The Cal-look Lounge

Ok, so I have been encouraged to share my loooong lasting project with you guys here at the cal-look lounge, although the car will not be conforming to all the "cal-look rules" out there....

Some key facts:
1962 VW Karmann Ghia coupe

Front end:
Standard VW disk brakes
adjustable gas Shocks

Rear end
IRS
standard VW drum brakes
adjustable gas shocks

Engine
1835cc T1
37x42 mm heads
porsche style cooling
Megasquirt II Fuel Injection

Wheels:
Detailed 6x15 Porsche Fuchs

Here is a picture of the car after I stripped of the paint after I bougt it some 9 years ago:

It looked absolutely terrible underneath the paint, and I ended up storing it for a few years, while collecting parts (and I was also growing a family in the meantime...)

I also came across a parts car, which was in even worse condition, this is (was) a '59 coupe.

After a few years of collecting parts (basically I needed the complete lower 6 inches around the entire car) I at least managed to finalise the rolling chassis: This picture is taken in the summer of '05.

I have sandblasted all parts and replaced all rubber etc. I also added a "berg style" intermediate gear box mount and a "beetle cup" torsion bar at the rear end, should the desire for running down the strip arise.

Then the work on the body started, and I went to my friends at Unneberg Bil for help on replacing the heater channels on both sides, as they have the knowledge and skills to get this important part right.

Here is a few pictures partly through the process, where the amount of work involved can clearly be seen...

As can be seen, I managed to source a pair of correct doors that were in quite good condition, and are time-correct

The first picture show how much I had to extend the heater channels in order to make the doors fit....

More pics from this painful operation:

So after a few weeks in the knowlegdable hands of the guys at Unneberg Bil, the car was back in my garage, so that I could start my part of the metal work.

It must be noted that I have no clue about metal working, besides a restoration of a bug I did some 15 years ago, so I would have to learn as I went...

I started out with the rear wheel opening, where both the inner fender and the outer was completely gone. But first of all I started with the lower rear corner, and swapping the rear part of the fender to accomondate the new rear lights. I sourced the complete rear lights with the necessary metal from Germany:

 

So after a lot of head-scratching, trial mounting and welding, the rear quarter panel now look like this:

This might look simple, but this actually took the best part of last winter...

Then I turned my attention to the front of the car, and started by cutting off the fenders and removing the entire nose section.

This might not look too bad in the pictures, but the dirt and rust treatment covered a lot of rot....

I also made myself a frame to stiffen the front so that the front hood might fit when all is done:

So I pulled out the large angle grinder, and started cutting the rot out, replacing the parts with fresh metal as I went along:

As you can see, the nose section was in TERRIBLE condition, but a new one one would cost me the equivalent of USD 1000, so I went for the option of trying to fix the one I had:

Some repairs were already done on the nose, covered by som quarter of an inch of bondo, so I needed to replace large parts of the nose with fresh metal, again I had to fabricate the parts myself.

I went on with welding on the front parts of the inner wings, after a lot of trial mounting, assuring that everything would fit upon reassembly.

My garage had turned into a total mess the last few months so I spent a night cleaning up, much nicer to work under such conditions.

I also trial mounted the front hood for the ompfth time, again assuring that all goes back together

This is what the nose section looks like after all the patching:

It has been at the panel-beater's shop for som hammering, but I also need to shrink some areas, so there is a little more work remaining before the soldering can begin. I need to finish all the "hot" work on the nose before I mount it, as I will need to paint the back side of it before mounting; it is a total pain to access that area later. Besides the idea of working with the soldering on my work-bench sound a bit more appealing that crawling around on the floor...

I've also cleaned up the fresh air vents, and found more rot... Again I had to make some patch panels to correct this.

Also the lower part of the inner wheel well needed work

After replacing the upper part of the inner fender, and some cleaning up of all the welds, this is pretty much how the car sits today:

You can also see that I trial fitted the nostril trim, and I do have som challenges in this area; again some PO have made repairs in the area, and I have to fix this also before the nose can be deemed "useable"...

Next step now is to lift the body off the chassis again, so that I can get good acces to lower part of the car for stripping of old paint and sand blasting before I start the fun part of applying primer and also paint to the areas I can not reach after assembly.

The plan is th have the car on the road this coming summer, so I better hurry up...

I will keep you posted on the progress.

Roy

wow, respeck!
top notch work on the body!

where do you get your inspiration from for the final result? any ideas what you want it to look like?  ::)

Now that is what I call "BUILDING" a car - truely awsome work dude  :)

thanks for the feedback, guys,

when it comes to the inspiration, I actually use the car as my therapy for getting through the daily routines; I have three little boys and a job where I travel a lot world-wide, so I find it very relaxing to dive into this car late at nights (usually when my wife and kids are already in bed).

I have also discovered that this car was a LOT worse than I anticipated when I started, so now I just have swore that this car WILL get back on the road, I have too much hours and money into it for giving up now...

On top of this, the Ghia is, in my mind, one of the greatest looking cars ever made, so the thought of cruising the streets in one keeps me going...

The style will be somewhat cal-look, with a clean original looking body, all chrome in place, and a somewhat lowered stance. As I mentionned, I will use Fuchs and a 1835cc engine, but I am already collecting parts for the next engine, but now the 1835 is ready, so I focus on getting the car on the road first. So far I will use the original interior, except for a pair of recaro seats from a golf I gti.

Roy

Hi Grelland,

I'm doing the same soon to my Karmann, would you have any more pics or even measurements of how you did the swap?
Thanks in advance!!

Jelle

Sure,

What I did was to place the new panel outside the old one (after I cut the rear-most part of the panel that was to be cut away),then I used a few self-tapping screws to hold everything in place, then I cut through both layers with a pneumatic saw, in order to make the new part fit.

Luckily the use part I had (red in the picture below) extended all the way to the opening of the rear deck lid, so I had the edge of that as a reference.

I have hudreds of pictures from all the work, so let me know if I can help you out with something else too.

Thanks allready for the pic,
I unfortunatley don't have that big panels to play with....
Did you measure it on an other ghia?

Jelle

I am afraid not, but I still have not done the other side, so let me know what measurements you are looking for, and I will measure there before and after I cut.

Small update:

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours grinding welds... Not the most inspiring work in the world, but it needs to be done.

Then I applied a coat of etch primer, which will be followed by 2-k epoxy primer and paint. I only do the area behind the fresh air intakes at this point, as this will be in-accessible once I mount these channels.

I also ground down and cleaned up the area around the lower a-pillar, and started preparing for the final piece to be welded on there too.

I am thrilled to actually do some constructive work, for a change, not only cutting away rotted metal :-)

Next step is to lift the body off, so that I can access the lower parts of the car better.

A few small steps more....

I have now mounted the fresh-air channel, and had the outside primed using etch-primer.

Makes me sleep well, knowing that the internals of this is now covered in shiny paint :-)

In this pace you are going to be ready to hit the streets this summer Grelland!!
Keep it up....  I picked up two NOS doors for my bug today...  ::)

More NOS doors? Are you converting to 4-door?

Slow progress the last few days, but I had a few friends and neighbours coming over, so we lifted the body off again.

On the second picture, I am making sure the frame fits, while my brother-in-law is doing the hard work..

The last picture show the approximate ride-height when all is said and done... ;-) here it can also be seen that the left hand side inner fender is more or less done, while there is still some work remaining on the right-hand side.

Now the next on the list is more welding, grinding, welding, grinding, cutting, welding.....

So another Sunday, and another late evening in the garage....

I spent most of yesterday cleaning up the workshop, since both the body and the chassis now are rolling, so the first picture show the result of this boring job; it is a lot nicer working under such conditions :-)

Then I cleaned up the last part of the inner fender, sand blasting the hard-to-reach places, and the second picture show how this part of the car now look: It is good to know that at least some parts of the car is taking shape.

As usual, sand-blasting and removing old underbody protection, reveals more rot; so also this time, and the last pic shows an area that need attention before I seal this entire secton off with primer and paint.

a few more nights in the garage, and the car now looks like this:

Man, do I have some work ahead of me before I can cruise the streets of Norway...  :-\

Your getting there Roy!! Keep going!! Spring is comming :-)

Thanks, Johnny, but judging by the weather earlier tonight, when I was moving my chassis to an other location, it seems loooong before the spring is here...

Slowly moving forward.. Have done some work on the lower a-pillar on the RH side, as well as the inner fender.
Man, I look forward to driving this thing ;-)

In the meantime, Speedwell and others have overwhelmed me with pictures of old cal-look Ghias, and I have decided to change my choice of wheels. I am now about to land a deal on a set of these:

sounds like this is gonna be a cool ghia!

Thanks, hope so. Still some way to go to match yours (if the car in the avatar is yours, that is..).

I had a chance to work on the engine a bit tonight, and this is probably not going to be fitting to the traditional cal-look theme, but I am opting for a Porsche cooling setup in order to place the plenum for a FI setup behind it. I kind of believe in utilizing modern technology whenever it is available, We dont have to freeze EVERYTHING to the way things were in '76  ;)

Roy

thanks,yes its mine in the avatar,i couldn't bring myself to weld up nostrils etc,but maybe the bumper overriders and window rubber trim could go!.glad to see you going for real empi 8s 8)

Agree with you on the nostrils (even if they are causing me a lot of extra work due to rust and stuff at the moment). The Ghia look naked without them.

Roy

About as naked as an engine without carbs??  ::)

right ;D

some update: the inner fender is ready also on this side, just need to mount the fresh air channel before I can start mounting the nose and fenders. It's coming together :-)

The red lines indicate where I have welded in new panels....

Man oh man, that is quite impressive.  Nice work!  Dedication for sure!   ;)  Keep the shots coming!

Thanks, I had a look at your car on your website, and it looks great. What plans do you have for the wheels?

Back to my project; I finished up the lower a-pillar last night, so now this entire part of the car starts taking shape:

Just AWESOME !!!

thanks :-)

Things are slowly moving forward, and I have fixed up the luggage area, ground down the welds, sandblasted, and applied the first coat of primer (etch primer).

Looking better already:

In the bottom right corner, you can see that I have fixed the area where the dogleg stops at the firewall. I still have to fix the other side, before I can primer the entire front of the car.

My major headache at the moment is the nostrils. The entire nose of the car was a total mess, and I fixed most of it, but the area around the nostrils was partly rusted out and partly "destroyed" by some PO's attemt to fix it. So I have mounted new air boxes, and try to shape the outer skin such that the chrome grille fits. But it doesn't....

I really dont know how to fix this, but I guess I will get there in the end. I have received some good advice from my friends at TheSamba, so I will keep trying:-)

Hi If You Are Fitting The Grills and Need to Shape Everything Do Not Use A New After Market Grill Use A Good Used One To Copy The Shape The After Market Grill are Way Off as far as A Good Fit I Would Make The Car Fit an Original Set Of Grills Then Make the After Market Grills Fit The Car Dont Make the Car Fit The Grill 

Or.... you could fill them in.

Thanks, that was what I expected... I will try finding an OE grille before I spend more time on this.

Somehow, I was expecting this :-) But I will keep the grills.

I am trying my best to keep up with JHU, but I see he has now started cheating, hiring proffesional help, so I will just have to stop sleeping at night...

But I did get some more work done the last few days, but barely visible, as it has been mostly related to grinding welds and applying primer.

But I had a trip out in the forest to rescue the last remainings of my parts car the other night, and here's a picture of the only usable part left. I will replace the dash with this one shortly.

oh no not again :D

I Dont Know if this would help you on your Ghia nose panel around the grills but take a look
 
 
 
 
TheSamba.com Classifieds Index -> Parts -> Ghia
Karmann Ghia Nose Ad number: 234511
 


 
Karmann Ghia Nose - 150 
This needs a bit of help in the apron and headlight buckets, but it's a big ol hunk of metal to work with if you have collision damage.Remember, the center sections alone, repro, go for $750. Man! Not an easy piece of metal to fabricate.
Crating Fee $40, I ship globally
 
 

Thanks.

A friend here in Norway have kindly let be borrow his nostril grills, so I will at least have a go at this first.

