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Post by Volktales on Mar 29, 2015 20:29:10 GMT -8
So finally back into the Ghia again. Started off by removing the clutch arm and cross shaft from the replacement trans and cleaned them up. Was going to reseal the differential side plate covers when my kid showed up in the basement. Apparently Mom said "No more video games today! Either come grocery shopping with me, or help your Dad". Surprisingly he chose to help me... So I put him to work and said "OK, remove the original transaxle". And he did. Got very dirty in the process, but was able to remove most of the bolts himself. An he even admitted that VWs are even kind of cool. There IS hope for him yet... Look at those greasy hands!!! Genuine VW grunge! Transaxle is now out, but what do you see wrong with that picture??? The small removable crossmember that the trans bolts to did not want to come off without a fight. That bolt on the right hand chassis fork was TIGHT! The cross member was badly bent anyway, so I decided to cut it off and remove the trans first. Once it was out of the way, I scraped off piles of collected goo from the chassis. Then a bit of heat was applied, and the bolt undid easily. I already had a good used crossmember hanging around so this worked out well. The original transmission was probably the grossest one I have ever seen, completely caked in oozing nastiness. Every year I have significantly topped up the trans fluid, due to the massive leaks. However the source of some of the leaks was unusual... Those are HOLES right in the side of the transmission! There are supposed to be plugs there, but two were missing, and the remaining one fell off as I poked it. Also the selector shaft seal is gone, and bearing has piles of slop. This allowed the oil to happily escape into the central chassis tunnel, which isn't really that bad of a thing given it rustproofed the inside cavities nicely... The old trans was quiet in operation and shifted just fine, too. The new trans is untested, but believed to be low mileage. Time will tell...
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Post by PICTUP on Mar 29, 2015 20:54:52 GMT -8
OMG!!! Victor got his hands dirty!!! Maybe there is hope for him as you say! That trans looks like the creature that crawled out of the black lagoon! UGH! Nice to see work progressing while the rain is still falling in quantity
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Post by Volktales on Apr 9, 2015 21:04:39 GMT -8
Ok, back fiddling with the replacement transmission...
I had previously cleaned up the outside of the transmission. Now it was time to reseal the differential side cover plates. This late '72 swingaxle transmissions has side plates sealed with a large O-ring. I stuck a paint can lid in the hole to prevent dirt from falling in while removing crud from the attaching nuts.
The side plate was removed with careful tapping. As the differential side bearing is seated in the cover, it takes a bit of effort to remove it. You can see the differential side bearing, ring gear, pinion gear, and reverse gears all in this picture. All looked to be in excellent condition.
In theory the new O-ring should seal the side plate without other sealant. I wasn't about to take a chance and used this Wurth product in addition to the O-ring. We have been using this stuff at the shop for a bit and are happy with its performance. The container is pressurized and very easy to apply.
Took off the nose cone assembly to inspect things. Everything looked fine, fortunately.
The nose cone itself. If worn the large ball bearing in the previous picture will pound itself into the nose cone. Not the case here. The shift lever (commonly called the hockey stick), seems unworn as well. I also disassembled the cross shaft and re lubricated the bearings. Trans will now be painted before axles transferred from other transmission.
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Post by Volktales on Sept 6, 2015 20:00:47 GMT -8
Throughout the summer, little has been accomplished on the Ghia. Non VW projects are finally concluding, and today the Ghia finally saw a little attention.
These front air intake grills have been badly letting down the appearance of the car. These are alloy and anodized or "bright-dipped" at the factory. When the coating weathers to this level, it is not practical to restore it. Fortunately the Seattle show had a great swapmeet and I was able to pick up a couple of decent used examples for an OK price.
The replacements required a good scrubbing and polishing, but came up very nicely. Sometimes doing quick things like this can inspire you to continue on.. Going to work on it tomorrow too!
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Post by PICTUP on Sept 6, 2015 20:22:09 GMT -8
WOW, What a difference! That car deserves that. It'll be great to see it on the road again. Maybe in the spring?
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Post by Volktales on Sept 20, 2015 19:21:03 GMT -8
No pictures yet, but I did a significant amount of work on the Ghia this weekend. Finished cleaning off piles of gunk from the rear of the chassis and the underside of the body. Did a lot more painting in the engine compartment too. This was because the previous painting I did was with the original tarboards in place. These were later removed and I have some over-priced, under-quality replacements to go in. I was worried the new panels might not cover all the original paint areas, so more new paint was applied. Will attempt to install the new tar boards tomorrow if the paint has cured enough... Next after this is to reinstall the decklid, and make the catch and latch assembly actually work properly; something that has not functioned correctly since I have owned the car... Then it is on to dealing with the long axle to short axle swap...
