OT plastic kit car

[pflaming]

Ive met a few interesting people, but you exceed all of them. We will have to take a drive with our two cars when I get mine on the road. 

[Ulu]

Thank you Paul. I try to keep up appearances, at least.

 

Well every wire, screw, ziptie and bolt is disconnected and I am ready to pull the body. But I am still working on a strategy because I will either have to build a spreader bar that will work with my hoist in a low overhead situation, or just hoist the nose and build a little gantry to hoist the rear.

 

As I take this car back apart, I am going to try and show you the way I absolutely slapped things together in order to get a presentable car to show the DMV and the CHP and get it passed.

 

I’m quite fortunate that nobody wanted to crawl underneath the car to and look at the undercarriage. They barely looked under the hood.

 

This is a good example. One of the fenders needed fiberglass repair and I took the wiring apart. In the future, these wires will be built right into the fiberglass so they are indestructible, but they were just glued to the fender with little lumps of epoxy.

 

To get this thing operational, all I did was duck tape the wire to the underside of the clean fender, and spray some black paint over it.

 

 

In that photo you can see the rag joint, and right above it is the area where the fender was cracked and I repaired it with fiberglass. It’s not actually spotted with red paint, but the light shines thru the semi-translucent glass Wherever there is no black by paint below.

 

This thing is made from glass and clear resin so essentially it would be transparent except for the entrained air. The air, which makes it thicker and stiffer, also makes it more opaque and yellow.

 

Here’s a preliminary view of what I did to get the brakes working. The sheet metal bulkhead that anchors the master cylinder was rotted away and I chalked it out completely and attach the master cylinder to the car with a complex system of struts angles and bolts. I did it this way so I wouldn’t have to weld, and I had all these parts just laying around to play with.

 

I did it this way so I wouldn’t have to weld, and I had all these parts just laying around to play with.

 

This is below the rusty toe board I removed, That nut is on the end of a half inch threaded rod that goes clear through the tunnel and has a nut and plate on the opposite side as well. I didn’t make those holes. Those are rust holes and I just opened them out with a chisel.

On the other side that threaded rod anchors the bottom of two heavy steel angles pointing vertically. The master cylinder is bolted to those angles with a couple spaces.

 

The master cylinder is bolted to those angles with a couple spacers. It’s difficult to see you this photograph but that half inch rod passes through both vertical angles and then has a coupling nut. There’s a steel clip on the edge of the frame with a bolt that threads into the end of that coupling nut. That arrangement holds the master cylinder down and locates it forward to back. I had to add two struts to prevent rotation. They are made from EMT. The long one on the right secures to the fiberglass body and steel floor pan with a 1/4” carriage bolt. The very short one on the left secures to the original throttle mount hole with a 10 mm German bolt.

 

The middle of the three silver tubes is the brake rod from the pedal. If you look you can see where they just cut the stock rod off and welded it onto a pipe. This is all because the driver and pedals move back about 2 feet from their original position.

 

You can see the largest part of the driver side front floor which is still stuck in the car. It won’t come out until the master cylinder comes out and that won’t come off until the body comes off.

 

I patched the floor together around this mess with bits from the back of an old Maytag. Self drilling screws and carriage bolts hold this mess together and anchor the chassis to the body.

 

I don’t know why I put the battery box back in but it was a mistake because it just made the floor very hard to construct, an weak and noisy.

 

Remember those little metal “crickets” with a bit of spring steel you press to make it go click-click? It’s a child’s toy that soldiers used to use to communicate in the dark. Imagine one the size of a car that goes click-click as the suspension loads and unloads in roll or twist.

 

It resonated that whole sheet metal floor and scared the snot out of my wife a couple of times.

 

One piece is still stuck in the car, but this is most of the sheet-metal floor and the battery box and you can see where I patched this steering column 4 times. I’m not kidding. It was patched in two places when I got it and I had to cut it twice!