In the meantime, I have spent some time filling in some bumps in the front luggage area, and then applied a final coat of 2-k epoxy primer. This will be followed by a layer of inno-tec spray sealer, and finally paint:

I have also painted the outside of the inner fender, in the area behind the fresh air vents, in order to ensure that this area will not rust again:

And while I was at it, the fan-shroud and cooling tin also got a round with the L87 Pearl White paint:

It is actually nice and shiny, it is just my photography skills that make them look flat...

Very impressive Grelland!

This will surely inspire other people to fix Ghia's. You will be a proud man when you drive it next!

Keep up the good work,

Matt

Thanks, Matt.

I see Johnny Boy has really upped the pace lately, so I will have to work hard to keep up with him :-) (By the way, Johnny, my chassis is already painted and ready for the body  ;) )

Here are a few pics of this week's progress so far:

First a picture of the right hand side, where I have welded on the rearmost part of the fresh air channel:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/Post-24-9215-hs.jpg)

Then the other side got  the foremost part added:

(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/Post-24-9217-vs.jpg)
What you cant see here is that all these parts have a fresh layer of new shiny paint on the inside, hopefully avoiding rust in the future: I will also use cavity wax once the last part is welded on.

Lastly, I spent a few minutes mounting all the engine tin and fan shroud onto my engine:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/Post-24-9219-motor.jpg)

I am not really too sure whether I like the outcome, but after I get all the runners, plenum, fuel lines and wires mounted, it will look better, I hope.   

Slow progress, but still progress...

I have finally got around to fixing the last part of the firewall, and applied some primer and even a lick of bondo to cover everything up:

I will have to take a few day's brake, as I did some welding without my helmet, so now my eyes are all red and swollen... I know...

Yesterday I regained my eye-sight, and made one small step forward again, so now the front is ready for mounting the nose section:

Awsome work dude and don't worry I did the same thing a few months ago - hurt like hell right  ::)

Right, hurts like hell....

But I have managed to make some progress lately, and it is mostly the nostrils that have received some attention.

Here is the same nostril as above, and a picture with the grille mounted. I was lucky enough to borrow a pair of OG grilles from a friend, but the one in the picture is one of my Taiwan ones, hence the sligthly twisted look to it; it has now been persuaded into fitting the opening quite well :-)

The entire nose section havs also seen some labour, and this part is now getting close to ready for body solder.

This is a pic from the inside, and the lower pic show all the welds after patching all the rusted areas... I still need to make openings for the bumper brackets.

On the above pic, you can also see that I have attached the foremost parts of the air boxes

And last night, I had to test assemble the front; first the nose section was mounted using all the seals that will eventually go on there, and then I hung one fender and the front corner on there too. I all sort of still fits, but there will have to be some adjustments before it all lines up perfectly.

At least it starts looking like a car now...

The lower pic show the seal between the nose and inner fender seen from the inside

And just to make sure my motivtion will be totally killed; here is a picture of the last corner of the car....  :-\

LOL Roy Car Looks Good But What alot of work you have done to it I hope you are not keeping track of your hours spent Doing your restoration I would have never went as far as you have I would have Bought another car LOL  But where you are they are way harder to fing in any kind of Cond.  I already have My 49th VW Planned out in my Head  I Know everything I want to do to it the funny Part Is I have just started on #48 So I Have to get it done before the Next Brain Storm LMAO  Keep up the Good Work And E Mail Me if you have Questions on your Wheels or hardware Thanks Shubee Keep up The Good Wiork....

Thanks, rub it in...  ;)

I am way past the point of no return, and I am NOT keeping track on the hours... (nor the costs)

I will keep you posted on the progress on the wheels.

Roy

Point of No Return... That's cool Grelland. Youre work is outstanding. But you already know that. I wonder were you buy youre body seals. The ones i bought years ago from West Coast Metric are start to fall apart in the box !
Have a good weekend.

Thnaks for the kind words. I get most of the parts like seals etc from VW Heritage in UK (through the Norwegian distributor, Unneberg Bil)

Roy

So, last night I was packing up the nose section in order to take it to an uncle of my wife for the full body solder treatment. The intention being that I wanted to do the soldering prior to applying primer and paint on the inside. This man has some 40 years of body work experience, so I gathered that he woudl be the right man to guide me in this project. He also is the old school type, using hammer, dolly and solder, rather than bondo..

When I showed up, he stated there is no need for solder, as these were some of the nicest welds he had seen in years   ;D

So he adviced me to paint the backside, and mount the nose to the car, weld on the fenders and corner sections, then he would help me flattening out the minor dents before doing the last finish with filler 

Needless to say; I am a happy guy today...  :D

So I mounted the rest of the HW on the inside, sandblasted the thing, and applid etch primer and two layers of 2-k epoxy. Next step is paint before I PERMANENTLY mount this piece on the car..

Thats Cool Roy Its nice to get a helpng hand once in a while I also have friends that do Bodywork they can sure save you alot of time, and most of the time it comes out way nicer with less work.. nose panel looks great keep up the good Work..

Thank,, yes it is always good to get some advice from knowlegdable people.

Yesterday I was able to put some paint on the nose section and the front of the baggage area; next step now is to permanently mount this piece, then the fenders and headlight sections are next :-)

Since I am not a particularily big fan of watching paint dry; I work on the engine between the rounds with the spray gun, and I have received some parts for my EFI system lately, so I am working on the trigger wheel and vr sensor setup.

The intenion is to mount the trigger wheel behind the pulley, for an as "out of the way" installation as possible. The equailzer pulley has a recess on the back where the trigger wheel may fit perfectly, I may need to trim the tin a tad at the red arrow, but you get the picture:

Great attention 4 detail on the bodywork :D nicee  ;D

Thanks.

A small progress report:

I have permanently mounted the nose to the car, and trial mounted the hood some 40 times in order to verify that everything goes back together:

Next thing was to open up holes for the bumper brackets, and trial mount these:

The over-ride supports are somewhat bent, so the distance from the nostrils to these is not right, but the bumper brackets themselves seem to align very well with the nose.

I also spent some more time on the intake runners for the EFI system, and here you can see that each runner is  made out of 7 pieces. The last pic show an earlier design of the runners, but these will be modified to follow the contour of the fan shroud better, like in the second last picture.

Next on the to-do list are the fenders, and I have started by removing all old paint and grime, and some rust. The inside is quite badly attacked, mostly in the surface, and I have started sandblasting, but as can be seen from the close-up, I will have to be more thorough....

Small update:

First, the engine: I have made the runners for the other side, and also started manufacturing a plenum chamber. I have started from a 2.1 wbx unit which I have cut up in order to fit behind the fan shroud. I will be using a 50mm TB:

Then I have spent a lot of time on the front...

I have trial mounted the fenders and the bumper in order to ensure that it all goes back together in the right manner, and once I was quite happy with the RH side, I used self-threading screws to hold it all together. Next I will cut through both layers of metal in order to get a perfect 1mm gap for butt-welding.

I also mounted the LH side, but so far only using wise-grips, as it need a bit more adjustments.

I also mounted the bumper in order to ensure that everything will be straight. I had to open up the holes in the bumper brackets a tad, but it all lines up quite well now. I want all distances to the ground, the blinkers, headligts etc to be equal on both sides...

The Ghia is looking Good Roy you Must have a Ton of Hours in the Car It will be great to see it Done any idea when? or Color yet?

Thanks,

Yes, and ton of hours, I stopped counting a couple of years back.

My ultimate target is SCC 2007 (early september), and the color will be L87 Pearl White.

Roy

what year is your Ghia? I had a 69 Ghia Pearl White with Porsche 2.0 Alloys back in the 80's

mine is a '62. Any pics?

heres mine at Bug in 13

nice one gary  have you more pict  ???.. ;)

A couple of updates:

I have been working on the front rhs fender lately, and this one is even worse than I anticipated (that mean it is REALLY bad...)

First of all, someone once cut out a piece of the fender and replaced it with a part including the gas filler flap. Then they changed their mind, and welded the flap shut...

The parts for connecting the gas tube on the inside was still attached, so I started by cutting these away, then re-welding the joints, and then the nightmare started, The original metal was so thin that I just kept burning new holes as I tried to close the existing  ones... SO I ended up cutting away another piece, and made a replacement. The red line in the pic show the part that was welded in originally; the blue was the fuel flap that was welded shut, the the green is the piece that I made and put in:

I also welded on the lower part of the fender, where it meets the heater channel:

And finally for this time, I have removed the dash from my donor car, and started preparing it for going into its new home. There are still a few holes to weld up from the PO's butchering...

A couple of more nights in my garage, and the dash now looks like this:

I hope I only filled in the holes that were not supposed to be there... :-\

great pics, would you have any better resolution ones?

More updates:

In order to make sure I filled in the right holes, I borrowed a radio in order to verify that the remaining holes are the right ones:

Then I turned my focus to the front fender, and started by making a patch that fixed the upper portion of the wheel housing

Then I put the fender back on the car, to ensure that the alignment is good before I make further cuts.

I then cut the fender just where my OEM front section ends, BUT it turned out that the rust had eaten further back that what the repair panel covers :-(

So I made small "flaps" and welded the whole thing together with a gap between the two parts, then I started the tedious job of filling in the gap with fresh metal.

In some places, I needed to cut the fender back another 7-8 cm.

I simply love it when everything I do turn out to be more work than planned....

I also could not resist to place one of the EMPI 8spoke wheels in the housing :-)

Looking Good Roy I love 8 Spokes on Ghias  Did you Get the Info I sent you On The Wheels? you should be able to get it there if not Let me Know I Can Get it for you...Talk to you Soon Gary

Thanks, Gary, yes I got the info. I will get back to you after I have looked for local suppliers.

nice to see that empi spyder,keep it up

Thanks, guys.

After a non-VW related trip to UK with my wife, I finally managed to spend some time in the garage again tonight.

I was really curious as to how much elbow-grease is needed for bringing the wheels bact to its former glory, so I spent an hour on the worst looking one of the set.

First I removed some wounds and black spots in the polished rim, then went over with a 180 grit paper, before I took it for a quick round in the polisher, using the coarsest compound. Then I media blasted the center and the back side.

As I said, I only spent about an hour on this one wheel, and I think the result show that I will not need THAT many hours to get these back to where they need to be :-)

very nicely done!

i think they'll look awesome! what colour will the center be eventually?

Looking Good Roy Lets See some Progress on the Body?? LOL  the Wheels Come Later LOL

I aim for a color not too far from the metal color in the pic; I dont want them too dark. I have a lead on some paint, but it seem not to be available here in Norway

Roy

Thanks,

OK, I couldnt resist spending some tiime on the wheels, once I had them lying around... You know kids on Christmas Eve, and all that :-)

But tonight I will be working on the body again... Updates to follow

ROy

OK, after these hints from shubee2, I just had to start working on the body again...

The last corner of the car is the rear right hand side, which was in need for some rust-removing work.

So I started off by cutting off all the rotten metal, and after about an hour with angle grinder, this corner now looks like this:

This went much easier now that I have already done the same work on the other side, and fitting all the new parts is quite straight forward as long as I get started in the right way. The rear bumper mount goes in first, and I will build everything around that.

It can also be seen that the inner fendre was already repaired, but whoever did that skipped the rust treatment, so the metal is paper thin in places, so I will cut the lower 1-2" off, and replace it with fresh metal, before I mount the outer lip again.

I just wanted to see how it all fits, so I trial assembled some of the parts again, and it looks a lot  better already:

Next step is to measure everything carefully then replace the rear light area, and start putting this thing back together again. It can also be seen that the lower rearmost part does not by far cover the part I needed to cut out from the fender, due to old "repairs", but I will simply have to make a new part that fits in the gap

Looking good Roy Keep it up I for one would like to see it Done!!  LOL

Thanks, me too  :-\

short update:

yesterday I managed to mount the bumper bracket mount, but first I had to fabricate a new part of the inner fender to have something to mount it to...

Then I started fitting the part below the rear ligth, and the next on the list is to cut out the old light section, and craft in the new one (actually the older of the two, but you get the idea...)

The black stuff you see in in the first pic is some welding primer I apply to the metal surface prior to welding. This to ensure that all areas are covered for the sake of rust prevention.

Could you do me a favor and measure the backspace on your wheels? Id really appreciate it! :)

I just did the other day, and I came to the conclusion that the OFFSET is 32 mm, and the total with is 136mm. Is this what you need, or are there other measurements you need?

