. I'm going to still epoxy the circle behind the logo though.

Here is the first nose attempt. I just couldn't get the warping smoothed out.


Here is the second nose attempt with turn signals filled in and lower piece fitted.



A close up of a turn signal filler.


A close up of the weld between upper and lower section.


Here is the hole I cut to remove the raised logo (late bay nose)


I lowered the logo location so it would cover my circle cutout. (I think I like the lowered location better anyway)
The cutout will fall behind the logo ring so it will be easier to blend the fill.



So I still need to weld in the brackets behind the lower turn signals and finish welding the upper and lower pieces together... hopefully all should be well... and hopefully before end of summer.