Greetings from Finland

[Kharon]

I'm really Tuomas and I live in Finland but I've used nick Kharon in various environments since IRC was invented, so it's that even here.

I've '65 left hand drive, sea blue all over and it's very much a project currently, engine barely runs and brakes are hanging. I bought it in summer 2010 from Germany (mobile.de) and the goal for this summer is to get it road legal and registered. Won't be easy task, no more than a third of electrics is working, on top of the mechanical problems.

Hopefully it will be in "daily driver" condition at that point but who knows. When the typ14 restoration is ready (somewhere in the future), I'll start to restore the t34: It has been a luxury car and it deserves to look like one, too.

I had some idea about what the parts cost for a T34, so I didn't want to buy a bare chassis and heap of parts even when those were much cheaper: Now I at least have most of the parts.

Here's the t34 and t14 in winter storage: current situation.


Typ 14 is something I've always wanted and I had the financial opportunituy to buy one in 2003. The car is more or less in same condition than then, some dents and rust more. For this summer I've new (restored) rims, rebuilt 1915cc engine and hopefully some dents & rust removal.

It's a 12V conversion: Bigger alternator (600 watts!) means good lights and small KG is my daily driver at summer and far into autumn. It's pitch black in the evenings by then and H4 helps a lot.
Also there's power to drive auxiliary lights (low&high beam), planned.

Collects a lot of attention with very bright blue colour: Olympia blue from 1973. I have to admit that I love that colour: Sky blue is my favorite colour and this have it, a lot of it.

I also co-own a (mostly) inherited grey '61 T2, from my step-granddad who bought it as new in December, 1960. It was in heavy use as he was a blacksmith and tranported iron in the van, along his family, parents and 4 kids until 1978. This shows even today.

This is fairly typical Finnish Kastenwagen: They came with bare metal to Finland, were driven a year or two (as 3-seaters), then the temporary seats (7 in this case), heat insulation (interior) and windows (with notable Finnish weirdness: Big back corner windows) were installed. After a another year, you could register them as a passenger car with nominal tax. All this because a van with windows in back was taxed like passenger car, about 65% tax on top of price on the border, while van like Kastenwagen was tax-free. Local tax oddities.

Restauration of the van is almost ready, with this history there won't be full restoration as far I can say: Objective number 1 is to preserve the car to the future generations as it is and like I got it: It had been standing in a shed from 1978 (when granddad lost his drivers licence due the age) to 2003, when I fetched it for myself after outbidding one of my cousins, who also wanted it. Very cheap by modern price standards, anyway.

Pictures and some history of what has happened as explanations of pictures can be seen in urls below:
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia3/index.html
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia/index_e.html
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/wiima/index.html

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Tuomas

[Kharon]

I've summer holiday now and I managed to grab some days to work with t34: I changed brake hoses, installed hand brake cables (old ones were cut off), emptied and cleaned fuel tank and carburetors.

Now I've brakes that work nicely and slighly limping idle, much better than nothing.

Brake drums are quite rusty so I didn't even try to adjust brakes yet, for now I'm happy I've brakes which disengage.

I don't have register plates so test drives were done on the yard (and very short) but even those revealed an really odd fault: The car idles fine and pulls strong from the standstill but after a few seconds of acceleration the engine dies completely. If I engage the clutch, it idles but not much else.

Odd. Unfortunately that's all the diagnostics I've for now but any ideas welcome.

I have to admit I've no idea, dual carburators (32PDSIT-2) are new to me.


But the car moved and stopped by itself, that's the best situation so far.

PS. Pics will follow

[Lee Hedges]

Carbs need to be tuned. Without the proper tuning they will run roughly, have limited power, and not be fun to drive. Do you have the original metal balance tube connecting the two carbs? Were they ever running well?

[Kharon]

I really have no idea, the car was sold by a shop on behalf of one of their clients and I had a proxy at the spot (in Germany) that phoned me that it starts and idles, a kind of.

That was enough at that point.

Clogged fuel lines are one option too, I really should have cut all the old hoses away and replace those (and not just the OG hoses) but I didn't remember there's so much hose in the engine bay, I had just couple of feet new hose with me.

Anyway, I could drive it out of the storage and on to the yard and here's the proof:



I also got fuel gauge to work: Fuel level sensor was just as dirty from the inside as the outside(as the cover shows), cleaning helped.


I also managed to repair another similar sensor (from a -67 bus) and it had more serious fault: The grounding end of the wire didn't ground to cover, at all, no connection between aluminium cover and copper base plate even those were riveted together.

I drilled the rivet away and no wonder: The mating surfaces were thoroughly oxidisized, no current can flow though that. Furious cleaning with steel wool (to aluminium) and Autosol (to copper) and when the surfaces were shiny again, I put it back with a M3 bolt and nut. Now it works, resistance is about 2 ohms (full) to 66 ohms (empty). The one I've in Ghia shows resistance about zero to 85 ohms so I think it will need same treatment at some point.