Roy

I guess it is time for a progress update too, but things are slow, as this is a very busy time of the year when it comes to summer parties at school, kindergarden, soccer etc, but I did manage to squeeze in a few nigths.

And I have continued the work on the rear corner, and cut away the rear light section, and grafted inn the correct tail-light:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/baklysIII.jpg)

(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/baklysII.jpg)

and I spent some time making sure the ridge on the top of the fender is straight:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/baklys.jpg)

And the entire rear end looks like this:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/bakfra.jpg)

But just as I was going to go to bed that night, I made a couple of checks on the dimensions, and came to the conclusion that the lower part of the tail light was some 10-12mm closer to the engine compartment than the upper....

So after a sleepless night (yes, I know...) I had no other option than to cut up the weld, and add a wedge, in order to correct this:

And after another night in the garage, the rear end now looks like this, much better :-)

lookin good Roy Keep Going It is getting Closer LOL :o 8)

Thanks, Gary, yes, getting closer but in quite small steps, indeed...

So last night, I finished up the welding and grinding of the rear end of this corner, and sealed everything with some 2k epoxy primer. I also made sure the inside is properly protected, as this area is hard to access once the outer panel is back on:

Looks Great Roy Want to come over and do my 58 Ragtop?? its not near the work you have done to your car just a Quick Dechrome and Cal Look Treatment ;D ;D OLD SCHOOL OF CORSE

No problem, going at my pace, that would taks just about 3-4 years then...

Better even, ship the car over here, so that I have something to do when this one is done; my wife is already expressing that she would like an aircooled VW next :-)

I managed to lay down another couple of hours of work the other night, and I started by making the missing part of the inner fender.

I dont have an english wheel, so I "cheated" by cutting some wedges in it in order to get the necessary double curvature.

Then the piece was trial mounted and the final trimming still remains:

The second picture is taken from the outside of the inner fender, but this view will be lost once the outer panel is attached.

And the final pic show the wheel arc being trial mounted once again, to ensure the fit.

And after tonights session, the area now looks like this:

Smoe clean-up, and sandblasting, now, and this entire corner of the car can be sealed up :-)

And this is how it looks now.

Man, buliding a Ghia from scratch is A LOT OF WORK....

Time for some updates, I guess...

I have spent the last few evenings on the inner fender, and have run into several problems...

first of all the area was more rusty than I expected, and that says alot...

Here you can see I have cut away the rotten parts, and the next picture sho where I have stareted to fabricate the missing part of the shelf inside the car.
The last picture show the repair panel being trial mounted

and then I had to separate the two layers of the rust panel, as the fit was terrible, and I was not able to shape the double panels..

The second picture show the outer reinforcement panel also attached, and the black stuff around the new panel is a welding primer, making sure all the unaccessable areas are covered. That was also a reason why I separated the panels, as they had no primer or anything where they overlapped.

The last pic show a modification I made in order to be able to fit the body without interfering with the "beetle cup" bar

and finally; in order to make sure the quarter panel aligns well with the pressing in the door, I reattached the door once again.

Here you can also see that the frontmost part of the inner fender has been trial fitted.

that's mad, impressive work!

which parts of the original  vehicule does it stay  ;D
nice job roy  ;)


fabian

It seems only the roof and the top parts of the rear fenders will survive..., ah, also the firewall and most of the engine compartment :-)

Damm Roy It's not in Paint Yet??? LMAO    it's Looking Good 

not quite  ;) ... but here is a sneak preview of what this will look like :

I Hope you are taking lots of pictures as you go I cant Imagine how many hours have gone in to your car just to get it where it is at now  you have to have a real love for a car to devote the time it takes to do it right.. Car is Looking Great Roy

Yup, I just counted, and I have 748 pictures in the project folder on my computer... And I am definately not counting the hours...

LOL why not??  I ll Bet  your making less then 1 cent per hour worked LMAO ;D ;D ;D

Dont rub it in..  ;)

Small update:

It seems that the inner fender finally has all the rust removed, and I can prepare for applying some primer, sealer and undercoating before the final coat of paint in this area:

There is still some chickenshit to be ground off in the lower part of the first pic, but I had to stop last night, as the noise with the grinder is terrible, having the entire head inside the inner fender...  Still rings...

The next step here is to apply some paint etc on the surfaces that will be un-accessable later, before mounting the last part of the fender lip and quarter panel.

I also made some small progress on the engine, as the plenum for the FI setup is done. I know this engine is not as per the"Cal-look laws", but I really don't care, as I want to learn more about FI and engine management, and figured this engine would be a perfect place to develop these skills :-)

The cal-look is still my inspiration for the overall look and stance of the car, so I hope I still qualify to hang around on this site ;)

With the amount of work you have taken upon yourself and executed with such quality of work, who are we to exclude you just because you run a bit different engine setup... nah.. keep up the good work and keep taking pictures for us :-)

I've been following your thread on the STF. I love the design and I'm curious to see how it goes. Planning an intercooler?

Thanks, no, no plans for an intercooler nor a turbo. Believe me, I am also curious as to how it will work :-)

Grelland you are inspiring me to Turbo the T4 in my Ghia (with DTM shroud). Plenum and all looks perfect.Are you welding all this TIG, I only have a MIG.( but also an aircraft TIG welder, if i beg long enough). Have a relaxed Wkend.

I'm using a MIG for this. I will ultimately build this in alu, and by then I need to have "converted" to a TIG....

Glad I can be an inspiration for others, even at a cal-look forum :-)

Grelland, where will you locate the injectors ? In the manifolds or in the central box on top...?

They will be located on the manifoils, aiming at the back of the valves.

btw, there has been some updates the last few days, and I have finalised the runners, and here I have mounted the plenum using rubber hoses:

Next on the engine list is to fabricate and mount the injectors, and a few brackets and mounts for various sensors.

I also made some minor progress on the car, as I opened up holes for the rear bumper brackets, and trial mounted the bumper to ensure a good fit against the fenders etc. I also painted the part of the heater channel that will be covered by the outer skin on the quarter panel, so that I can now finalise this part of the car also.

Been following this thread for a while - good work!
I`m really interested in your engine, I love seeing new ideas & want to learn about efi & so on, the technology is there - why not use it?
Cheers,
Kev

Thanks,

I also like the thought of utilising newer technology. I will keep you posted on the progress on the engine too.

Progress is a little slow the last few days, as I have been busy organising a local show this weekend,

here's an overview pictures of the show:

As you can see, we still have summer here in Norway, so the oulook for next weekend's action at Gardermoen should be the best

You ever heard the saying measure twice, cut once... ? >:(

I was trying to fit the quarter panel the other day, and no matter how I tried, the holes in the inner fender and the outer skin, for the rear torsion bar, simply would not line up...

So I did this:

and then this:

NOW the holes line up, and I will also probably be able to pull the torsion tubes out through the hole ;D

I also trimmed the wheel arch and quarter panel, and treated the inside with some anti-rust stuff before it is time to finish up this fender all togehther:

After seeing all the bugs at SCC last weekend, I thought I better hurry up in order to at least double the amount of Ghias next year, so I got out of my coach tonight and got the quarter panel mounted.

See, shubee2, I told you I would have that done tonight ;-)

This turned out to be a real PITA, as the shape of the foremost part did in no way fit the shape of the door, so I had to cut some wedges and make it fit...

Just remains to mount the wheel arch now, and this corner is about done :-)

LOL Good Job Roy Way to Go!! Get-R-Done ;D ;D ;D

And now the wheelarch is mounted:

But I was somewhat over-eager on the MIG, and the entire fender ended up with a large dent after I heard a loud popping noise...

Ah-well one of my best friends is a panel-beater, so I guess I have to invite him over one evening...

Ok on to somehing nicer.

I was browsing through my pictures the other nigth, and it seems that my wife not only took care of the hot-dogs stand at the local show I set up a few weeks ago; she also snuck around with my camera, and here's a couple of the images she produced:

progress is slow, but not completely stopped...

So I have finished welding up the rear fender, and that is a milestone!

Then I started to prepare for doing the final mounting of the front fender, and the first thing I noticed was that the shape of the lower part of the fender that meet the heater channel, pointed inwards compared to the heater channel, so I cut of the lower part of the fender again, and on the second pic you can see what I mean:

Part of the problem is that the curvature of the repro fender part does not match the curvature of the repro heater channel. I dont know which is correct...

But in order to remedy that, I made some cuts to the lip in the wheel opening, and made this part fit the curvature of the heater channel:

Then I made a couple of brackets to mount the splash guards to:

And once the fit of the lower part of the fender was getting ok, I realized that the gap to the front side of the door was not right, so I made some cuts there also, in order to rectify that.

You just got to love repro parts (they weren't even cheap...)

Here you can also see that sandblasting the door revealed some more work...

Then I made sure the gap at the rear end of the door was good, by making a cut along the gap, and welding in a wedge. It turned out ok:

I am planning on using body solder to straighten out the imperfections after all the welding and cutting, and I am afraid I have to prepare for a significant weight gain to the poor Ghia before it is done.

I just have to compensate for that by building an even bigger engine, so I have started collecting parts for a 2276 to replace the 1835 EFI engine that I am working on at the moment.

So this car will keep me warm and busy through this winter too, I guess...

Stay tuned

Looking Good Roy How Many Hours in it now?? ;D ;D ;D ;D

I have no idea how many hours I have put into this car, and I am not that interested in that either, as I do this for two purposes: Build a car to have fun in, and have fun while building it :-)

Today I actually managed to put in a few hours during the day, and I started by mounting, priming and applying seam sealer to the mounting brackets for the splash guards:

Then I fixed the gap towards the door. I still need some adjustment before I weld this up

Then I made sure the lower part of the front fender lined up with the heater channel, and then mounted the rest of the fender, and here you can see that I welded this part on wrong the first time, as I need to add some 10mm more steel here: 

and then the alignment is vastly improved

In between I aslo made myself some clips to hold the panels as I do butt-welding. I have seen these for sale, but it took me about 15 min to make these out of various stuff I had lying aroung.

I need these for when I am to weld the front febder back on, as I dont have wise-grips that are long enough...

ok so I worked a few hours this weekend, but I had to stop last night and head for the ER after testing the sharpness of the angle grinder blade...

But before that little incident, I managet to cut out the dash in order to prepare for mounting my period correct one. Lots of air...

An added bonus is that the access to the back side of the inner fenders is improved, so that I can clean up this area and grind the welds that were done from the outside.

and here you can see how I used my new clips for the final trial mounting of the front fender. It is all coming together now :-)

I've got a set of those clamps - absolutely superb things! I love 'em! :D

Progress is slow these days, work is taking too much time  >:(

But after my finger grew back together I managed to get a few things done.

First some cleaning up of welds behind the dash:

Good to know that this area that will NEVER be visible again is looking good....

Then I cleaned up the area around where the dogleg meets the firewall:

Then I cleaned up some old welds in the rear inner fender, and also trial mounted the shelf next to the rear seat, to verify the fit:

I also removed all the cross-bars internally in the car, since the heater channels are now securely fastened, and the car is supposed to have gained its old rigidity back:

Then I spent some time cleaning up a pair if IRS arms that have been narrowed about an inch in order to make my EMPI 8-spokes fit inside the fenders:

And then finally, last week, I spent one evening helping en old friend picking up an EXTREMELY nice '60 T1. The original rear lights came with the car. The funny thing is that this car was located about 5 minuted from my house... I am glad my friend bought it, since I would have had to buy it, and I would end up with another explaination problem towards the Wife... ;-)

And the last one for now, here's one of the reasons why progress has been slow lately, as I was ordered to finish this up before the snow comes:

Later this week, I plan one taking a day off work to really have some progress on the car, and I cant wait :-)

Stay tuned for more updates.

Man, when do you sleep???

 ;D

Now it is just over midningt, and I just returned from work, as I had to finish something up before taking tomorrow off.

So NOW I will sleep :-)

And apart from a handful of phonecalls, did I actually manage to take the day off, and spend the entire day in the garage :-)

I started out by welding in the wedge at the bottom of the front fender, and I also finished the arc against the door, so that the two now actually follow the same curve...