Anyhow any of you safety mavens can rest easy because this car never got driven over 5 miles with this hokey arrangement.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Ulu

[Ulu]

This is the original gas tank frame which was welded to the car sort of. I chopped it off and bolted it down in a different position with big countersunk screws. Straps used to hold the security screen on someone’s security door but I repurpose them and they are really thin and scroungy even though I burnished & repainted them.

 

 

You can also see the top end of the steering column in this photo. That’s the slip joint so you can get it in and out.

 

I had to move the outlet on the fuel tank and I enlarged the original ragged hole in the plastic by sort of melting it into a tube, and then I drove in a pipe plug.

The ridiculous fuel hose arrangement goes from American 3/8 down to 3/16 which is the only thing that will fit tight on the German fuel line.

 

I roll out the hoist from the boatyard and into the garage, to begin the extraction. I don’t live anywhere near the water. I have to drive for half an hour. The boat yard is just where I store my boat and my old cars.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Ulu

[Ulu]

More warts:

 

A while back I wrote that I had arranged the wiring to stay with the plastic body, and not the chassis. Part of this is to help prevent short circuits.

 

Mostly it was to make the body easy to remove from the chassis. There’s also no connectors. I wired this car point-to-point.

The one place I screwed up is the front parking lamps and I had to snip the brackets to get the wiring through without cutting it. Those brackets are thin, crooked and malformed, and will soon get chopped.

[Ulu]

It became apparent to me that I was not going to be able to build a rig that would allow me to hoist the body off in my garage without hitting the ceiling.

 

So instead I decided to split the body into two pieces, and I hoisted off the back section today and put it on a cart.

 

I wasn’t going to do this because it required disassembling the tail lights and tail light wiring, but I hated that light arrangement anyway, and I wanted to change it desperately.

 

This hoist is heavy enough that I can just turn the boom around backwards and pick up about 150 pounds Without additional counterweights. This part of the body only weighs about 60 pounds.

 

 

This cart used to be pieces of two different architectural plan carts. Our old engineering office finally went paperless and they gave me all the carts to scrap out.

 

So now I gotta move all this stuff around and hoist the front body off the car, and I don’t have a cart for it yet.

 

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Ulu

[Ulu]

I built this cart to hold the front body while it is off the car. This was also assembled from old Planhold drawing racks.

 

While I was looking at my work and considering potential framing scenarios for this car, I noticed that my rear axle had contacted the frame braces I added ( during a 3000+ rpm clutch dump under full lunatic launch mode.)

 

There is a ring around the axle and a little dent in each of those tubes. It’s hard to see but I drew a little circle around it.

This is going to require somewhat more clearance.

 

I’m glad I didn’t do any more violent burnouts. I really don’t want to screw up those axles.

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Hoisting the front body, I used some conduit as a cross bar & the front bumper for a spreader bar. (It was strong and handy.  )

 

It’s a balancing act . . . Can you see the extra weight?

 

The weighting is the hardest part!

 

I had to add a lot of junk to counterweight the back of the hoist.

 

Ok, the front body is up on the cart.

 

 

Now the body and frame are fully exposed, and I can work on whatever I wish.

 

Like this mess! The bulkhead supporting the master cylinder was completely rotted away and flexible, so I chiseled it away and replaced it temporarily with this system of struts and braces.

That stuff has to come off right away.

Edited February 7, 2022 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Trying to organize things.

I have the dance floor cleared.

 

[Ulu]

Guys it is time to start cutting and welding and I am stalling. I am not 100% happy with my design decisions.

 

But I don’t want to spend the last days of my life fixing this car so I need to get it going.

 

So instead I have cleaned up my boat and planned a fishing trip.

 

not a good omen….

[Ulu]

Our weather soured a bit and my fishing buddy canceled, so fishing was canceled.

 

I ended up shopping for lumber and more VW parts. I picked up a hybrid fan shroud that had no heater vents. I also got a roll of steel brake line.