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Post by CrazyBrit on Sept 20, 2015 19:46:39 GMT -8
I was wondering when we might see an update on this beautiful car. Good to hear it is progressing again - I for one am looking forward to seeing it out and about again.
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Post by Volktales on Sept 21, 2015 19:09:01 GMT -8
Went down to the basement garage tonight to work on the car. The paint is still curing, and the smell was a bit mind blowing... I did remove the new tar boards from their packaging and was not impressed. CIP loves to send products in cheap, poorly wrapped packages. All the separate pieces were marked up to some extant. The edges of the main back piece were wrapped too tightly in plastic and are damaged. Not impressed, but not surprised either... Some of the cutouts in the boards are not in the correct place either. Going to have to make do given that the originals are in poor condition.
And for CIP....
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Post by CrazyBrit on Sept 21, 2015 19:43:57 GMT -8
I still have my originals. If you can find some tar board you are welcome to borrow them to make copies, assuming the '64 boards are of a similar pattern to the '71 items?
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Post by PICTUP on Sept 21, 2015 21:00:53 GMT -8
Would working the new boards with a heat gun allow you to rework them into a better shape? And what shape did they have after you took a couple of deep breaths in your garage
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Post by Volktales on Oct 30, 2015 21:13:29 GMT -8
Been slowly picking away at the Ghia. The decklid is finally adjusted, the catch is reinstalled and working correctly. Incidentally the original release cable broke and I had to find a replacement. Fortunately I still had one from the '72 Ghia I scrapped several years ago and it worked just fine. Then I decided to do something about the crusty license plate housing...
The main problem with it was the chrome strip on the housing was damaged. It featured a large creased dent in the trim. The solution was that I had earlier bought a complete housing assembly that had a trim strip in significantly better condition. I thought it would be easy to transfer this piece over to my original housing, but as usual things were a bit more complicated than that... Looking at the above picture shows the trim strip is attached with those metal "tangs". This go into the slots on the housing and then are twisted to lock them in place. Untwisting them with some needle nose pliers was difficult due to poor access and the fact the tangs were surprisingly tough. My friend Brian who was just doing the same job on his Ghia suggested to modify a screw drive as shown in the picture. Damn it worked great, and I wish I had thought of that earlier... The trim strip on early Ghias is very sturdy chrome plated brass. The later cars use anodized aluminum instead. I also cleaned all the internal wiring, sockets, etc, and spent way too much time polishing up the oversprayed original license light lens. In the end I was happy with the outcome...
That looks better; no more big dents in the chrome. I polished the paint on the upper part of the housing, and resprayed the underside which had been crudely painted flat black in the past. Note that the plastic lens have some silver paint on the inside of the lens to block the light from shining straight back.
The bulbs are MUCH brighter then before. It is amazing how much dust gets into the lens, and how much bodyshops overspray everything. The rubber gasket surrounding the housing is from the '72 Ghia in this case. It was not cracked, but had lots of paint residue on it. This was removed in the bead blasting cabinet. This can work very well to remove paint from rubber components, but how good it works does depend on the composition of the rubber.
Now they will actually be effective at night! Next up, tackle the stupid tar boards, once and for all...
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Post by Volktales on Dec 14, 2015 21:15:52 GMT -8
Well finally something useful got accomplished this weekend. I have been stuck on dealing with the stupid tarboards in the engine compartment for some time. It is one of those situations in which a job that you don't really want to do is slowing production down to a crawl. Fortunately that finally changed this weekend. Don offered to come over and give me a hand to finish this part of the project and move on to other things... And things turned out quite well...
And the reason it worked out well was because Don did most of the work! I was not that impressed with my first attempt, so Don used it as a pattern and modified it. Incidentally, I chose to use neither the original damaged tarboards, nor the crappy reproductions. Instead I went to Rona and bought a few rubber backed carpets, intended for entrance ways to wipe your feet on. Turning them over revealed a rubber backing that looked kind of original-ish, or at least close enough for me. And at $7.00 each on sale, if they didn't work out, at least I didn't waste too much...
Don started by taping some cardboard to the backing that I had made: this was to allow a much more accurate cut around the hinge pocket areas on the new piece.
Here is Don tracing the pattern onto the new piece. He says he was using some boat building skills here. I wonder why???
Here is an unflattering pic, just to get back at him for the crappy pictures he took of me in the past!
Don has much more patience then me for this kind of work, so I was keen on letting him do it. The results of his efforts were very nicely fitted panels.
<a href="http://imgur.com/nF6eU6A"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/nF6eU6Ah.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
For the side panels, I was able to use the reproductions as backing, with the rubber material placed on top. In reality the only glued down parts, were the pieces that cover the rounded surface of the wheel wells. Initially I was concerned about the main back panel and how to secure it. I heard stories from Karl about how the backing piece can fall off and block the fan housing inlet and overheat the engine. Others on the Samba confirmed this and obviously that was a concern. Originally the tar board was secured with sharp tangs sticking out of the firewall. On later Ghias, there are very few of them and I could see this would be a problem. However on my '64, there are LOTS of retainer tangs, and I think I will be fine...