Then I welded up the edge facing the wheel well, and the fender now has the same shape as the heater channel along the entire length of the car.

I actually had to cut another wedge along the opening towards the door, in order to make the opening even all the way down.

Then I covered all areas to be welded with a welding primer, and added body sealer wherever possible to ensure no rust in the future, and then I finally mounted the fender for the last time, and started welding it in place. I went wery easy with the welder, in order to avoid the metal to warp. I also used a hammer and dolly to get all gaps perfect prior to welding

The area around the nostril was also fixed up, and here I have to make a small piece in order to fill in the void:

Now the fender is in its final location, but there is still some work to do before the thing is finished.

I also mounted the bumper again to make sure all still fits.

I have lost count of how many times I have taken the doors, bumpers etc on and off this car...

But now it at least starts to resemble a car again...

I had to break for lunch, and then I took a trip to a local hardware-store that has a wide selection of hard-to-find parts. this is a place where grey-haired men in gray frocks work behind a counter, and when you ask for a hard-to-find part, they say "hmmm, let me see", then they disappear into the back room, and after a while they come back, "is this what you are looking for?". This time they came back with some clips for mounting the splash panels and locking nuts for my Spyder Mag wheels. I love that place...

A short update from the cold north...

I have managed to finish up the welding on the front fender:

And I aslo laid down a layer of 2k epoxy primer behind the dash and in the luggage compartment. Now the welds arfe more or less invisible :-)

Sunday night is garage nigth, so I started on the other front fender, and first I had to make something to attach the fender to.

The lower half of this part was gone, so I had to make it from scratch

Looks ugly for the moment, the black messy stuff is a welding Primer I use to ensure no rust in the future, so I will clean the area up before I apply some 2k epoxy primer

Then I welded on the lower part of the fender, and the rearmost lip folds around the part I just made, so I mounted the door and fender tree times to ensure a good fit

next on the agenda now is to weld on the front part of the fender, and fix a section of the wheel opening, where one of the PO's have made some repairs...

It is coming together now :-)

and after a night of sandblasting and cleaning up the area, the a-pillar now looks like this:

great job ray

And then I started on the front fender. I started out by taking a lot of measurements, as I would like this side to be equal to the other side (...), so I measured a lot, then started by tack-welding the front part of the fender on. This is an NOS part, so at least the shape of this should be right.

I can't stand a Ghia where the bumpers are not straight and parallel to the ground, so I also mounted this in order to ensure that all is well.

All the measurements on positioning the headlights, nostrils and bumper are now within 1-2mm, so I feel I can move on and mount this fender permanently now.

It starts looking like a car now, doesn't it?

Thanks :-)

Things are slowly going in the right direction.

I have trial mounted some of the instruments and stuff thant goes on the dash, and I still have to figurte out how to mount the 356 tach

Then earlier this week I started working on the left front fender, and as was the case on the other side, do I have a gap between the fresh metal in the NOS front section of the fender, and fresh metal in the fender itself, so I started out by making small tabs in order to locate the parts correctly, then I filled in the gap with pathes:

And after another evening in the cold garage (it is getting time to turn on the heated floors, as the temperature is below the freezing point here now..) The fender looks like this:

I am trying to make sure the ridge on top of the fender follows the original look, as I have seen quite a few Ghias where this ridge disappears long before it reaches the headlight.

Here you can see that you can at least see the ridge, now I just have to make sure it is straight, so a little work with the hammer and dolly, and this will be fine

I cant imagine tackling a job of this magnitute. You are doing a great job, keep it up!

No kidding. I've cut up better cars. :-[

Thanks for the feedback, guys :-)

I have been quite eager to test out the art of applying body solder, so I started out with the easy part; namely a horisontal area on top of the right front fender:

The last picture shows a surprice I discovered when I tried to melt some of the solder that was already there.

So now I needed one of these, to even this out:

And after a trip around town, I found one of these body files in a well-assorted HW store, so I could move on.

I started out with cutting out the rusted area, welded in a patch, and added more solder to that area.

Then I started the tedious work of filing down the solder, and here's a few shots of the result of a couple of hours work:

As can be seen, I will need to apply more solder, and that is  the tricky part, as I will need to heat and melt the solder I already applied in order for the new solder to blend with the old, and then all my filing will be in vain...

Oh well, I guess I will learn as I go along...

Hi Roy Looking Good Do you have a Wood Ladel? to spread the Body Soder when you are working with it? The Thing when Using Body Soder and to get good Results you need to Clean all the welded areas real good and tin them when your melting the body soder make sure to push the soder rod in to the welded areas  which will eliminate air pockets and you wont have to worry about it rusting between the repaired body and the body soder  I dug out all the old Lead on my Nova when I did the Body on it I rewelded  all the joints and releaded it.

Hi, Gary, yes I bought a kit like this from Frost so I have the wood ladel, and I am sandblasting the welds prior to applying the solder flux.

GOOD Boy ;D ;D

Some top skills there  8)

That is something I have always wanted to try/learn  :)

me too, so I simply jumped into it...

Guess it's time for an update again...

I have tried to apply more solder to the area I already filled in, and here's a shot of the top of the fender after I filed it down again. It looks quite good now, I woudl guess there are a couple of 0.5-1mm deep craters here and there, so I guess I will have to go over it once more:

Then I started on lesson #2 in the art of body soldering: vertical panels...

Now it is even more important to control the heat, as the solder will run if it gets too hot.

With some patience this is how the outside of the front fender looks after one night in the garage:

And one night worth of labour later, it looks like this:

The picture did not come out too good, but the point is that this is getting quite nice and smooth :-)

Here's a detailed shot of the ridge on top of the fender, where I try to make sure the rigde follows through all the way forward to the chrome ring:

and finally a shot of a bracket I made for mounting the splash guard plate on the other side, so that everything is now prepared for mounting this fender also:

very nice work keep going  :P

I've been playing with body solder too - I'm using it on my '70 to seal the welds on the repair panels, filing it to shape as best I can and then using plastic filler for final shaping. The idea is that the lead will stop the cracking that you often see along the long straight welds, especially the ones on the rear quarter panels. Takes a bit of practice to get it right though! :D

The Welds have to be good and Solid I Dug all the lead out on my Nova rewelded all the joints and seams then releaded them the factory joint's were all cracking from Body Flex  over 30 years

Guess it is time for an update.

First of all, I got the left hand side fender back from a friend of mine that is a panel beater and he had manufactured a new wheel opening on this side too:

Then I filed the fender some more, and as far as I can tell, am I done with this now, but I will leave it to my friend, the panel beater to judge...

Then I sat down and had a long look at the shape of the top of the fender.

Then I realised that the shape is not equal side to side, so I decided to make some cardboard templates in order to check, and here's what I found:
(The brown areas  indicate the diffenernce in the profile from side to side)

I guess these cars never were quite the same side to side, but I am a little concerned now, as the right fender has been welded twice by a previous owner, so I suspect that the basic shape of that fender has been somewhat distorted.

Maybe this will never be visual at all, we'll see....

So there has been a while without any updates, so I thought it might be time for one...

First I started off by sand-blasting the back-side of the dash and the underside of the last front fender. I then covered it all with a lick of etch primer:

Then I received a small package for my engine project. These are injector bungs that I will weld into the intake runners:

And the last thing I did on my car last year (2007) was to mount the last fender to the car.

And I ended up spending most of the evening getting this gap ok:

It is still not perfect, but now I can at least open and close the door....

I still need to work on that gap, but I am quite optimistic now :-)

such awesome work!!
this should be a real beauty when it gets on the road  8)

The Car Is Coming along Good and is looking great And I Can Tell by looking at the car there a ton of Hours spent just getting it to the stage it is in now Keep up the good work Roy in the end it will be worth all the time spent..

very impressive work! keep us posted :)

Thanks, guys,

I spent one night massaging the gap between the fender and door, but it is really not that much to see, so I will come back with an update after tomorrow's session.

Meanwhile, here is a shot of the engine with my new CSP exhaust mounted. Cant wait to find out what this will sound like, not to mention how it will run...

After a couple of more nights in the garage, working on this door vs fender gap, I think I will say that I am satisfied. Here's how it looks now:

It is not too different from the pic in a post further up, but now the gap is some 4mm +/- 0.2 all the way, while the variation was a lot more on the previous shot. Not easy to see, but now i KNOW it is ok....

Here's a shot from behind, where you can see the reflection from a lamp continuing fron the fender into the door. I am quite eager to get this right, as I dont like it when the door gaps break the gourgeous lines of the Ghia

Here's a shot of the weld on the top of the fender, and I must admit that I start getting the hang of this now... About time, as I am almost done welding... I can always consider this to be  practice for the next project :-)

And finally a front view, wher you can see that I have just spot welded this seam so far, and I have not yet started on the vertical weld.

And the last pic of today, where I have gathered some of the FI parts, indicating how the fuel plumbing will look. In stead of using high-tech alu fuel rails, will I go for a simpler solution using hose and som brass tees, but I will have to fabricate a bracket to hold the injectors down, The bungs will be welded to the intake runners

Today I only had an hour or so on my hands for working on the car, so I decided to spend some time on the engine.

I ended up fitting and welding the injector bungs to one of the intake runner pairs, and here's the result:

Hi Roy What is going to hold the Injectors in? is there some type of bracket or clamp?

Yes, you're right, I just have not made that yet....


Roy

Short update:

I have finalised the welding of the front fender, and it is now ready for the hammer and dolly, and some body solder:

I also mounted the front bumper again, to check the alignment, and it all looks good. Also the dixtance between the fender and bumper around the corner was verified:

Good work!

I think I'm impressed with your perseverance more than anything! Not saying that your work is bad by any means, but that car would have been scrap if it was in the States! Keep going Grelland!!

great to see it coming together now

Yes it is, and the nostrils are still there ;-)

man, I can only hope mine turns out half that great if this
nice work!

I guess it is time for today,s update

First I started off by welding up the rear wheel arch

I just HAD to tuck a wheel up there  ;)

Then I realised that some of my former work on this fender was not up to par (it was the first thing I did on the car, and I had not touched a welder for 12 years prior to this), so I made a small patch to replace some very thin metal after I had been over-eager with the grinder:

Next on my to-do list is to fix this little mishap, which also dates back to when I first started working on the car

Not sure how I missed this thread before, but that is some incredible work. Gives me hope for when I do the rust repair on my car. Keep up the good work!

--louis

So I spent a night fixing the fender, and I actually ended up cutting the entire rear section of the fender off the car again, and refitted it. There seems to be a "swing" towards the rear of the ridge, but that is mostly illusional, as the primer is ground off on one side of the fender

and I also applied some body solder to the outside to see whether I will be able to smooth this out, and it looks good, here's a shot about halfway through the filing process:

Good Job Roy keep it up ;D ;D

Thanks, Gary, I can see the light in the end of the tunnel now  ;D (or is it the train coming....)

LMAO" its a Train Roy Look Out ;D ;D

Oh, well....

anyways, I did manage to get a few nights worth of work done the last week too, and here is a short update:

I spent about one evening fixing the lower corner of the door opening. After I had fixed the opening along the entire fender, I realised that the corner in the bottom was not quite up to par, so I added some weld and ground it back:

As you can see, I need some minor adjustments along the bottom of the door, but the curvature is getting there. I also added some lead to the fender to even out some bumps.

I also prepared the dash for the final welding, and this is how it now looks:
 
I just need to apply some welding primer to the windscreen area, then this is ready to go on permanently

No updates for a while, but I have spebt quite some time lately preparing for sending the body off to the panel beater for some massage before I start prepping for paint.

Here are some photos from the last couple of weeks action:

and finally, today the body went for a 10 minute drive over to the panel beater. Thanks for the help guys!

And btw, with a roof-rack like that all the resto-look guys would be very envious, wouldn't they?

I was planning on working on the chassis while the body was away, but as it turns out, I have to go to the US for a few days with work, so that will not happen... Oh well, at least there will be progress while I am away.

So how do you like working with the lead body solder? I have been looking at Eastwood's non-lead metal body solder for when I do the rust repair on the '67. Where you headed in the US?

--louis

Well I have no experience with the body soldering prior to this, so I guess it is ok.. What I experience is that on vertical areas, the solder runs easily... :-)

I am going to Branford, CT .

