Ulu

I spent some time today putting stiffeners on the edge of the floorboards I had trimmed, and bolting them up to the walls of the car. I also improved the attachment of the crossmembers to the pan. The rear subframe on this car is a goofy nest of thin square tubing with poor anchorage, little beam strength, and no torsional capacity to speak of. to combat this I am prototyping a series of six struts under the back of the car. The temporary frontmost struts are to relieve the floor pan of uplift where it is not designed to receive it. They brace the sub frame up to the heavy VW torsiontube crossmember using 2.5” u-bolts and 2” square U bolts around the sub frame. In the future I intend to re-design the sub frame and it’s attachments; but I had no idea at this point how long these should actually be(because the body hasn’t taken it’s final shape shape. That requires the rear fenders) so I just bolted something adjustable together and stuck it under there to preserve my floor pan. Here I am making the second struts, which of course are left and right handed. I located these from the top of the shock tower to the end of the crossmember which supports the rear subframe rails. These are just made from 3/4” EMT, and they should have some little gussets at the angle. Again I am just Proto typing things for size and spatial relationships. This will all change when I re-build the rear subframe. See the big overhung load on that shock absorber bolt? Today I’m going to make two longer thinner struts that go from the rear shock towers all the way to the rear of the sub frame to pick up the rear corners of the car. In order to get those the correct length, I’m going to have to align the rear body, which means I have to attach the rear fenders and I haven’t finished relieving them yet. In other words they don’t quite fit. Anyhow, that will be today’s main task: finished notching, shaving, and installation of the rear fenders. Then my wife is going to drag me to the grocery store or rather I’m going to drag her, and after that I will build my rear struts.

OK, here is an example of my welding close up. I had to close this gap at the end of each tube where the plate didn’t quite cover it. I wish I’d cleaned the metal a little bit more here, because I did get up into some rust & dirt, but overall it’s OK. I had that set at about 80 amps and I used 1/8” filler rod. The whole weld took less than 30 seconds. This is easy to manipulate as gas torch welding but it is a lot faster to do because of the temperature difference. This plasma torch is 10 times as hot as an Oxy-acetylene torch, and if you manage to keep from sticking the electrode into the puddle you get pinpoint control. So here it is with a quick shot of paint, bolted to the chassis. The steel tube spanning between the crossmembers reinforces the runningboards, which are only fiberglass and plywood.

The new brake reservoir is installed and everything is tightened up & seems to work well. I decided to reinforce the running board braces (crossmembers ) with some 1.75” OD steel tubing under each runningboard. Not DOM, but just 16ga ESW tube. It was electrogalvanized, so I had to strip that back. Here I tack up the 16ga tube to 3/16” bent plate braces. (Retired computer geek crawls on the floor for fun and recreation.) My out-of-position welds look pretty bad, so far. Tough to get penetration on the 3/16” without cooking the thinwall tube. Now that it is tacked up I can stand the frame up and flat-weld from my chair. One time I started, forgetting I had turned the gas off before lunch. Nearly burned up the torch before I figured it out. This welder has loud fans and I didn’t notice the whoosh of Argon missing at arc. Best news is that I am learning to love the new automatic helmet. What a time saver!

I can’t afford a Lift right now, so to calm myself down I bought a new pair of jackstands. Of course I then had to explain to my wife why I need six jackstands. Actually, where I live there isn’t enough room.

I quit reading right there. I need to calm down and go take a pill. I was really jealous of Bernie Sanders until I read about this second lift. ARGH! I just don't wanna know! ?

I got the brakes to bleed OK today, and no leaks so far. Woohoo! This was a big deal because when I got the car there was an obvious brake fluid leak on the frame. It turns out it was just the cracked plastic reservoir that was leaking and everything else is tight and dry. I ordered a new reservoir from J-bugs in SoCal. $11

Over the past few days I have managed to straighten out the headlight spreader bar and do all of the wiring forward of the fuse box (on the cowl) Except for the fuse box itself. This includes mounting the horn, and wiring the brake light switches and fuel tank sender. I also installed a heavy connection for all of the forward grounds to the Volkswagen frame. I had to do some welding to build up too worn out cable hook on the clutch pedal. I did it with the new welder but I did an awful job, and it took me four times as long as it would have with the acetylene torch. That’s because I keep stabbing my electrode into the puddle and I had to stop and regrind four times. Anyhow when I got that all reshaped and filed down I Straightened out the bent pedals and realigned them, Install some new pedal rubbers, and mounted the pedal cluster to the chassis. I reinstalled the master cylinder and the steel brake lines and I cleaned up the brake pushrod and got that adjusted and mounted. If you look a few pages back you’ll see where I chiseled off the rusted piece of the frame that holds the master cylinder, so I had to cobble up some angle brackets and a big piece of all-thread. I went right through the frame tunnel with 3/8 all-thread to secure the master cylinder to the frame. This is all temporary of course, because when I change the chassis the master cylinder mount and brake lines will all change. I put some new hoses on for the plastic remote brake reservoir but I noticed that it has damage at the top and I’m going to have to order a new one. In the meantime I mounted it in a way that I can still fill the brakes and bleed them, but I have not started that yet.

Big rains here today and last night so not a lot of chance to do any welding. Instead I’ve been in the garage with a trammel & calipers trying to figure out where the headlights are crooked and which way I have to drill to straighten them. The spreader bar was never installed straight to begin with. Now that I have the fenders straight & the nose of the car straight, it’s obvious that the headlights are crooked.