 

This is Burnett’s in Clovis

 

 

[Ulu]

Well today, in order, I moved my workbench and heavy vise. I moved my anvil. I moved my boat out of the boat yard and turned it around. I moved my tablesaw and my miter saw. I moved half a ton of miscellaneous steel. I moved my grinders out to the work shed which is now the welding shed. I moved my anvil and my steel rack. I moved the doors and  axle from the 47 Plymouth (which are on a cart.) I moved a couple other carts around. I moved my TIG welder and my torch kit out to the work shed. I moved my motorcycle from the boat yard into the garage. I moved the kit car body around on its carts to clear the garage floor, and I moved my portable workbench. I put the boat back in the boat yard the correct way and put the garbage cans all back in. I jimmied and jiggled everything around until I got it to fit the way I wanted and finally I brought my wife’s car in the garage and put the door down.

 

It’s still all chaos out in the boat yard but at this point I am pooped.

 

And so now, in that finest of American traditions, it’s Miller time. But I don’t have a fridge in the work shed so I’ll settle for some black jack number seven Tennessee whiskey.

 

Here’s the chassis with the engine removed.

 

[Ulu]

This is my little engine cart for moving the Volkswagen engine around. I should’ve used steel casters as this engine weighs more than I thought.

 

 

 

This is way more stable than it looks. There’ a lot of aluminum and tin here and little iron.

[Ulu]

I had house repairs and other things to attend to so no work has happened to the car.

 

I took my welding equipment out to the shed and brought my motorcycle into the garage to work on it. It’s too wet to weld out doors where my chassis is now.

 

I did takeoff the Ford style rag joint and put on a Volkswagen style, and it fits a lot nicer.

This is how much the passenger side tie rod is bent. Gotta fix that.

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Ulu

[Ulu]

7 months later….

 

I have the bicycle pretty much wrapped up and done working on my motorcycle so now I’m working on the Volkswagen again.

 

After I repair this, I will rebuild the engine in the Scout, and once it is running, I will probably go back to work on the P-15.

 

Anyhow I got the VW chassis uncovered for the first time in seven months and cleaned all the leaves and dirt up a bit and started looking it over really well.

 

This has been hit and repaired sometime in the past, and you can really tell when you look down from the top in a certain direction.

 

There is only about 1/4 by 1/2 inch piece of rusty 1.5 mm steel holding the front head frame from ripping loose at the pan. It was bad before, and after driving the car and doing some general hooliganism, it is much worse.

 

I was wise to take it off the road when I did, because if this popped while I was driving it, it could send me off the side of the road into a tree.

 

 

I wasn’t looking forward to being impaled by the steering column.

 

Anyhow I have to get this thing apart and cut off the cancer and then build a real frame under it. This is my first major custom frame job. Thank God the Scout don’t need framework.

 

The Plymouth has got some frame damage, which is one of the reasons that I put it aside until it got more valuable. 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Ulu

[pflaming]

If you recall, I have a solid full length pan. 

[Ulu]

It would be tempting except that that would change the frame number and I’d have to get it back to the highway patrol for re-registration.

 

They will want to see a title for that frame of yours, which you do not have.

 

That makes it a salvage vehicle under the law, so I have to have full equipment & smog inspections, and get a blue tag riveted on by the highway patrol.

 

What an incredible can of worms that would be!

 

 

Anyhow, my plan is to eliminate a lot of the Volkswagen frame where it is bolted to the Frame extension, which is the weak point in the whole business. I’m going to cut away the Volkswagen tube frame and replace it with frame rails welded to the extension directly.

 

 

 

 

[Ulu]

Well it seems like I get back to this about every six months.

 

I’ve been attempting to adjust the rear suspension and I’ve been cleaning things up so I have room to work on the car in my welding area. Just a lot of nasty layers of paint and dirt in some places. Particularly the end of this torsion arm housing. This must get really clean before the rubber bushings will slide off over it.

That Milwaukee knocks it right off but it is a beast to work with all day. 
 

 

 

 

[Los_Control]

I can imagine the torque that thing puts out .... your arms will be tired.

There are times you just need the big tool to get the job done.

 

Once on a home remodel, it included removing existing sidewalks and adding new .... this meant a jackhammer.

My employer rented & delivered a small jackhammer .... he thought it would be easier to handle.