Roy

The panel beater reports of some issues with the wheel openings, but things are moving forward, so within a few days I expect the body to be back in my garage again.

Meanwhile, I went to my parents' hous to pick up the chassis.

And that was not a very pleasant experience...

Some 2 years ago when the chassis was transported to their house, we had snow, and with the snow follow salt. So the entire chassis was covered with a slush of salt and water. Now the chassis is supposed to be able to handle that, but the point was that prior to taking it out, I had done some cutting and welding on the body that was sitting on top of the cassis, so the chassis was full of small pieces of steel debris.

OK, guess what happens when these steel particles lay in a mix of salt and water for 2 years... yup, RUST...


When I got the chassis back, I started with a thorough cleaning, after I lifted the thing up vertically by my self. It i s HEAVY....

This is how it looks at some distance:

Not too bad, maybe, but take a look at the bolts and the un-painted brake pump...

Then a close-up of one of the worst areas:

The rust is mostly on/in the paint, but I will most likely grind the paint off again, and apply new layers of primer and paint. I dont want to end up welding rust after some 5 years again...

The underside looks perfect, though...

and finally a shot of the entire chassis in my garage after the cleaning was done. Some of the silver chassis details were paintred using 1K spray can, so I guess I will grind this back also and apply real 2K paint to these parts as well.

So once I get a few spare moments, I will completely strip the pan for all loose parts, and start grinding and painting again...

Oh well, the body will soon be off for paint, so I guess I will have a few weeks for finishing this up..

Stay tuned for mure fun discoveries...

Two steps forward and one step back huh, lol. At least you are making progress.

--louis

as long as the sum is larger than 0, I am happy  ;D

Top work there dude and a credit to yourself to take the body so far back to do the repairs right  ;)
That should give me a bit of inspiration to drive on and get mine finished, hopefully before EBI2  :o  ;D

Thanks,

I have started dismanteling the pan again, to prepare for stripping an new paint, but I ave also prepared a set of narrowed IRS arms, and mounted the Spyder Mags :-)

I was quite nervous whether there would be any rubbing, but this seems good:

I am now VERY excited to check whether the body actually fits over the rear wheels... I hope I am able to check that within the next few days

Some of the most impressive work i have seen - esp. at home - Great job - will be a real looked  ;D ;D

Thanks, RACE HEAD.

Time for an update, I guess.

After my friends at the panel beater's had worked on the car for a while, we decided that the body itself is too soft to really fine-adjust the door gaps etc without the pan, so we had a slight change of plans, and I had to load the pan on the trailer, and take the pan over to the panel beater.

This mean that I have to rush the finishing of the underside of the body, and also make sure the pan is ground down and new paint applied before I join the pan and body for the FINAL time :-)

The downside to this is that I have to mask off the pan and chassis details as the car is painted, but that is manageable.

I guess I have my Easter vacation plans worked out...


Here's another shot of the engine mounted on the pan

so after some more work, the pan now looks like this:

and the underside has been treated to some 2-k epoxy primer, body sealer and finally a layer of "body5000" which is a rubber-like semi-hard stuff that is over-paintable:

next on the list now is to apply a layer of L87 Pearl White paint on these areas, before the body and pan can be permanently joined :-)

and this is how it looks with paint:

Finally there is some progress to report.

I have mounted the body to the pan for the last time, and finally it starts looking like a car again:

Then I had a closer look at how the wheels fit in the openings.

The rear seems fine, but there actually seems to be enough space for using the standard IRS arms. The ones on there now are 1" narrowed
On the front I think the wheels are too far tucked in. The beam is 3" narrowed using CB spindles

Over to the engine, it seems that there is not enough room for the plenum :-( I will have to either make a new plenum, or make a dent in te firewall.

Other than that, the engine layout combined with the Ghia engine compartment ensures lots of space for working on the engine

And finally a shot from the rear. I like the look of this exhaust :-)

So things are definately moving in the right direction. The panel beater need another day or two, then I will take the car back to my own garage for some final touches before it is off to the painter.

roy ,  your car looks like frankenstein monster  ::) ................................  ;D ;D ;D ;D
no seriously ,you had made a great job on this car , Some would have given up(lowered the arms) (as I by ex  ::) ) you ?you believed in this car and here is again soon on the road  8)
NICE JOB
fabs

Rear disc brakes will add to the track width (about 3/8" on each side is my guess), and so will drop spindles if you dont already have them. I agree, the front looks too narrow :-\

It's getting close Grelland!! ;)

Yes, I have also thought about the rear discs. The front already has CB dropped spindles, yes

looking good. Cant wait to see it all in one color. If it were me I think I would just dimple the firewall a small mount.

--louis

Thats, what I was thinking too.... I don't like the idea of cutting up OE steel...

Finally the car is back from the panel beater, and I had to take a few shots of course....

Here's a couple of the entire car:

All the little dots are from the crimping process.

Then a couple of pics of the door gap and door-to-fender alignment

This is a rear sight: A rear deck lid with the same shape as the body...

the lid is a little low since the rubber is not in place at the moment

all i can sayu is WOW dude :P :P :P

and the front hood gap:

and this is what happens when you leave the car for a couple of weeks in a garage frequented by Harley and hotrod fans...

And finally a shot of the big guy (me) inside the little car... You can tell I am pleased with the progress

And just to add some pressure on myself I bought this today...

Next step now is to trial mount the bumpers lights etc to make sure it all fits, I also have some minor welding to do, then it is off to the painter :-)

The Car Looks Really Good Roy Cant wait to see it Painted ;D ;D keep the Pictures Coming......

wow its all coming together now,looking great,its gonna be a really nice ghia,exhaust looks excellent and those empi 8s,can't wait to see it in paint 8)

I am also quite eager to get this car painted, to say it the least...

Meanwhile, I have to finish up some work, and I started by mounting all the bumpers, lights, doorhandles etc, so that I will not get too many surprises after the car is painted...

From what I can see and measure, it seems that the front of the left rear corner of the bumper points a little upwards, other than that, it looks ok

Then I climbed under the car and mounted some brackets for the exhaust, and I also intended to mount the bracket for the oil filter on the bumper bracket, but it seems that the filter will hit the exhaust... anyone with any experience here?

Can I mount the oil filter bracket so that the filter is horisontal?

You can mount the filter horizontally but it can be a little messy changing it.

This is how I mounted mine Roy :)

(http://www.vwnorge.no/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=320.0;attach=2161;image)

Thanks. Øyvind, where is it mounted? on the exhaust bolts?

That`s right Roy, on a home made mount. I had to face it inward because of limited space around the heaterbox.

excellent, I have one of those std mounts, but they dont work with my exhaust and heater boxes. Any chance you have a template for that bracket?

here's another option, I posted the same question on TheSamba, and one guy had solved it like this:

If you were going to mount it there, I'd make a 90degree bracket to keep the filter vertical. By keeping it as high as possible you should minimise the amount it hangs below the bumper and wing level.

then I am back to my original problem, as it fouls the exhaust... I am not able to lift it high enough. This is not a problem on a "normal" exhaust, just this CSP ome

Ah, I see! Have you looked at bringing the lines up through the engine tin and mounting the filter inside the rear wing?

no, but that might actually be a good idea. thanks

I understand Flames but why would one put them on the nose of a rear engined car... seem like the flames should be coming from the motor.

Hey, look at what I said, those guys are Harley and hotrod fans, maybe they dont know where the engine is on a Ghia  ;D

Things are moving forward, and here's a shot of the engine bay:

The entire underside looks the same way, and is ready for underseal and paint

As you can see, I also ended up making an indent in the firewall for the plenum

Looks perfect. It took me a minute to even figure out where the indent was.

--louis

Exactly  ;)

Good idea Roy, that looks stock!

thanks.

time for update, I guess.

The entire underside of the rear end of the car is now painted:

and the inside of the car has also been prepped for paint. I have applied a thick layer of two of a spray-on damping material, the stuff that the stereo guys use, in an attemt to get this car as silent as possible. It is over-paintable.

and the engine bay has received the same treatment

Great work Roy, can't wait to see the car in real life... As for the oil filter I like to have them mounted horizontaly. It makes for easier filter changes without getting oil on your hands..

Thanks, Rune, I will hava a closer look at this when the car is back from paint.

Something tells me there will be a rush to get all these issues solved before SCC...

Back to the progress:

I have replaced the problem area on the RHS front fender, the area aroud where the fuel filler flap once was welded shut. Now, there is a genuine non-fuel-flap piece of steel here:

Then I spent sonme evenings cleaning up the underside of the front fenders, and after grinding down the welds, removing surface rust and also some sand-blastingm the underside of the fenders got a layer of the 2-k epoxy primer:

and after applying body sealant in all joints and welds, I applied a generous layer of s product called "Body 5000" from wurth. This becomes semi-hard and is over-paintable:

Next thing now is a layer of paint before the car is sent off to the painter :-)

but before i can paint, I also added a layer of the damping material to the luggage compartment in the front:

And I screwed up by braking this molded piece that takes the heated air into the passenger cabin...

Last night I mounted the shelves next to the rear seat, after finalising the heater tubes (I know some of you wonder why bother with all this heater stuff, but I live in Norway, and intend to use the car more than 3 weeks in the summer...)

This area is almost ready for primer and paint now, and I am also prepping the front firewall in order to cover that area with the damping material also:

MArathon resto! nice work grelland, as usual...

Even us just 25 km's to the south of you are wondering!!  ;)

but then your slogan cut from the top of this page is "- It’s a Cal Look thing – you wouldn’t understand”, so I am not going to try to explain it to you

 ;D

True, I would never understand...

Now for an update:

The inside and underside of the car is now painted:

And the car is loaded on the trailer, and will be at the paintshop by 0700 tomorrow morning  8)

btw the pics are taken at about 10:00 PM tonight, and as you can see, the spring is here.

Life is good....

You've got to be feeling good about that!

When did you start this project??

Oh yes this is a good feeling, I started the project in 1998....  but I didnt start really working on it until about 3 years ago

looks great grelland, whens it coming back from the painters?

congratiulations on the work
all the respect isn't good enough  ;D
glauco

nice work

Thank you all, but I am afraid I have some bad news....

The car is back in my garage, and will be there until August...

The painter underestimated the amuount of work his panel-beater had to do, so the panel-beater didnt have time to finish it up before his summer vacation...

So now I will have time to finish and install the engine, and hopefully even fire it up before it goes back to the paint-shop.

I was a TAD disaappointed and sick of the whole thing for a few days here, but now I am back with more inspiration :-)

SCC 2008 is out of the question, though  :-[ (unless some of you guys out there know of a GOOD painter that can do this now.

Roy,
You can ask Larvik Billakksenter,Hegdalsveien 76

Magne

This sucks Roy, I'll call you tomorrow...

please do ;)

and yes it sucks...








big time

Now that I am waiting for the panel beater to find time in his schedule, I am working on all the other bits and pieces that need to be finished anyways, and the last few days i have accomplished the following
- Steering axle and wheel reconditioned and mounted
- Front brake calippers and brake hoses fitted
- Gearbox lowered about half an inch in the rear in order for the engine to fit the sealing perfectly
- Injector bungs welded in the other intake runner

I had set myself a target before the painter threw in the towel, and that was to attend the SCC event on August 15th. This may still happen, but if so, the car will be in primer and not paint, and it might actually be a good idea to trial mout everything before paint, as drilling and cutting a newly painted car is no fun...  And yes I have paid the starting fee for the drag-race...

Next on the list now is to finish up some the details in the engine, including a new fuel line, but I have to go to the UK for a business trip end of this week, so progress will be slow for a few days again...

So I am finally back from my trip, and have startet on my long list aiming for the dragstrip at SCC.

The car will then be in primer, but that is the least of my worries at the moment.

I put the engine back in the car, and first of all, I mounted the runners to verify that the plenum now clears the firewall, and it does:

then I needed to find a way to connect the right hand side pedal with the plenum, and came up with a solution using a wire-extention kit intended for dune buggies. I made a bracket, and I think this will work, I just need to check for clearance with the fan shroud

I also made a holder fror the injectors, but forgot to take a picture...