Well it really pains me to put out the $350, but I figure it’s like buying eyeglasses. You don’t want to buy cheap ones. I never spend less than that on a pair of eyeglasses.

For $350 I solved my helmet issue. An auto helmet that works for pulse

My first welds are all on .7mm and 1mm mild steel. That first weld is only 0.06”x 1” long. I just folded over a .7mm strap and welded the edges together. The second weld is a close-up of the third picture. This shows some welding of the Volkswagen floor pan reinforcements. The fourth picture shows the other side of the steel strap. I welded up the edges and at one point stuck my tungsten in the puddle, leaving a crater. in the last photo I am welding the edges of the .7mm Volkswagen floor pan to the edge of the floor pan doubler, which is 1 mm. didn’t clean the steel in between the layers so I had a blowout. I did all of these outdoors with welding curtains, and I had a helmet that was too dark. I will need to get a lighter lens.

First test welds. Comments to follow.

Will still no welding, but I got an argon tank, welding helmet, and a bunch of supplies today, and a new welding cart kit. Here it is all assembled. Here it is all assembled. I have spent $1464 so far. This includes 3 pounds of welding rods and several spare bits for the torch. I bought a welding rod holder and a diamond wheel for sharpening tungsten but the Argon was the biggie at $365. ….more data when I have more data….

My new TIG welder showed up. I still need argon and a helmet. And the longer power cord. And a cart. This is the Primeweld TIG225ACDCP kit, With torch, ground, stinger, pedal, switch, regulator, hose, power cord & 110 V adapter. More reviews once I have welded with it.

I reattached the rear body and managed to keep it off the muffler. By reading through the assembly manual and disassembling and reassembling this car, I have discovered where all of the missing parts were never installed. So far there’s about 30 bolts and 12 spacers and a bunch of shims plus 4 steel brackets. Also there were several places where the fiberglass body needed to be notched according to the instructions and this was not done, causing the rear fenders to fit poorly plus throw off the alignment of the runningboards. Anyhow I am notching the fenders and fitting them to the body closely.

Well we are making some progress here. I’m getting body panels aligned properly and trimming things that never got trimmed 30 years ago when the car was built. Next I have to assemble the headlights and install them, after which I will mount the rear fenders to the rear body and install it loosely. When the body is finally reassembled on the chassis I can figure out how much to jack things around and get the tail off of the muffler. But on this car everything starts from the front bumper.

I didn’t think I’d be working on the car today.I went and got my second Moderna shot yesterday and the doctor told me that I might feel sick afterwards but so far no after effects.I got my grandkids to come over and help me In the house and the garage, and they helped me stick the front body clip back on the car.It’s not secured yet but it’s positioned. I was up late working in the garage and I got a lot done.The rear crossmembers, parking lamps, front valance and front bumper, rear bumper and rear sub frame are all on. The heater boxes are gone and the “Heater delete” tubes and muffler are installed. Today I will try to get the front fenders on.I need to trim the floor pan just slightly before mounting the forward body, and I have to locate and attach the forward crossmember which supports the runningboards and the tail of the front fenders.The rear body has no rear body mounts and never has had. Basically it was sitting on the muffler and cantilevered from the fenders.There’s the front fenders, the tub, and cowl. I also still have to install rear fenders and doors and runningboards.At some point the people who built this car couldn’t get things to fit and they just gave up. That’s because the chassis was bent (!) but with some easy modifications I have taken that out of the equation for the body.The radiator shell is very much out of square and I need to oversize the holes in the body and get it aligned properly. The mounting of the front body is not going to be finalized. I’m just throwing it together to get an inspection passed.You’ll notice I haven’t bothered to clean or paint anything, because this is all going to come apart again. My wife is going to hate me.Anyhow, I am tired from all the work yesterday, but the best part of all of this is I was expecting to feel sick today. I was warned by the pharmacist, because he had a mild reaction, but I am having no issues.The one thing I did not do is sit around and take it easy, And so it’s back to the garage for me

The good news it doesn’t actually have to be drivable. It just has to appear to be a complete car.

Well it didn’t work. The DMV will not issue a title until I reassemble the car. Just because I showed them pictures of a roadster they want to be assured that I am building a roadster.

Yesterday I finally set up to tow the chassis over and have the numbers inspected at the DMV. I also put some lights and flags on it today (not in the photo )

Mine was bored 0.060” over so I don’t know the real displacement. Wasn’t much.

Is that the 1298cc? I built up a 1298 long block In my mom’s dining room. Of course all the parts were surgically clean and it was the cleanest place that I could build the engine. But when she came in and saw pistons and rods laid out on the kitchen table she was not amused.

LOL. . . . I have been cleaning on the boat yard for a couple days now, and I found all kinds of things I forgot I even had.

It’s a very good method of operation, and my main modification is that as soon as I can’t find what I need to continue with my current project I start cleaning up the shop I get the vacuum and the brush and a shovel and whatever and before I know it I found six things. Right now though I’m just having a brain block on exactly how I want to do some reinforcement in my fiberglass car. This is causing some stress because every day it sits in my wife’s parking spot she will hold that against me. To combat the stress I am cleaning up the worst part of my outdoor boat yard. I have generated a full 92 gallon container of leaves and twigs, Moved my welding table & lots of iron for access. This has turned into majority of my physical effort for two days and it is satisfying to have done it. In the process of all that mindless pruning and sweeping I managed to come up with a better philosophy of construction that I think will be OK, as long as I don’t have chemical problems between polyurethane adhesive and cured polyester & epoxy.

This is just a symptom of us all having too many toys. . . Err. . . Tools.