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Post by John Kanters on Oct 27, 2012 13:54:32 GMT -8
I had a few other things to do yesterday so not much progress on the old girl i'm afraid, did manage to nearly finish off the lower fender panel for the left side which I've been working on making during the week but have mis placed my big chassis punch to enlarge the torsion cover hole to its correct size. Thats the last thing to be done to that piece, have one small rust hole to take care of on the inner structure before blasting that area and welding it all back together. Rather than dwell on my missing tools I carried on cutting the lower rear fender off and what a surprise (not really but sounds better that way ) more rust!!! Man these things hide rust well, don't think I'll have to make the inner parts like on the other side but then I haven't blasted it yet so may eat those words............ Next step will be waiting for better days for sandblasting, if the weather isn't condusive for it next weekend I'll drag the floor pan out and start on that instead.
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Post by John Kanters on Oct 31, 2012 20:03:38 GMT -8
Quick update from this week, thought I only had 2 pieces left to make which turned into 5!! But more nasty swiss cheese areas replaced ready for the final outer skin to be made which hopefully I'll start on this weekend. Also repaired the fender arch and the big crease from another fender bender at some stage in its life. Can't wait to get this part of the body work completed and on to the next thing, would like to get a rolling chassis done and drop the body on to make sure everything is A OK.
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Post by John Kanters on Nov 3, 2012 15:13:37 GMT -8
Well the end is near finally got on to making the last lower corner of the body and remembered all the trouble I had making the last one so tried a different method this time round using just the shrinker and english wheel, actually a little tip I picked up watching a youtube video of Lazze metalshaping (please look that up, just an awesomely talented guy!!) Anyway doing it this way turned out to be a lot quicker and gave a better result, test fitting along the way checking fit as I went. Just needs a final trim before it gets welded in place, with the panel pretty much done I'd hoped to sandblast the inside of the rear 1/4 so that these last panels could be finished but as usual the weather had other ideas What to do now................go home or............... Decided that going home is for quitters so I dragged the chassis out of hiding and began looking at that, quite a sight to behold really...........some in genius solutions for holding the battery in too in the form of an old rotten piece of timber under which was a huge rust hole! This is probably the worst condition floors I've come across but a nice set of funky green Gerson specials will make it all better, just soo awesome somebody has taken the time to reproduce these floors. First order of business was to make a drawing of the floor to record measurements from the tunnel to the pan holes and also where the seat tracks sit in relation to the tunnel, I also recorded measurements for the rear seat support etc. With that out of the way I started salvaging that parts which would be required later such as seat tracks, rear seat support, jack supports, pedal stop, gas pedal bracket etc etc. My seat tracks may just be salvageable so on the one side I cut them out of the floor and then ground through each spot weld to remove the excess metal which turned out to be painfully slow, on the other seat track I went back to drilling out each spot weld which to be honest isn't really any faster and you really can't be too brutal removing them as you'll just end up distroying them. They are pretty rusty as well but with some repairs I'll re use them. Quite surprising just how many spot welds hold them in place, obviously didn't want them coming off!! Next thing I cut off all the other parts to be saved which I clean up later before they go back on, just roughly cut them out with an air saw. With those out of the way I simply cut off all remaining remnants of the rusty pans which makes things look better right away. All thats left to come off now is just the excess metal at the front and rear plus the tunnel which will be trimmed to suit later. My chassis had reinforcing plates on the front so i drilled the spot welds out and removed them giving access for the front metal to be removed, same story at the rear (will post pics of these areas next time) That was about it for this weekend but next will be trimming the new floors to suit.