Next on the list was to weld in the bung for the WB O2 sensor on the collector, and it is a tight fit, but it fits...

And finally a shot of the engine height: I wolud still want the engine to sit a cm or so lower, but now the seal will work, so that is the main issue for now:

I almost forgot: here's a shot of my 8-year old sons project tonight, to clean, primer and paint this bracket, which is what I made for holding the injectors down:

i love it when the kids help out, mine is just hammering around with wrenches on all parts for the moment, but he'll get the hang off it later.

but i don't think i'll ever be able to set such a good example as you... true piece of art.

Time for an update, I guess.

Waiting for the painter to get his panel beater ready, I am working on the wiring and engine, and here are some shots of the engine after finalising the intake runners and also the bracket for the throttle cable:

Then a few shots of the wiring job:

I have made a loom out of all black wires, but have numbered them in each end.

I have also laid a 6mm2 cable that feeds all the bits up front, through a distribution block, the fuse box, and finally relays. The idea is that all switches will only switch signals to the relays, no power.

more wiring:

I am also planning the mounting of the instrumentation pod, and this seems to be a good balance between looks and visibility:

Then one of my sons projects again, this time an old fuel pressure regulator has been cleaned, rubbed down and painted:

I also receved the fifth EMPI wheel this week, so trhat I now have a proper spare wheel  8)

And finally for this time, I have to add a picture of the beautiful June night yesterday. This picture was taken outside my house at 1130 PM yesterday

Great Job On the Progress Roy Cant Wait to See it Done. ;D http://www.sccevent.com/

hehe thanks, Gary

somehow, I like to put pressure on myself...

Here's a few more pics of the status:
 

As you can see, the engine is quite ready, I still need to add a voltage relay, make oil lines and add a clutch, then hook up the EFI sensors, and the thing is ready to be fired up.

I have also started prepping for primer, as I will not have time to get it painted properly prior to scc...

Tonight there will be no progress on the car, as I have been busy working in the garden... While mowing the lawn, my wife asked if I had seen our youngest son, he's 2 1/2. After some search around the house and garden, I realized the garage door was open...

Some progress on the engine project:

First the wiring in the engine bay is done, I just need to make a bracket for the intake air temp sensor:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/motor-4.jpg)

I wanted to put some "walls" on inside the inner fender in the engine compartment, so in order to have the wires and MAP tube mounted in a neat manner, I made a small plate in the corner between the inner fender and firewall. I will then make a small notch in the "wall" in order to clear these wires:

The pushbutton and LED is for the WB O2 sensor
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/gjennomfring.jpg)

I am almost done hooking up the MS; and I have hooked up the injectors and fuel pump to the relay board, and the sensors are wired diectly into the MS board via the D-sub connector.

I just need to clean up the wires and make this a bit neater, then it is about done :-)
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/MS-kopling.jpg)

I need to pull the engine again, and install the flywheel and clutch. I also need to drill and make threads in the sump for the oil temp sender. Then I am about ready to fire it up :-)

I am also getting close to finished on the rest of the wiring:
(http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m68/grelland/wiring.jpg)

WOW IV'E BEEN LOOKING THROUGH ALL OF YOUR PICS, ALOT OF WORK, I AM IMPRESSED, IT'S GOING TO BE AN AWESOME GHIA KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK.

No possibillity for me to see it this year, but this must be one I wish to have a closer look at.
Incredible work!!

Tor Henning

Thanks guys, the last week was spent on the poolside with my family, but now I am back, and will work full speed to get this thing on the road before scc :)

Poolside Grelland??? Don´t you have an event coming up real soon?  ;D

I know... ;)

As you could tell, I didnt make the SCC this year...

But I had a great time with all the VW friends at Gardermoen.

Since then, I have mostly spent time taking care of my family and some other domestic duties, but the last few weeks I have actually managed to get a few hours in the garage also.

So now the engine is more or less ready for start-up, and all the electrics has been tested and it all works :)

The painter called me today, and wants the car in next Monday, so I will start stripping the car down again, in order to prepare for this important milestone. I have had a friend help me with straightening somem more panels, so I guess the painter will be satisfied this time around.

If all goes well, I will have the car back in the garage with fresh paint before X-mas.

Youre doing well Grelland, take it easy. Priority's in Life also count!

Thanks,  ;)

MEanwhile, I could post a few pics as the car stands today:

All the electrics is in place, and it all works :)
Also most of the engine s ready, I need another oil hose from the breather box to the LHS head cover, and I also need to get the plumbing for the oil cooler mounted.

Next on teh agenda now is to strip it all down, and send it off to the painter.

BTW, I was persuaded into changing the color, so I will have to repaint all the internals and engine again...

Nice project, keep the pics coming. ;) 8)

Greath project Roy, and what AWESOME work you've done so far !!!!  :o  Can't wait to see that car finished.I regret now,that I've sold my
'69 KG last year(it was also a RUSToration-project)
I really like it,that you are going cal-look,different style.(cooling fan,csp exaust....)and also that BLACK wiringloom.BTW ,great choice of wheels(8spokes),they look so right.
So have fun and keep us posted with pics.
                                                           grtz,Peter.  ;)
P.S.,what color will it be now???

Thanks, Peter.

NEVER sell a Ghia, you will always regret that...

As for the color, the initial plan was Pearl White, so the entire underside, engine bay, front luggage area, behind rear seat etc is already painted that color.

But after looking at the color for a few months, my wife kind of hinted that this was not the best choice, and I tend to agree. It is too green in my eyes, and looks a little "dirty". I was aiming for a warmer shade of white.

So I got the local paint supplier to mix a rattle can of two other candidates, and sprayed one front fender in each color:

The one to the left is VW Classic White, the one one the right is Rover Old English White (I know...)

Let me hear your opinion on this, guys :)

One more shot, to compare with the Pearl White in under the hood:

I think the right one is a little to dark, the left one (if well polished) will go great on the ghia imho..
glauco

I should go for the classic white.  ;)

Colours are always hard to assess on screen  :-\

From what I see I have to admit that I really liket the first colout the most, just because there is that slight hint of green in there.

Maybe you can hold something next to the car in a white that everybody can compare to. Might sound silly, but something like a glass of milk  ;D No serious, what about an ordinary piece of paper, just plain white paper.

I had a piece of paper on there when I looked at it on my own, so yes that is a good idea.

I can also roll it out of the garage, to see it in natural daylight.

Once again, the car is on its way to the painter, so time will show what color it will be ;)

Strange feeling...

No car....

But yesterday I stopped by at the painter, and things are really progressing :) I wasn't able to take a picture, as they were working on it even on a Saturnday.

Tonight I spent a few hours cleaning up the garage, and what a mess.... It will take a few more nights before I can take a picture for you. But now it will be only "clean" jobs left, so I was even planning on painting the walls again, but I will see if I have time

I'm excited to see what you get back from the painters shop!!!
-Andy

me too  ;D

yesterday the painter called and informed me that he had found a problem...

On one of the doors, there were cracks where the glass enters the door:

he didnt want to just cover this in bondo, as this would show up immediately, so I took the door home, and welded the cracks:

The painter will grind it down and tidy it up again.

I had to give the door back to him this morning, as he is going to apply the filler today :)

Actually quite reassuring that he came back to me with this issue, and not just covered it up...

I also had a look at the wheels , and cleaned up one of them, to get a feeling for what I want to do.

I started off by mediablasting the spokes, and I went over the lip with wet 400 and 800 grip paper. I will fully polish the lip.

I kind of like this "raw" look:

Today the painter called and asked if I wanted to have a look at the car as it stands, and here is what I found:

one more:

Cool Grelland allmost time for paint

Michael

yup, the filler need to rest some 2 weeks, then the paint comes on :)

Car Looks Very Good Roy I Bet You Are Happy car looks real straight to   Keep up the Good Work

quite happy yes  ;D

And yes it looks quite straight. Maybe I should go with black in stead?

Roy

Yes... white was never going to work...

 ;)

so how is this for a Christmas present :   ;D

Congrats Roy I know its been along time Coming The Car Looks Great cant wait to see it done Great Job Hope its everything you wanted and you are Happy with the Job!! ;D ;D

i like this shade of white it looks very nice....let's see it in the sunlight
i think is is a good christmas gift after all the effort you put in to it...

will there be a colored roof ?

Very nice Roy !

great job! And yes, it's a really good Christmas gifts!  ;)

sunlight??

come on this is Norway in mid December...

ANd no I think I will keep the roof white for now

superb

sunlight??

come on this is Norway in mid December...

ANd no I think I will keep the roof white for now
[/quote]

 ;D

Looking good Grelland!

Looking good man. Bet you are excited.

--louis

thanks guys, and yes, you bet I am excited...

Yep,looking good.  ;)

The painter maintains a very high service level, and actually delivered the car at my house today :)

Here are a few shots:

more

the result so far is beyond my expectations, given the starting point of this car...

Now I have to pick up the rest of the parts tomorrow, then the fun part begins  ;D

I just had to sneak out in the garage to check a couple of things:

This is a fantastic statement to all your hard work, grelland - a reward to know that you didn't cut any of all the corners that came along your way! Congratulations on the result so far - I bet the final result will be amazing! :D

thanks, and I havent posted ALL my mistakes, so it might be that I did cut some corners  ;)

yesterday I collected the remaining parts from the painter, and had my brother-in-law coming over to help me mount the doors etc.

This is how it came out:

I am somewhat picky when it comes to door gaps, and although I am not 100% pleased with the results, this shot indicates that this could turn out ok in the end:

I have also started thinking about the interior, and one of the options is to cover the door panels in diamond stitch vinyl.

I have received a couple of sample patches, and I know what my favourite is, but still have not made the final decision:

The red would look awesome  8)

the colors in the picture actually "lies" as the red is not that signal red, and the beige is darker.

more like these:

the darker beige look good to me  ;)

maybe with some red piping  ;)

No, that'll be too much! Brown piping would be more in keeping! Like the diamond stitching too. :)

here are some ideas after some playing around with photoshop:

maybe switching the colors on the door panel.... (?)

please ignore the green, it is just a result of my lacking Photoshop skills...

or red?

The brown looks so much better. In my opinion is red is too bright.

beige and brown  ;)

Yep,the colors in the first pic suit better,anyway,that's my opinion.  ;)

I went to see my good friend that accidently runs a VW restoration shop, and he had a carpet kit and a door panels kit that I borrowed in order to check the color combo:

The door panels are tan/offwhite from TMI, and the carpet is oatmeal from VWHeritage:

And while I make up my mind on the interior, I started working on the car again.

First up was to paint the engine and luggage compartments in the right shade of ivory:

Then I started the job of sound-deadening the car:

Grelland, what did you use for sound deadening ?
Tx,
Harry

looks good roy  :o

this is what I used:
http://installbay.no/product_info.php?cPath=67_73&products_id=679

Christmas is over, and I have managed to get a few things done in between family gatherings and HUGE dinners...

Here are a couple of teasers:

Really nice to be able to find old parts, clean, polish, mount, watch.... ;D

woow,nice colour :)

one more :)

very cool! :)

Now I decided to focus on the engine, and here's a couple of shots of that end of the car as of tonight:

Really nice detail.

--louis

thanks.

I wish I had more time to work on the car...

I spent one more day on the engine, but nothing visible apart from a padding on the firewall, and a lot more wiring and fitting the sensors...

That's going to be one cool Ghia when it's finished  ;D

Thanks, I certainly hope so :)

I got just one night in the garage so far this week... My wife has been away with her work, and I have three little boys to look after...

But some details got done, and one of them was to hook up my 3rd brake light.

My intention is to use the car as much as I can, so I figured some safety thinking would be a good thing.

Here's how the rear end looks while braking:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/518996.jpg)
as you can see, it indicates that most of the electrical system works too :)

and here's a close-up of the 3rd light:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/518997.jpg)
I used a repro hella back-up light with a red lens.. I also have the clear lens, so I will see how it looks with red leds and the clear lens.

Finally, my son's project that night was to mount the engine surveillance instruments and hook them up:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/518998.jpg)
It all works, and even the lighs dim while turning the knob :)

As you can see, I will need a new set of dash knobs...

Your car has came a long way and very nicelly so , Keep up the nice work and pictures.Very cool to see more ghia stuff going on

thanks, and it seems I have forgot to update in a while...

