Ulu

That friend was me, and I've changed my mind. I think the #5 cyl has galled both the rod bearing and the wrist pin, and they are both going, first one then the other, as cyl pressure varies.

All air cooled VWs had crappy fuse arrangements. I put a regular Buss fuse block in mine. First mod I always recommend.

Just the one '66 Type 3 fastback. This was my hobby car and I hopped it up with 1700+cc kit and dual (Brazilian) Webers. Basket O' snakes in back. Bosch 009 distributor, reground cam, dual external oil coolers and spin-on filter. I converted to 12v and put 5 speakers in it. It was fast enough but used to overheat in summer and burn up the charging system. I sold it and bought a brand new Subaru 1600cc which was a fabulous little car. Never gave any trouble at all. Not as fast as some similar Japanese cars, but the #1 in JB Powers, 1981, beating out the M Benz in reliability. Fantastic traction in the snow. The engine and trans looked 99% like a VW, turned backwards, and mounted in the front. Except it was water cooled.

I had to look for a while to find this... Reminded me of the Empi.

Just an update on the boat. I was out in the yard moving cars and boats around today and thought of this old thread. I bought a fancy new sonar, and re-worked some of the wood trim too mount it, but never did mount the other two motors. I didn't think It would add enough speed to make it worth while, and what I want is lighter batteries. Not extra weight. I've been following this fellow who is building an electric boat from a used Tesla battery, and I thought that would be a neat idea. But, I am considering, someday, the addition of those Navigator motors with some additional floatation, in a detachable arrangement. Otherwise, several fishing trips have proven it capable and safe enough. I have otherwise shoved it aside to make more room to put up another workshed, and work on my cars again.

You got some great hearing there . . . An armored catfish, the Albino Hypostomes Plecostomus

When you charge a battery water vapor comes out. It's normal as long as you don't have a crack in the case. When you charge too long the water boils up and can overflow easily if it was already filled up.

Don't let me stop your experiments. Experimenting is the best part! Just because I can't see a way to make it work doesn't mean there isn't one. But grab one by the magnet while it's playing and wave it around in the air, and I think you'll hear harmonic distortion. It can work, but I don't believe it will sound good unless you are parked. Yet I have not tried this, and I may be completely wrong.

Oh I get it. Strictly speaking, it's a softwood plantation species, but it is abrasive and tough and hardens with age.. It's literally the Bread and butter of the forestry industry around these parts. My house is 100% doug fir framing, and virtually all of this town was doug fir & hem fir, until light gage steel took over for commercial buildings. New houses still are mainly doug fir. Termites eat it, though they prefer other woods. It absorbs water and gets dry rot readily compared to redwood or cedar, but still a tough wood for boat framing when well sealed.

A car is a strange environment for audio. There are a world of differences just from car to car. I've built a number of speaker enclosures before, and essentially you are making a free-air speaker. No baffle to improve atmospheric coupling. It's so big it couples directly quite well. It's difficult to get bass without a big radiator (acoustic, not heat) so in a modest room two very large panels (radiators) are required on the drivers (exciters). They may not seem large compared to boxed speakers, but they are huge if you compare radiator sizes to radiator sizes, by db ouput at standardized situations. The joy of those big panels is that you do get bass from modest input wattage, because of the big radiator. It's efficient. It's not sturdy. BUT, since a 50 watt radio is no larger than a 10 watt radio, and a car has little room, it makes more sense to use a modest radiator size and more watts. By shaping the radiator, you can make it stiff and still light, but it will always be delicate. You can seal it to prevent humidity damage, and harden the soft surface, but the sealer can weigh a lot. It will be an interesting experiment, but I think there are lots of hurdles before you.

That Empi is a fur piece from the Fiberfab jobs I'm more familiar with. I wanted an Ocelot kit, which was a lot like the Manx, but it had swoopier side panels:, more attractive for street trim.

https://youtu.be/CKIye4RZ-5k

On the youtube channel Tech Ingredients they build these to hang on a wall. The edges are unsupported and the driver is just glued on. In a physically dynamic environment like a car, this is probably a poor idea. It's like a big leaf. What happens when you open the windows while going 55 MPH? I managed to put two 4" speakers and a 10" woofer in the back shelf of my P15, and 6" in the dash, run as a ghost channel. I never needed more. I had to make a special cabinet to fit behind the rear seat, above the shelf. It was a bit odd, but I just built one from cardboard and tape until it fit exactly, then duplicated it in wood. Because the bottom was screwed directly to the shelf, and the ends were small, the wood need be only 5/16. the baffle was 1/2" I made the baffle 1/8" too large so it fit tight to the headliner and seat upholstery. I had to carve a special baffle for the front as a regular 6" speaker won't fit tight to the grill without an adaptor. My car didn't have the oddball shape stock speaker when I bought it..

There are so many interesting engines available nowadays... Maybe it will have a totally modern engine. Maybe just the 1953 dodge I have already. It may not matter what powers it, because when it's done it'll be too custom to see easily what it was made from. I have a torch, unlimited gas budget, spare 19 ga steel, and no deadlines, so it may turn out to be bizarre in every way. But no ratrod nonsense. It needs to have paint!

Hey Paul! Are we going to get to ride in the dune buggy?

Doug Fir is good stuff for not quite being a real hardwood. My first engineering job in 1975 was designing trusses made of Doug fir, and it varies a lot. You have to select the best pieces to get really hard tough wood. Hem fir is usually like balsa wood by comparison. It was used for non-critical bits.