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Post by John Kanters on Nov 8, 2012 0:56:59 GMT -8
Once you have cut off the remaining bits of the floors the cleanup of the edges can begin, drilled out the spot welds front and back peeling the excess metal away and cutting the floor flush with the tunnel edge. Since the T34 floor is constructed differently to a Beetle its not quite as simple to weld new pans in and on mine I wanted it to look quite factory so I decided to butt weld the new floors on instead of doing an overlap joint. There are many ways you could install these but I thought I'd share the way I did it. Its more work and more tricky but should end up with a nicer factory looking result as well as the factory spot welds still in place. Below pics show the front and rear of the frame with old floors removed. Going by my measurements I took before I started cutting I placed the new floor half on and lined it up clamping it in place where it measured right. Ran a scriber along the tunnel marking out the metal to be cut off the new floor, trimmed the new floor to suit with tin snips. Really impressed with these pans, thickest metal floors I've ever come across. Once cut I clamped it back in place and began tacking the pan in place adjusting the fit as I went trying to keep both pieces of metal level with each other, just takes time and patience to get it nice. Bonus with thick metal is that the welder can be on high producing a nice strong weld and things don't tend to warp much at all. Grinding is a little tricky and time consuming but I'm really happy at this point with how they are looking. Other side is just a repeat of what I already did, one thing though worth noting and my only criticism of these floors. The holes for the body bolts tend to vary quite a lot and are punched very nicely in the middle on the right half where as they are punched on the outer edge on the left half, maybe just on my set but it meant I had to trim more off one pan than the other to make my measurements correct for the body bolts. The center pivot for the rear subframe has a plate that attaches to the floor with 4 bolts and on the inside of the floor there are 4 reinforcement plates with captive nuts on them, now mine were completely beyond saving so here's how I made new ones. Managed to figure out what they looked like and bent a 25x5mm piece of steel to the correct angle to use as a die if you like. Cut some strips of 2mm steel plate to the right width (38mm from memory) and used a vise to clamp the 2 together, bent the plate to the shape of my steel die and clamped together with vise grips. Now comes the fun part (make sure your vise is REALLY tight) just using a hammer you beat the edge over little by little, takes quite a bit of effort but you should end up with the correctly shaped pieces and a folded edge.
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Post by John Kanters on Nov 10, 2012 13:48:23 GMT -8
Even though we had fabulous weather for blasting I just couldn't be bothered dragging the body outside so carried on with the chassis instead. Mounted the rear subframe pivot plate to mark out the 4 holes to be drilled, with those done welded the 4 support plates on and also mounted the pedal cluster in order to find the right spot for welding the gas pedal bracket on. Decided that I won't weld on the jack supports till the body is sitting on the pan as there's just too much chance for them to end up in the wrong place as the body has just a small recess for it to sit into. Seat tracks require repairs as well so can't do them just yet either. Looking at the pan holes along the edge something caught my eye which didn't look light so started doing some measuring, took measurements from one of the frame head bolts on the body (the 2 side by side at the front of the body) and measured back to each bolt hole in the heater channel and recorded those on paper. Compared to the holes in the floorpans I found that the holes on one side are as much as 15mm out. When you eye up the stamped hole in relation to the pressing on the pan half its plain to see that they differ left to right and clear that its not placement of the pan half on the chassis at fault. (i'd be interested to know if they are still like this as my pans were one of the first sets Gerson made so this may have been corrected by now) Obviously the body would never fit with the holes where they are so I set about moving them forward, ranging from only 5mm to the worst one being 15mm. Easy enough to do by clamping a copper block underneath and welding up most of the hole then using a die grinder to create a round hole further forward. Happy and confident that everything will now fit the rusted rear seat support is next, best way really is to re make both lower portions of it so by days end I've nearly got one side made. Made it bigger than needed so that there's plenty of choice on where to cut and join it to the main panel.