I will upload some pics of the current status:

a few more:

I even tried starting the engine, and have about 30 mins video of ..... nothing....

I started out hooking the fuel pump up the wrong way around, and when that was fixed, it coffed a few times, but then I discovered a leakage in the original fuel line that I use as a return line from the regulator to the tank. So now I will make new lines, and replace some of the fittings before I start it again.

So there is some progress, but I still have 2 ft of snow here, so there's no immediate rush ;)

great work
I like the wheels

Yeah,that's gonne be an AWESOME car when it's ready.  :o   ;)

Thanks, guys.

Here are a few more shots:

and this is how we spend Saturday nights in our house :)

more

And finally how the door panel look on the car:

very nice roy :o :o great job  8)

Ghia`s looking very cool 8)
Is it in the final build up stage or are there still things to build / work out?

Cheers,
Kev

that project amazeses me every time. love it.

I really hope this is the final build-up.

There are a couple of thinks I need to fix, though, like the bushings in the front beam, and a leaking fuel line, but from what I know, when it is mounted this time, it will be on the road :)

cool!!! can't wait for those pictures

Easter in Norway norally mean going up in the mountains, and I spend the first 3 days in our cabin with my boys, while my wife had to work...

But yesterday evening we came back, and today, spring is finally here, and I rolled the car out in the driveway, and worked on it most of the day outside in the sunshine and 10-12 deg (Centigrade..)

My brother-in-law came over, and we decided to tackle the headliner..

And here are a couple of pictures from the nicest part:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542023.jpg)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542024.jpg)

Not too bad, but at the rear, I have some problems:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542025.jpg)

There are some wrinkles down the middle, that will smooth out as soon as I apply some heat, but it is quite visible that I was not able to thighten it enough side-to-side, and the next shot show what I suspect is part of the problem:

(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542026.jpg)
Here it can be seen that the pockets for the steel rods are shorter for the front and rearmost rod, and it is a pain in the a.. to tighten it enough where  the pockets are shorter, they are in fact a couple of inches shorter than the original...

Oh well, I will lwave it in for now, and see what happens when the weather warms up a bit more...

After the boys were in bed, I went out again, and while I was away, my wife had bought the pipes for my new fuel lines, so I spent the night on the floor, bending the pipe in a zillion places, to make iy fit.

It starts up front next to the fuel pump which is mounted on the front "firewall":
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542018.jpg)

Then it turns around and into the slot between the pan and the dogleg:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542020.jpg)

and continues inside the wheel-well, Then turns down and into the slot formed by the heater channel:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542019.jpg)

Nice and protected along the heater channel: (I will add more clamps later)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542017.jpg)

Then it turns inwards and up between the pan and the torsion bar tube:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542021.jpg)

Then it comes up and turns backwards close to the frame fork, just above the IRS bracket:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/542022.jpg)


Now I only have to repeat this for the other side, for the return line...

Hi Roy you can use a Hair dryer to get the wrinkles out just dont get it to hot at one time 

Just cut back that listing until it matches up with the other one. Be careful with heat and perforated vinyl!

Thanks for the advice,

here's a shot from late last night, the Norwegian spring is here :)

nice work dude
yours wheels are top

thanks.

here's a shot after todays work on the front

Very nice job.     But is it so god to have the fuelline in the heaterchannel.  In case of a accident it will broke and cause danger!!

Jimmy

The lines are not inside the heater channel, but under the car, beside the heater channels.

I know..    I mean i case of a sidecrash the line vill break!

Jimmy

PROGRESS!!

She runs (or more accurately ran...)

Here's a video of the startup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0qBojJTBrI

and the funny noise that made us stop and take the engine apart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM_VunaQylQ

I finally found time to put the engine back in, and after some initial tweaking of the mapppings it actually runs. Not good, but it runs...

So I thought I should take it out for a spin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FF3BNhtMjc

As you can hear, there is quite some tuning left to do, but now I can focus on finishing up the rest, so that I can get some more testing and tuning done.

I have the carpets, all the fabric for the interior, and also the brightwork and bumpers lying around, so the final assembly should be smooth (famous last words...) . My wife will fire up her sowing machine next week, so things are moving ahead.

And btw, I look HUGE in that little car... (Well I am quite big  )

Cool! That had to be a great feeling to drive it under its own power. Looking really good.

--louis

wow, I am slow in updating this thread...

so it is time for an update again.

SCC is only a couple of weeks away  :-[

I am on vacation for a few weeks, but we are staying at home the last two weeks, so I will be able to get some work done anyways.

First, a shot of the area under the gas tank. I had a leakage a few weeks back, which dissolved the paint, so I cleaned up and painted it again:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580970.jpg)

Then a shot of one of the finished wheels, I had a hard time finding good center cups to my EMPI 8 spokes, only to find out that SSP in UK have started making repros that in my opinion look excellent:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580974.jpg)

Next on the list was to make some seat rails for my Golf I seats, and I used a set of old beetle rails that I welded to the seats as low as I could possibly get them. They certainly look ok:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580971.jpg)

But there is absolutely NO way I can fit my 6 ft 4" in there...

I tried pushing the seat all the way back until it hits the rear seat crossmember:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580972.jpg)

But the result is that the seat hangs out over the rail for almost half of the length of the rail, offering little or no support..
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580973.jpg)

In addition, my head still hits the ceiling, so this will not work...

I have two options at this point, I think; use the original seats; they are at least lower than these, or bolt the Golf seats directly through the floors...

I want to keep the original rails on the floor, though...

Oh well, The outside of the car is also coming together, and I actuallyy hosed it down yesterday, and also adjusted the front suspension up, to a more speed-bump friendly height.

Looking good :)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580975.jpg)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580976.jpg)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580977.jpg)

Also a small mishap when mounting the rear deck lid:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/580980.jpg)

Do you need the torsion bar covers for the body? I have a set I'll probably never use.

No thanks, I have them, just not mounted yet :)

WOW. july 29th was the last update...

well. things are moving quite slowly here, but eevry now and the I get some stuff done.

I had plan to attend SCC, but as that plan failed miserably, progress has been slow since.

I have had some problems with noise into the esc, most likely coming from my ignition trigger system (picking up the trigger signal from a 009 distributor) so I decided to convert to EDIS before getting to deeply involved in tuning.

I have a few more parts coming in before that conversion is finished, so in the meantime I have mounted and finalised a few more things.

Here are a few shots that shows the status as of last week:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607297.gif)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607298.gif)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607292.gif)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607293.gif)

Not so sure about this, though:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607294.gif)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/607296.gif)
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/594885.jpg)

I just hope the snow does not come before I get a few more miles on the road.

As you can tell by the red plates, I have already had it out on the road :)

stay tuned

I got around to mount the rear bumper today

And I removed the overrides on the front again, as I like this minimalistic look better...

yes looks better without overriders  8)

You're not the first one to say that :)

Just need a set of Euro Guards now? or have the seams welded and make them a One Piece Blade with the seam showing it looks unfinished   ;)

Yes I know. My Euro guards are really rusty though. I was thinking of usin a set of stainless blades, and weld, grind and polish them. Would that work?

Have them Rechromed ;)

that costs more than a complete set of stainless ones...  :-\

Looks better without the towelrails.

Another vote for straight blades, looks much cleaner.

Car's looking good  ;D

:D :D :D :D :D

Nothing wrong with the seams, IMO.

Euro guards is your answer! Nice work overall! :)

wow, time really flies.... It's been 3 months since my last post here.

Generally not too much has happened, as winter kicked in in December with loads of snow and cold weather, the rush for getting it on the road before the winter was gone, and the worst thing that can happen is that you actually think you have a lot of time...

Oh well, before the snow came, I did struggle a lot to get the engine running well, and I have the problem more or less narrowed down to a faulty output from the ECU board. It only fires one bank of injectors, but after some advice from fellow FI-friends, I tried hooking all injectors up on one "channel", and then it runs well enough for me to take it for a few spins.

Here is a shot from one of the last trips in october, before the snow came:

Then winter kicked in, and my garage was packed with the car and a lot of other stuff, and during X-mas holidays, my wife forced me to clean up the garage, so that her daily driver would have at least one of the spots in my garage, so I took the ghia for a spin in the snow, and on summer tires, that was not a nice experience, and you can tell by the pictures, it was a cold experience...

as you can see from the last pic, the door panels on one side is still not finished.

The last few months I have done a lot of thinking, and since I plan to have the engine and other modofications approved by the Norwegian road authoroties, I came to the conclusion that the wheels had to go... I know, some of you will not be to happy about this, but there is a couple of reasons for this...

first of all, in order for the road authorities to approve my engine, I need upgraded brakes, and I have a German Kerscher vented disk setup coming in in a couple of weeks. These kits come with a TUV approval for 136 hp, which the road authorities have confrimed will be approved on my car. Now, I then needed to decide what pcd to order, and the car being a '62, I felt that 4x130 is not the right choise, as basically these EMPI wheels are the only ones yjat will look good. These wheels are some 40-50 years old, and a 2-piece design. I plan on doing some spirited driving, also on road-tracks, so the idea of using these wheels did not appeal to me...  Therefore I ended up with a 5x130 pcd, and will use flat-4 fuchs for the first season at least.

Secondly the offset of the EMPI wheels are not optimal, and the road authorities does not like the idea of a narrowed beam, so since the flat-4 fuchs have an offset of 45mm, I have decided that thew will be a better choice for that reason too.

So I will now mount an adjustable puma beam, no dropped spindles, and the Kerscher vented disc brake kit.

Here's how the car sits as of today:

the brakes are in transit, the puma beam is on my workbench, and yesterday I picked up the wheels from my friends at Unneberg Bil:

The wheels are polished, not chromed, and will be detailed.

It will be 5.5 up front, deep6 out back and a 4.5 as spare.

This pretty much sums up the status as of today, and there are still quite a few things to be done prior to the spring, but we still have 3/4 of a meter of snow here and some -15 °C, so there is still time.

As I mentionned, I was struggeling with noise in the trigger signal to the ECU, and here is a shot of the engine after I converted to a crank trigger system, and the rpm signal is now as smoooth as silk:

I will clean up the wiring and add som insulation to the firewall also this winter

I had some time to fill today, so I decided to have a look at my new wheels.

I have ended up with a set of fuchs replicas, and will have 5.5" up front, deep-6 out back, and a 4.5" for spare. All come from flat-4.

I bought the polished version, as I wanted them detailed, so I though I should explain the process here.

First I started out with a cake basin from the local budget store:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640660.gif)

Then I masked out the openings from the backside:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640661.gif)

I flipped the wheel over, and made sure it was level:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640662.gif)

Then I wiped off with some solvent, and then simply started pouring paint:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640663.gif)

And kept pouring until I was happy with the lip:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640664.gif)

After letting the wheel sit for the time it takes to consume an ice-cold can of bubbling fluid, I simply poked the masking tape witn an x-acto knife:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640665.gif)

I let the paint drain out, and discovered that I made a mess on the inside of the wheel, so on number 2, I also covered the entire inside in masking tape.

I used a semi-gloss black enamel pain with some 10% thinner in it.

So this is how they now sit, waiting for the paint to dry:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/640666.gif)

I now just have to wait for the deep-6 wheels to arrive from Japan...

WOW,
great thinkin to do it like that!
looks super easy compared to masking :)

Isn't the recess deeper than the holes in the center of the wheel? Or maybe you drain the extra paint from there via the air valve hole?

Good idea anyways... ;)

Looking very good,those wheels are gonne be really cool under the Ghia.
(I didn't know they were also in 6" available by Flat4,good to know).So,let the pics come.
 ;)

you are right, in the last pic, you can see that I made a mess when draining through the valve hole...

ok, so the paint is starting to dry, and becomes more satin, and here are a couple of detail shots:

and then a couple of shots of my mistakes...

first is the result of tilting the wheel in order to drain the paint through the valve hole, but I forgot that there might be som paint in the bolt recess...

the second shot shows the result of dragging a paint-covered rag across the polished lip...  Smart move..

10 minutes with the dremel and this should be fixed :)

looking very nice!
Didn't they do it @ Porsche a bit the same way? I thought I once heard something about it  ???

