importance of the bulge.....

morning all,

i have a question about the bulge.......

what is the relevance of it and how important is it to reproduce the bulge?

the bulge in question is not my stomach........ it is the bulge behind the seats, above the jacking points lol

any thoughts? is it possible to just straight sheet it off? or would that just not do?

cheers

James

 

I think the bulge is there to stiffen the bulkhead, and possibly give a little more foot room when used as a passenger bus.
Tony

 

bulge is designed to accelerate the corrosion process & be an utter ball ache to recreate from a sheet of flat steel

 

cheers Tony and Vet,

so, do i need to reproduce it? have you reproduced one before Vet? if so, how did u do it?

i see there is a repro one that can be bought, but i think its about £50? need two, so if a bit of sheet will do, then that will do!!

anybody just by-passed the bulge?

 

I've read somewhere that it's there for torsional stiffness and as @Bhubesi says for more room for the footwell for passengers.

It's strikes me as a complex pressing which surely has a reason - having said that my understanding is modern Brazilian buses don't have the bulge....can't quantify that though as I've never looked that closely at them.

 

just make it triangular with boxed ends. it will act the same and probably be easier and cheaper.

 

I have been complimented on both the definition and size of my bulge. I am very proud of it.

 

Here's how I repaired mine:

http://www.volkszone.com/VZi/showthread.php?t=604247&highlight=Westfalia&page=3

 

The bulge is important when wearing Speedo's, but if the weather is cold a big pair of Timmy Mallet style baggy bermuda shorts should divert attention away from the absence of the bulge.

 

You can lose the bulge and use flat plate, it's there merely to add a little foot room

 

WOW - good work dude

 

if you still have the 2 ends of the bulge then the way smeato has repaired the rest works well.i`ve used the base of a welding gas (full sized argoshield or oxy) bottle as an anvil of sorts as these have a nice indent in the bottom which with a round faced panel hammer & a fair bit of patience will result in the correct profile rectangular bowl to weld into a flat plate.

 

thanks all for the info,

cheers vet, thats good thinking using the welding bottle, the bottle looks to be the right size aswell!!

i have just received the partition plate from vw heritage, its a lot smaller than the original!! more patching to be done!!

thanks smeato, i will use that for reference. great work!

james