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Post by John Kanters on Nov 15, 2012 23:00:37 GMT -8
Continued with the rear seat support this week, not happy with the panel I made last weekend I binned it and started again, always easier the 2nd time around and came out how I wanted. With a matching one for the other side also complete I could look at the best place to cut the rotten bits off the existing panel, figured the best place was just above the diagonal pressing. Cut both lower parts off and mounted the remaining back on the chassis to be able to accurately mark out where to cut the new panels. With those trimmed to fit I ended up doing a lap joint, I wasn't going to put the rectangular pressing in but not knowing what it was there for I thought I might need it so a little more effort has made it like it was originally. The whole deal didn't really come out as good as what I had planned but I'm not making another so this will have to do. So I thought that's it! I'm DONE with the chassis...........WRONG, seat frames to repair........ Picking up those rusty seat frames I thought does everything on this car need repairing?? I guess the answer to that is YES Anyway, a quick sandblast to reveal the true condition of the frames I quickly realized that all the base plates would need to be replaced as well as all of the strengthening pieces on the ends of the seat runners. Took some 1.5mm plate and cut it into strips, marked out the notches to be cut. With the base plates cut and trimmed to fit I welded those on as well as the new end pieces I'd made. Pre drilled all the plug weld holes, finally ready to weld that sucker on. Finished one side tonight and the other will be done tomorrow.
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Post by John Kanters on Nov 22, 2012 22:44:32 GMT -8
Things have been a bit quiet on the Ghia front, been slacking this past few weeks achieving very little...........but ya get that sometimes Anyway remembered that my kick plates for the front footwells were in pretty dire shape as well so rather than repair I settled on making a couple of new ones using the old ones as templates. Marked everything out on flat sheet and began rolling the beads straightening / shrinking the sheet as I went, rolling beads which stop before the edge of the sheet really distort pretty bad so shrinking the edge flattens it all back out again. Then its just a matter of folding edges etc and checking the fit as you go, in all about 3 hours work to make both of them obviously the driver side one taking longer with the added cut outs for the pedals. Just have to finish the locating tang on the drivers one tomorow.
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 2, 2012 20:33:26 GMT -8
Started on a side project yesterday making the interior panels, managed to find a sheet of panel board (which has never been available here) We used to only get hardboard which is ok but doesn't lend itself well to being removed from the door without breaking around the clip holes. This new stuff looks pretty good, not exactly cheap at 50 bucks a sheet but oh well thats how it is. My door panels are well trashed but luckily the pass side is salvageable to be used as a template of sorts. Took my time picking all the staples out to dismantle the panel one piece at a time, with all the material off the board is pretty warped but placing big steel weights on it keeps it pretty flat to be able to trace around it and mark out the holes etc. Found that a white paint pen is about the best thing which is visible enough on the black background. Once I have one cut out I'll check it on the door and then use it to make a duplicate one for the other side.
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 4, 2012 19:43:37 GMT -8
Yay, new set of door / rear quarters cut out and ready to be covered. Rear panels were more of a challenge as the old ones really weren't of much use at all as templates but managed to carefully remove the vinyl off them and use that as part of the measurements I needed as well as test fitting on the bodywork which worked out pretty sweet! In the process of ordering the materials needed to cover them in the original style. Thats pretty much it for now with those so I'll push on with stuff I can do at home and thought restoring the gauges would be a nice thing to do. Started last night pulling them all apart and got a nice surprise finding that someone had hand painted a MPH face and stuck it on the original KMH speedo. Will work on that tonight, got to somehow get the glue off and polish the face up. I intend on restoring these myself so will give as much info as I can for those that want to do this themselves, there's no T34 specific info that I could find so again I have to just figure it out as I go but hopefully others will benefit from it. Most difficult part was getting the speedo needle off without distroying it but in the end brute force prevailed!! Best way is to hold the shaft very tightly with long nose pliers and twist the needle shaft whilst pulling upwards. (takes courage to do this, doesn't feel natural at all )
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 5, 2012 0:24:26 GMT -8
More gauge stuff tonight, pretty much completely pulled them apart yesterday but thought I would mention how to get the bezels off. I used a nice flat screwdriver to gently lever the edge up bit by bit, probably went around the gauge 3 times by the time it was straight enough to be able to remove the bezel. You just lever against the gauge housing gently pushing the bezel edge outwards. New camera finally so pictures should be a little sharper Try to keep the gauge parts together with its respective housing as the do differ a little between the 3 but once pulled to pieces you'll end up with something like this: In my case on the dining room table and my wife doesn't even mind, what a star!! Started with the speedo and once you have that apart and the needle off the next thing is to get the large brass cap off so that you can get to the screws which hold the face on to the gauge frame. With mine some glue had obviously seeped in there and so had to pry it off with a jewelers screwdriver which took a little effort then just carefully removed the hand made gauge face to be left with quite a mess of left over glue and black paper residue, trick is how to get that off........ Figured sanding it with fine paper would be the way so started with 1200 and worked up to 2000 grit, still took a couple of hours in total to sand all the glue etc off and then used 3M vehicle cutting compound to polish out the 2000 grit scratches. Pretty stoked with the results, also reset the odometer back to 0 which is easy to do by bending the frame a little so that the shaft which holds the odometer wheels can be released allowing all the numbers to be rolled back to 0 then its just a case of lining everything back up and bending the tab back over the end of the shaft. On to the outer face, just thoroughly cleaned this with the 3M polish and re painted the little white stripes with Tamiya model paint. The KM speedo has a red stripe right at the 50km mark so I painted that as well, the button in the center of the face is actually brass so with a little polish it cleans up real nice! Another evening gone, more stuff done.