Later I installed the intended battery for the car, which seems to work fine even though it was free. And I see it is turning eleven soon... Had to buy some new battery cables, although maybe I should have stuck to black for both of them...
While Don was doing the hard work, I couldn't help myself and started colour sanding the back fender. It is working very well, and I had to go out and buy more sandpaper to do the whole car now... I just can't help myself... The picture above shows a fender, part way through orange peel removal. Slow but the results are encouraging...Anyway I have to thank Don for completing this part of the job, as it has allowed me to move on and continue with this project. Next step is to finish cleaning underneath and apply some new undercoat... Then onto the transmission!!!
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Post by Volktales on Dec 31, 2015 21:43:16 GMT -8
Sooo, been doing a few more things to the Ghia...
One of the things that kind of bugged me about this car is the steering wheel, or more precisely the horn ring. The one on the car is the right style for 1964, even though it is not original to this car. I bought this complete wheel assembly many years ago at a swap meet in Victoria. I didn't even own a car that it would fit, but the price was very cheap and I couldn't say no. A long time later, my friend Chuck bought a '64 Ghia that needed lots of work. The steering wheel it came with was quite terrible, but the one I owned was the correct type, so I gave it too him. At that time I never thought I would get it back, but then I bought the car several years later... Funny how things come around...
Although the wheel is still decent, I don't like the design of the horn ring. This style was only used for 1964/1965 on Ghias and Beetles. To me it always looks "broken", even though it is designed like this. VW used a different design commonly called the "D-ring" from 1960 to 1963. The "two-bar" design was used for two years, then in 1966, VW brought back the "D-ring" design again. They continued that until 1971 when the steering wheel changed design. Anyway the "D-ring" is a much classier looking device to me. And I just happened to buy a great used one at the Seattle Vintage meet in the summer...
Transferring the D-ring to the 1965 steering wheel was straightforward. Except why is it upside down? Turns out the steering wheel was mounted upside down on the shaft, so that had to be removed and flipped around. Maybe that is why the signal self cancelling mechanism never seemed to work very well...
The end result. Much more "retro" looking to me. So why would I, the "original" guy, do this? Well for a variety of reasons. My Ghia is a '64, but I like features of some of the slightly earlier cars better. VW was making subtle changes throughout the '60's. Some components that used to be vintage ivory in colour (like the handbrake, gearshift, etc.) were switching to black. I like the earlier vintage appearance so will be switching to ivory. The horn ring looks better with the earlier design too. I also do not have the "VOLKSWAGEN" script on the rear deck lid, which was new for '64. It was missing and the holes filled before I bought the car. It will not be reinstated. I also intend to paint the VW symbol in the hubcaps black which was discontinued in 1962. All this will make my car look identical to a 1962 model, and that is fine by me for this project. I am STRONGLY considering repainting the roof of the car. And if I do, it will be in a different colour. Two-toned paint was optional on the early cars, and I think it would look quite good. We will see...
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Post by CrazyBrit on Dec 31, 2015 23:09:47 GMT -8
Looks great Russ. If you dislike your Ghia's "late" features that much, you could always sell it to me!
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Post by Volktales on Jan 17, 2016 20:50:26 GMT -8
So back on to the Ghia again!
Before getting back into the greasy stuff, I decided to colour sand and polish another panel. This time was the passenger door, which had the worst paint on the whole car. I don't think the door was removed during the low budget re-spray the car received in Chuck's ownership. It does look like it was painted at a different time however as it had WAAAY more orange peel then the surrounding panels. The above pic shows the rear edge of the door, and that was probably the best part of it...
It was tricky to sand around the trim clips with 2000 grit paper. I didn't want to remove them because it would be unlikely I could re-use this type, and I didn't have any new ones. After sanding I hand polished using Farecla G3 rubbing compound. Before reinstalling the trim, I put a small blob of silicone on the trim clips. These Ghia trims have a bad habit of sliding back and forth once installed and are easy to damage. The silicone will prevent this.
Lots of work, but worthwhile in the end. The sanding and polishing and reinstalling the trim took about four hours in total. If I had an electric sander/polisher, it would be faster, but messier. The results are pleasing and I will continue on the rest of the car...
Now back to the greasy stuff...
It was time to remove the axles out of the original transmission. I had done the first side earlier, and now time to document the second side...
First is to remove the 36mm nut holding on the brake drum. The quickest method is to use an air impact gun, but my "workshop" is much too cramped to hold a compressor and it would be too loud anyway. The slower but much quieter way is to use one of these torque multiplier tools. This works great and I am glad I bought it in the past.
More to come...
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