My first real 9 to 5 job was building VWs in Layton UT. I only owned one, which was quite different from this Empi.

Yes, exactly. Awful pun, but nobody under 30 gets it.

I'm bumping this old thread to tell you all how sorry I am that I have let go of this project. It's been 5 1/2 years since I started stripping Edith d' Plymouth and many life altering things have happened in the nonce. I'd give you a long list but I really don't want to relive it all! Suffice it to say I am retired and fully engaged in empty nest feathering. Lots of improvements were made to the house and property. Nothing was done to the Plymouth, except Jasco phosphate wash, clear paint, and random oiling to preserve the stripped metal. Mostly it worked, though there is a bit new. So there was this other thing. I was just going to strip and repaint this car, and reassemble it with a Dodge flathead 230 and BW overdrive trans, spicer driveshaft, and stock rear end. Stuff I already had. I was going to reupholster the interior myself, having the worn one as a good pattern. (Most of the interior was eventually destroyed by vermin, and I dumped it.) But my plans changed when I got the shell stripped bare. There was thick filler in two major places: decklid and right QP. There was thin filler on 90% of the metal. In ancient times, the right rocker had been butchered to effect a pull of the damaged right QP, and never repaired. Just carpeted over. It wasn't well done, but the rocker trim and rubber covered the sins effectively. The deck lid had taken a hit in the handle, making a huge dent and warping the deck a tad. That was pulled somewhat, and plastered with filler up to 1/2" thick under the Lic plate. It never cracked but eventually would have. There was also rust out in the front floors and a little under the tail lights. The rear valance was always missing. The stock engine was history. One door was not original. There's minor frame damage, etc. Many small parts had been changed over the years too. This car couldn't be restored in any true sense of the word, and certainly not for less than a better original car could be had in California today. That was the sorry economics of the situation. In the end, Edith sat unloved for five years, and started to rust again. Fortunately we've had 39 of 45 years as a nominal drought, so this is not rust as you eastern folks might imagine. But the plans had to change. The only way it would be attractive for me to work on this car was to make it 100% full custom. I can't waste time re-creating what was. I can buy that, but the time is another matter. I think most of the stock trim and dash, handles, bumpers, garnish, lenses, heater, radiator, skirts, visor, etc will eventually be sold off, as they are filling up another vehicle which needs work and would actually be profitable to fix. More about all that later. I'm not sure what I'll need to keep yet. But there will be major surgery. I'm going to build it into a full custom roadster. Aside from that, nothing is set in stone, but I intend to reshape this car in ways unimagined by man. If I botch it, nothing real is lost but my labor. I have under $10K involved, and back when I bought for ~$3500 it was shining and lovely &, I drove it every day for 5 years! That's a bargain only possible because it was in the 80's, everything was cheaper, and I maintained the car myself. So I have ideas for this roadster that I'm not going to share yet. I know this is shocking enough already, to those of you who have built up much worse cars, but I'm really intending to cut this one to bits and re-make it. If that stings, remind yourself that it had been junked at least once, and was built up from parts of various cars, when I got it in '86. In the end you may well chase me off for my abominations if I screw it up. But nevertheless, I will start up a new thread when I have more than a sketch and an idea.

I got caught on this one... My daughter called me to help her jumpstart her car. When I got there she was doing fine but the engine wouldn't crank. I started fiddling with the clamps, and something felt funny. I took a good look at the wire. The cables she bought had only 12 ga copper (maybe real copper, maybe...?) in a plastic cable that looks like 4 gage! I grabbed the clamp and pulled it right off the wire. not even well crimped! "Where did you get these, sweetie?" "Ummm . . . Home shopping club." <sheepish daughter look> I took her to NAPA and bought her some real cables.

We have multiples of both now. Dyson was an emaciated rescue fish with some fin damage. 12" long now and quite fat. Felix the Oscar

Putting up the new shed... You can't see any of my fish in those previous pics. . . .

So now there are aquariums indoors and out, there. The patio aquarium, and insulated sump below, serving both indoor and outdoor tanks. For the winter, I dolled it up in Styrofoam and white duct tape. There's a greenhouse on top for the ivy. Little glass windows are from old cracked aquariums. A pic of me at the shotgun range, testing some buck & ball loads.

No major injuries for me. I just got discouraged working on the Plymouth. I just didn't expect to see such major body flaws when I stripped it. I've been fishing more, and because the eye surgery has improved my sight so much, I've been spending a lot of time with the rifle club. I put together a reloading bench, and just did lots of work remodeling and fixing up the yard. We managed to put in a nice shed, and patio etc, but no shop for me yet. That big hole was a tin fireplace with fan in a stucco chimney. The fan circuit now runs the aquariums which replaced the fireplace/chimney. I shored up the trusses from inside, as termites had eaten into the old fireplace header. That's me in my official and really clean engineer's hardhat, after termite abatement (bleach treatments.) We re-roofed that asphalt region under the A/C, and filled in the framing where the chimney was.

Hey there Paul, Since my wife broke her knee she couldn't chase me on the bike, so I've only been riding when the grandkids come over for birthdays. Except for the youngest two, they're all driving and starting college now, so their interest in skating has vanished. Mine is improving again, however I have put on some 15 lbs and will be fighting to loose it. So is the Plymouth wagon roadworthy now? It's probably been 4 years since I saw it in the garage. The pickup was almost together....