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Post by Jürgen Klein on Dec 5, 2012 8:26:56 GMT -8
Ha - I know these scenes : 30 and more headlight-glasses in the dish-washer , Jürgen standing at the kitchen sink cleaning up rear lights , parking light glasses and many other parts more . And later on I`m sorting out the last 250 light bulbs I brought home last week from my latest safari through stables , attics and cellars on the dining table ...... In the summer it`s easy to clean up the box with 30 sun visors in the garden , but in the wintertime ? Polishing chrome parts in the cellar : "Oh , what kind of stench is this now ?" Jürgen
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 6, 2012 0:42:53 GMT -8
Well, the kitchen sink is just a great place to clean car parts! I mean why should we always be out in a cold garage Took the gauge casings and outer trim rings to work this morning so that I could sandblast them, even a cheapo blasting cabinet from Harbor Freight just does such a superb job! Once free of rust and paint I spray painted the parts with a zinc rich paint and followed that up with a coat of silver on the trim rings alone. I'll take the black inner pieces with me tomorow and clean those up as well. Other than that I carried on with cleaning more parts, painted all the needles a nice red again and already my done pile is getting bigger than the to do one. Thought I'd get away with re using the outer chrome bezels as 2 of them cleaned up nice with steel wool but the 3rd has chrome flaking off so all of them will get re chromed. My chromer isn't taking on any more work this year so it looks like this side project will stall very soon........ Still, pretty happy with my pile of rebuilt parts!
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Post by Jürgen Klein on Dec 6, 2012 7:17:45 GMT -8
Hi John - tomorrow I`m in my hall again and will look if I have such chromerings for you . I hope so . Jürgen
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 8, 2012 16:44:43 GMT -8
Gauges are nearly done, after cleaning up the outside of the housings and painting them I re painted the off white on the inside too so that what meagre light the bulbs put out is of maximum use! Once that paint had dried I could finally start putting them back together, at least 2 of them anyway but suddenly thought I should check the condition of the chrome on the speaker unit as that won't be used since I'm going to install a tach anyway. Hopefully that will negate the need to have one ring chromed. I think they have come up pretty nice, its good to see things come together once all the individual pieces have been restored and easily done at home. Yesterdays weather played ball so even though I didn't feel like it I made the final assault on the rust by blasting the inside of the other rear quarter panel, all nicely primed ready to have the last 2 pieces welded next week completing 99% of the rust work. Not sad to see that part behind me either, still a few tiny spots to do but a few extra hours will knock those over. Then I just have one door, trunk lid and hood left to strip.
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Post by John Kanters on Dec 10, 2012 1:30:22 GMT -8
T34 sunroof clip has just been delivered to one of my suppliers in Holland, pretty stoked to have a real one to install. I had intended on modifying a 912 one to use that but I'll keep it until I restore an early 911.
I'll combine the roof with some other parts and it should be here early next year.
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