1964 Beetle.

[whatucolm]

i haven't got much with the car in the last while-it's still in pieces.lost motivation for working on it after failing to have it ready for the drag day again.a recent track day in a wonderful jap scrap hairdressers car has got me wanting to get the beetle going again tho.many thanks to the people in Autstadt for letting us out for the spin.
have some photos here a few small bits that got done,and Seanie has been doing a proper job of tidying up the wiring loom.many thanks Seanie.

got the engine connected up..



had some fun dropping the bodyshell back on..




thought we were well on the way once we got it bolted up,but ended up taking the engine out three more times to try figure out the clutch not working-it looks like it was my own fukup with a botch job on extending the clutch cable up to the aftermarket pedal box.oh well!

had to cut some notches in the trailing arms where the black marker is,as they were hitting the mount for the top of the shock mount..



this is the RHS half done-a bit rough,but was in a hurry to get her on the road!.



also had to cut and re-weld the exhaust to fit arount the IRS driveshaft.only the best of Iveco scrap exhaust i found lying around was used for this of course.

 

[whatucolm]

will post the rest of them tomorrow-really slow internet here

 

[whatucolm]

Seanie got these new fuse boxes for me.we had to move the original one because of the new pedal box being in the way.trying to fit them in the glove box at the moment,cos there were no other boxes left..





i was delighted to be able to fit the original ashtray back into the dash for the first time since i got the car-there had been switches there,but Seanie moved the wires for the switches up to the top of the windscreen-really tidy job.i dont have a bracket to hold them yet.

 

[whatucolm]

i suppose i should have known something like this could happen if you leave Seanie in your car for more than 5min with a new snips in his hand-i thought we were only changing a few fuses!

 

[whatucolm]

he did an amazing job tho-heres just some of the stuff he removed from the loom-even the camera got dizzy looking at this stuff..



by the time he had it tidied up i guess it has only about one third or less of the amount of wiring-and new wires for lights,fule pump fan and loads of other stuff.



this Subaru fuse box used to have about two bizillion wires going into it,now it only has three..

 

[trev]

this just gets better and better. Well done Colm. I love all this DIY engineering.

 

[whatucolm]

i think this was some novel Seanie was reading while he was wiring the car....strange..but what do i know about wiring,or reading.

 

[whatucolm]

i had the week before Drag Day 3 and was hoping to have it driving at least by the Friday.had been hoping to have it running a few weeks earlier,but that didn't work out.i thought  if every thing went well we could have it running-expecting some unexpectedness...but not from the clutch.<br>i fucked up there.got a splitscreen inner cable which was a good length to reach to the top of the pedal box.didn't realise it would be so hard to get an outer cable that long.i used the fixed beetle outer cable that runs inside the tunnel and botched a flexiable outer cable from there to the top of the pedal box-it was pressing out the release bearing and returning no problem,put the engine on no stirr-thought i was going to snap the clutch arm off,levering it.engine in and out 3 or 4 times and no idea what was going on,pedal still seemed ok,after braking the cable end off once or twice.<br>eventually got the clutch tested and its fine-yer man told me he was fairly sure the cable was the problem.sillt me.many thanks to the people for helping when i was asking in the workshop section-i described it really badly-thinking the pedal end was working ok.the cable was frayed kind of badly where i joined it alright,but i thought it was just because the clutch end was putting too much pressure on it.still not 100% sure yet but i almost have it converted to hydraulic now-just hoping it will work.

i had a mastercylinder for the handbrake that fit in the pedal box-just! and got a slave cylinder from daMerica.

 

[whatucolm]

i had got a T25 slave cylinder and bracket,but couldnt get it to work because the shaft the release bearing pivots on was a different thickness.i just got the new one almost plummed in now.

 

[whatucolm]

this is Nugget,helping me out big time this week-always ready with invaluable advise, cups of tea,and strenge looks..

 

[duts]

Brady has a serious horn looking at that I'd say!

 

[johnnyg]

Yeah,he loves dogs...

 

[whatucolm]

unfortunatly the dog isn't of the homosapien persuasion,he only wares high heels so he can reach the pedals.

 

[kvinyl]

very tidy routing of brake piping there Colm - what's the blue cable / pipe for?

 

[RattyOval]

Magic

 

[whatucolm]

the blue cable is the accelerator Padraig.another botch job really.i will have to do that again!

 

[whatucolm]

the clutch seems to be working now anyway.

 

[whatucolm]

has been very slow progress/no progress with the beetle lately,but have a few photos here anyway.
the wider t3 hubs didn't fit too good-wheel sticking out past the wing,so i got a new set of narrower ones,but had to get spacers made so the would work on the irs shafts-a 5mm spacer behind the hub,and 10mm on the outside.the wider brake shoes from the t3 seem to work in the narrower hub though.thw wheels still stick out past the wings,but about an inch less.





also got some braided petrol lines to run from front to back,and back again for the return pipe-had a bit of a scare one of the last times i drove the old pipes sprung a leak inside the car.i got the braided line in WIP galway for a fraction of the price of some of the motorsports places.

 

[whatucolm]

also bought two battery boxes-one to hold the battery(surprise!)and one to try and hide the ECU and other wiring.they were bright red-ended up painting them silver.i was kind of dissapointed there was very little way of mounting them to the car,or mounting the battery to them.ended up tacking some bolts to the floor to hold them,and made a bracket for the battery from some scrap.

 

[whatucolm]

i have wanted to do a better job on the water pipes for ages-they are made up of plastic pipes from a T25,and other bits and pieces from scrap cars.i saw on other threads where the water manifold on top of the block can be un-bolted and turned 180*,so you dont have a big ugly water pipe doing a loop around the engine.i was nervous about doing this,as you have to remove the inlet manifold and heaps of other water,petrol,and vacuum pipes that looked scary to me.removed them eventually only to find the water manifold on my yoke is a bit different,and doesn't want to turn 180* without fouling in loads of places-dont have this figured out yet,but gave me a chance to clean up the inlet manifold,and the engine bay a bit-a lot of those extra pipes wern't needed at all.

uugglee..



this is the manifold i wanted to change..



spent ages grinding tabs off this.ugly coil pack and water resivoir tabs and stuff like that.



dont really like too much polished stuff in the engine bay,but it ended up like this..



also fitted a slightly bigger turbo-TD04 from a WRX impreza,instead of the tiny origional TF035(i think)and got a tidier looking charge-cooler second hand.it is supposed to be less restrictive than the Subaru legacy one i was using..




re-routed the intake pipes to try and tidy things up a bit-not finished this yet-still a lot of brackets and stuff to make up.also splashed out on some anodised bolts and pullys.