We tried all morning, first my apprentice & then I took over .... all it did was beat us up with the shaking, but broke no concrete.

I went to lunch early at 11:00, turned in the small hammer for the big daddy .... 90# hammer.

By 1:30 I had all the concrete broke, over 100'. ..... Employer sent me to return the rental tool, flipped me $20 to buy a beer, sent me home with pay.  .... He, my apprentice & the laborer spent the day loading the broken concrete into a dumpster.

Sometimes, only a big tool will work.

 

@Uluare you sure you need that big tool for this job?

I have a 4" Makita with a 5" brush that does a great job of removing the same crud your 7" is doing.

The times I have used a 7" grinder that takes two hands to operate,     That is a job.

[Ulu]

I have smaller ones for the detail work.

But that monster strips it down fast!

I have half an acre of used steel to clean up before I start welding it. It’s gonna get a work out.

[Ulu]

I have recreated the tail frame braces from scratch. This is stronger and now the axles wont strike the braces. This will reduce frame wrap (twist) as the engine moves.

 

Basically the engine and transmission are mounted in a fork, and it winds up a little bit as the car accelerates and decelerate, to cushion the actions. They had extra reinforcement in the vans, to control the frame twist with the bigger loads.

 

Commonly, people run those braces to a thin tubular crossmember at the shock absorber bolts 
 

Since my body does not sit on the Volkswagen body mounts, I was able to add a square tube crossmember there, and run all my braces to the crossmember. This will be just enough.

[Ulu]

When I look at my photographs it appears that the new struts might be a little bit close to the rocker covers, so I will need to do a test fitting of the engine soon.

 

I decided that I needed to check out the front beam axle for straightness and other damage, and I hoisted the whole assembly off the front frame adapter.

 

 

Checking for warp and twist at the adaptor.

 

She’s down about a half a degree at the driver side and it’s pushed back at the driver side slightly less.

 

Basically the car is twisted a half an inch at the front wheels and it’s pushed back a half an inch  at the left front wheel.

 

After I do my test fitting of the engine, I will put some indicators on this frame and start making relief cuts to see how much it springs back. There appears to be a lot of weld draw and once I cut out that bit of metal I expect the frame to spring back almost 100%.

 

But if it doesn’t I will set it up with big hoist and draw the frame out straight hydraulically.

 

 

[Ulu]

The frame did spring back quite a bit eventually, but I chopped out the bottom of the fore tunnel with an angle head grinder. Then I flushed out the whole frame with a garden hose, and an air hose, and the high-volume air hose from my shop vac, until it was all dry again.

It didn’t happen as easy as it sounds. There were a lot of different cuts with the grinder to get all the internal reinforcements and welded on patches.

 

So I got to do a lot of forensic investigation.

When this was originally repaired the entire bottom of the tunnel was all rusted out for about the 1st foot from the front axle back, and they had completely replaced that with a patch that covered way too much and welded to the wrong spots. The whole business was 3rd rate.

 

In the process of all the cutting, I uncovered a considerable amount of mouse nest and debris. By uncovered, I mean I sent it up in smoke.

I removed the pedal set so I could figure out how far the rust damage went, and it goes another foot on the driver side. Just to the end of that lumpy weld to the right of the right bolt hole.

It is hard to tell from the photograph just how much trouble they had with this, but you can see they had to hit that patch with a torch, and beat it down (until they actually ripped the floor) in an effort to get the pedal assembly to fit back in the hole.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Cleaning up the frame rails and welding up a crack. This was welded from both sides.

 

 

[Ulu]

I did a test fit of the engine and found out that it didn’t quite clear my new struts in the back frame. I ended up re-designing them a little bit and now there’s plenty of clearance and the car will NOT try to unsnap its own valve covers.

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Ulu

[Ulu]

These are the rear frame rails after welding and painting. I made these little standoffs so they could be securely clamped to the rear suspension torsion tube. Previously these just bolted right to the sheet metal floor pan with no brackets to attach them to the actual frame of the car.

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Ulu