Installing the resisting wire back is the tricky part and it helps if you have an assistant lifting the base plate with a screw driver while you install the wire to its holder with both hands, you'll really need four hands to do that and it's not easy even then.

I also noticed that someone had repainted the fuel tank and forgot that the fuel sensor needs a ground contact from somewhere, so I made one with star type washer between tank and one of the attaching pads. Yet another reason why it wasn't working.

[Lee Hedges]

Sounds like you could use a T3-friend that has experience tuning the dual carb engines.

[Kharon]

I've those, nearest one is just few miles from here, with a '65 variant, basically the same engine.

[Carsten Klein]

also here my advise :

to disassamble the engine and take a deeper look into it!!!!!
clean the carburators etc ...

[Kharon]

I already cleaned fuel tank, changed fuel filter and cleaned carburators.
But distributor is totally untouched, I've to check if any advance mechanism is working (at least vacuum hose is very worn).

[Kharon]

Not much has happened, too many other projects (mostly the -63 typ14 (now with 1,9l engine with dual carbs) and -89 BMW 750iL (now painted and camshafts swapped, needs just doors swapped (have the new ones) and some work underneath to be good enough for a historic car), so I sold half of this project and it's a long story:

A fellow VW hobbyists has been wanting a T34 a long time, but those aren't sold too often here in Finland and he missed last two, not being happy abou that.

He has already half a dozen different VWs from early Beetle to a 411 and he knew that I have one which is more or less a project, i.e. cheap, so he asked if he could buy half of it and I said "yes, but we have to go and see the car first: Then we'll negotiate about the price". Not expensive anyway as this guy is very good at bodywork and painting, much better than me: His own cars are mostly registered as historic vehicles after a total rebuild, very suitable co-owner and also a nice fellow to hang around with.

The T34 is in storage about 130 miles away so it's just not 'let's visit there and come back', it takes some time and I just had an eye surgery, couldn't move for a while.

In storage (old picture but that's still the status):
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia3/IMG_0785.jpg

For standing so long (now 6 years more) I have to do major overhaul to T34-engine, so there's a lot of things to do. Which is one of ideas of a hobby, at least to me.

Which leads to another VW, not T34 though:

We already have a shared -75 Pritchenwagen (wide bed), so the sale wasn't hard for me to decide. Prichenwagen is a new buy (for both of us) and it's currently in the shed I found it last autumn, but bought and paid, only 'fetch'-phase is missing and that needs to wait for dry roads in the spring, so late April or early May. Here in North the fields and small private roads are so soft (mud) after winter that you'll just sink in there, no use to even try.

But here's a peek of it:
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/pritchen/IMG_4545.jpg

The shed was so small I couldn't get better overall pictures, sorry. Many detail pictures in same directory if you are insterested.

Prichenwagen was taken out of the road in 1995(!), so it has been sitting like that 22 years, no-one has touched it. One owner, now deceased, son was selling, quite cheap too: An excellent find and I'm still patting myself to head for the decision to buy it (and the CombiCamp same seller had).

Needs major restoration of course, but no major holes(!) or rusted away beams so often bay window vans have and all the parts are there, so it's just work ... sorry: 'hobby'. Hobby is not work, really. I have to admit it sometimes looks and feels the same, but I try to avoid situations like that: Hobby is meant to be fun.

[Kharon]

Finally pieces clicked into place and we started a full restoration by first disassembling everything.

Here's the first phase: Interior and body trim out:
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia3/#2017-11

Less rust than I expected, but more backyard fixes I though, too. Well, we've whole winter ahead, let's see in spring how far it progresses.

[Jürgen Klein]

I can`t wait to see more pics from your Restauration in the next months ...
Jürgen

[Kharon]

Hello peeps!

The body actually was quite bad, we eventually swapped almost 10" from body bottom around the car as the old steel was rusted away and/or self made patches not very high quality. That and preparation for painting too most of the last winter and we didn't do anything to this project in summertime, just drove around with the other cars we have.

Despite lack of updates this restauration has again been progressing in autumn and currently we've base plate (+suspension, brakes, rims etc.) almost all done, body painted and engine just came back from machining shop, so it needs just new bearings and assembly.


Wiring set is pushed in the pipe, just need some new wires and assembly. Most chrome parts still need re-chroming and interior part pile is a mess.

If you start from here you'll get a (mostly) chronological order for pics:
kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia3/#2017-12

[Kharon]

No updates for a long time, but picture page (http://kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ghia3) is getting updated every now and then.

Current status is that engine is running, car moves on its own and almost everything on outside is assembled and works. Some interior parts aren't there yet and some (new) suspension pieces are still on the shelf.

But floor carpets and seats are in place so it almost looks like it's ready. Some paperwork and inspection needs to be done but I don't expect any trouble in those, this more or less looks like a new car.