Good luck with the Ghia!!!

gr
Wout

yes in a similar manner, except I heard that they immersed the entire wheel, but the effect is the same, and they probably had more paint available tnan the 1 litre can I had ;)

and while I am at it, a couple of more with nuts and cap:

Looks great! Will look perfect on the Ghia 8)

Looks perfect!
How much paint did you need to fill the rims?! 1Liter, 2, 3?!

But:

Don´t you think the paint will chip off because you didn´t sand the rim or use primer before "the paint job"?

I used 1 liter, and that was just barely enogh on the 2nd rim, so for the deep-6's I need more I guess.

I did sand down very lightly, but since I did not know excactly where the edge would be, and I did not plan to polish again, I might have an issue after some time... A friend reported that his were finr for at least 4-5 years. only time will show :)

progress is slow, and with 4 feet of snow, it is hard to build up motivation...

But I managed to paint and mount the new front beam (a std width one with adjusters), and today I also managed to mount the new front brakes.

These brakes are vented front discs and they come with documentation that they are tested and approved in Germany for up to 136 hp, so I know the Norwegian DOT will be pleased...

Here's how it looks:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/651533.gif)

I have not received all the studs yet, but I had to mount a wheel just to see:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/651534.gif)

And the very important measurement of distance from the wheel to the fender:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/651535.jpg)

And for comparison, here is the same measurement with the 3" narrowed beam, dropped spindles and EMPI Spyder mags wheels:
(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/651536.jpg)

It seems that I got the wheel some 20-22 mm further out in the opening, just as planned :)

Hi Roy,
so what tires will you be using in the back?
I am running 215/654 in the back, but they slightly rub :)

Peter,

my plan is 185/65, but I will have to see how that fits as soon as the rear wheels arrive

Good to see some progress.
Did you solve your MS issues?

nope, since the car is not rolling, and the fact that there is still som 4-5 feet of snow here, hava I not been able to do any more testing, but I have received some spare parts, and will investigate further in the next few weeks. Suddenly the snow is gone :)

I thought I've seen this done before....? You can't take all the credit ;) Although, Yours turned out better than mine! Here's my original write-up on refinishing Fuchs at home. Happy Motoring~ http://www.themotoringjournal.com/cars-for-sale/refinishing-fuchs-at-home.html

One more thing, The spot where your paint got high next to the lug hole can be fixed very carefully with a razor blade. That's how I did it... Polish it afterward and you'll never know it was there.


Cheers

Chris R

I never tried to take any of the credit, as the idea has been discussed on various forums I have frequented lateely, as well as in some magazines, I just wanted to try to see how it worked as I found it to be a great idea, and not too different to what the factory did 40 years ago... And I never used any of your copyrighted material either... ALl the pics are of my wheels in my garage, and everyone can feel free to use them for what they want...

You did a fantastic job Roy. It might have been easier to just point credit in the right direction from the beginning.

May your roads be winding~
Chris R

I think you're doing a top job there Roy, top marks  8)

You sir , are a glutton for punishment. I know from where you come. I rebuilt my Ghia in about the same fashion. I have a '71 coupe with extensive body mods. I think they are an improvement, but to each his own. I have a 2276 with Megasquirt EFI, Ford EDIS ignition, 52mm Chrysler TB, Engle FK7 cam. 1:4 rockers, ect. As soon as I can figure out how to get my photos small enough to post, I will. My wife and I have done all of the work so it is a work of love. I can't believe the power and throttle response of the EFI. I had a '59 Ghia with a 2180 and this is far and above from that. Very nice work on your car. Keep on "Ghias Rule".

wish I had more time on my hands, but at least the front end is done, just need to mount the sway bar, and a set of 6 and 7" cookie cutters came up for sale here, so I borrowed them for a trial fit:


(http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/657997.gif)

Even with a 2" narrowed IRS rear end, the tires rubbed...

Though I might use these for some track action, but I guess a round of 6" all around will fit better...

Also some new parts from my ECU arrived this week, so things move in the right direction

Uh-oh, those cookie cutters are really working for me! 

the cookie cutters look very cool, nice work on the fuchses too ;)
Kristof

Viva la Cookies!! ;D

They look great paint detailed that way, pretty similar to what we did on AssHull's car :)

Oh man! Those cookies look great! :o ;D
I've got to get rid of mine before I end up finding a car to put them on! The cab is going on my chrome sprints (well, this week it is - it might end up on fuch copies), the '68 is going on original 8-spokes and the '51 is going on FF BRMs! Thats enough cars, surely! :D

before I start a lot of modifications to make this work, I have a question. For me, I think the cookie cutters looked surprisingly right on the car, but I also have a feeling that the reason why I like them is the combo with 7" 's in the rear, and the fatter lip on those. Will it be the same with 6" at the rear also? I am not sure, to be honest, maybe some of you have opinions on this

Roy

I agree, it won't look as good with 6's on the rear :-\

Is it not even close to fitting? Or do you just need a little bit?

I just need a little bit...

here are a couple of more shots[attachment=3]

the Ghia has quite a pronounced "boat-shape" in the rear, so the problem area is behind the center-line, on the top half (1-2 o'clock)
I have not adjusted the rear toe-in, and I might be able to machine a few mm off the inside of the wheel, and if I on top of that go down to a 185 or even 175 tyre, this might work.

Maybe even some "persuation" of the wheel opening is needed, as thes wheel arches are probably not too close to the original shape anyways...

As I said, anything is possible, just a matter of how much effort I am to put into this.

What size tire is on there now? Anything smaller than a 205 will look a bit funky on a 7" wide wheel. I vote a little "persuation" first, then machine the mounting pad of the wheel... although as I remember there isn't much you can take off there.

those are 195's and you remember correctly, only a few mms to be shaved on the wheel.

OK, I wanted to have a closer look at the wheels on the car, and also take it for a test drive, so first the good news:

There is rain on the car, so there is the proof that it runs and I took it for a spin around the block:
[attachment=1]

The wheel sits rather nicely in the opening, ok?

Then to the other side:

Approx same angle and distance from the wheel:

What the heck????

Where did the rhs wheel go?

I am currently investigating what happened here, and will be back with an update later.

All good ideas are welcomed :)

did you only narrow one side ??????? :-\

this is an original front beam...

ok, I did some measurements, and first I did the same before I removed the old narrowed beam, and here are these measurements:

this indicates that with the old beam, dropped spindles and EMPI wheels, I am within 3-4 mm side to side. Not too shabby.

Then todays measurement:

a little hard to read, but it seams that there is some 30mm difference. I took this measurement close to the center of the wheel, since the camber probably is way off.

I checked a couple of things, and that was the offset of the wheels, and the distance to the brake disc, and all checked out.

So I will simply have to work my way inwards, as there is a number of things that can have ended up misaligned, icluding the beam itself, the blade springs, the trailing arms, and the spindles. Maybe some of the set screws didnt quite align up with the indents in the springs.

Hi Roy Try Measuring from the Frame head out  you could have Bent Trailing arms on the right side (pass/Side ;D)

That's an option, I will do the measurement, but I used the same trailing arms as with the EMPI wheels, and then everything was ok...

I managed to get some measurements done, and it seems that the beam is quite centered on the framehead, and trailing arms also checked out ok.

As suspectedm the camber angles were way off, and with a couple of other adjustments, I managed to get the tho ssides within some +/6-7 mm, so I think that by maybe trying to move the beam over a couple of mms and maybe also loosen the body-chassis bolts and adjust the body vs the floorpan, I will get close enoughh. I have had a couple of friends point out that this is not worse than most other cars anyways...

On the right hand side, the rear tyre just barely cleared the fender, so I took a couple of shot of the 7" wheel in its final location, maybe the car need to be raised a little in the back though:

and a full view of the car. The front height is about right, but it's a bit too low in the back.

Also the side mouldings are about to be mounted one of the coming days, and it needs a thorough cleaning :)

As you can see, the snow is gone at least from my driveway :D

Those rear wheels sure look nice!  ;D

yep they do!

hello Roy,
as a reference: i have late 6 fuchs with 195/70 or 80? and have about 1.5 - 2 cm space between tyre and arch,
The irs is not narrowed.
I would take a tyre like that on your fuchs; heres a pic of my car

nice :)

do you know the offset/backspacing of that wheel?

Here you go :)

excellent

flat and deep 6 have the same offset then. interesting

thank you

Nice work so far.Going to try and run 15 x 6 and 15 x 7 Phone dials on my ghia.Going to be tight.

That will be tight indeed ;)

Easter ie here, and some work has been done, including starting the long dreaded job of drilling holes for the side moldings..

I also mounted tyres on the front wheels, and I must say I like the looks of this :)

today I got a job done that I hve feared for the last 2 years; I drilled the holes for the side moldings....

Seems ok, but I am a nerve-wreck now...

Looks more then perfect to me!!!

Awesome ghia!!!

gr
Wout

Looks perfect Roy! Now have a rest ;)

thanks, guys.

one more side to go...

now also with fuchs in the rear.

I need to raise it an inch or two in the rear, it seems

almost time to enjoy man.....the result of hard work and a good turn out, i like this ghia...

Thanks,

one more shot in the sunshine.

I cant wait to get the plates on it now. Norwegian bureaucracy is a bit slow at times...

I got the response I wanted from the road authorities, that the engine, brakes, lowering and wheels are approved, so I am a happy camper at the moment.

I also raised it one notch at the rear:

Love your ghia! Really nice!
Hope one day mine looks as good as yours  ::).

Have fun with it!

gr
Wout

Wow nice looking Ghia ! 8)

Thanks,

I took it out for a spin today, to check that things are oke before the road authorities will go through it, and I also managed to get some tuning done. It started out on the lean side, but after a few minutes in autotune mode, I saw the AFR values normalise, and it ran better and better. Pure magic...

I will have to go through the maps to smooth things out a bit, but I would say it is 90% in tune after 1 hr on the road.

I took a shot of the car during one of my pit stops :)

Temp looks good (180-200°F), pressure looks fine 12-15 psi at tickover, 20 psi around 2k.

But I need to have the front end aligned, as it was all over the place at speed, but that will be done professionally the next few days.

Looking good. So was all that hard work worth it?  ;)

--louis

Congratulations Roy! What's another hour of adjusting in the big picture?? Nothing!
Keep on driving... soon you will be driving of the island to!  ;) ;D

ooooooohhh yes  ;D

cool, must be rewarding!!
make sure to post some pics now that you're out in the daylight with no snow around ;D

Sure, as soon as the plates are on, I will shoot some more pics :)

Verry nice!

Hurry and make some more foto's before 'BP' goes down  ;D

gr
Wout

hehe, that gas station is not operating any more, it's a local car club that resrtored it.

but I do realise that BP is probably not the hottest brand around these days....

Nice !

I've just been told about a new type of car that runs on water...

Unfortunately it's only water from the gulf of Mexico! :o :D



Looks awesome Roy! I was a little concerned when you started talking about Fuchs instead of the Empi's, but when they look that good it all makes sense! ;)

WOW, time flies,

Since the last update, I have managed to drive the car a little, kill the enginge, then rebuild it by line-boring the case, and put in an original 69mm crank, and last but not least, the car FINALLY passed all the applicable tests last week, so now the car is officially legal, including lowering, the wheels and the engine. :)

Now, the bad part, is that it is November now, and statistically, we should have a foot or two of snow, but thankfully the temperature is still above the freezing point, and the roads are dry, so I drive the car as much as I can.

Here are a couple of shots from when I drove it to work today, and the latest version of the engine:

The to-do list for the winter is long, and includes the following
-detailling and fitting the deep-6 flat-4s at the rear
-replacing plastic VW fuel rails with alu ones
-mount VR trigger behind pulley
-mount dual throttle bodies on intakes, and decide whether I should mount them or not..
-clean up wiring and plumbing
-start building my next engine ;)

been a while since i looked,the ghia has turned out really nice 8)

thanks,

here's a short video from today, where one fellow VW fan wanted to hear what the csp exhaust sounds like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jayy8VQ6Jfc

It's taken me a couple of hours to read this thread and it is epic, truely an inspirational read.

Thanks, truly inspiring to have such feedbacks :)

I have had some comments on the video I posted, with people wondering whether I have a diesel engine as I didn't rev it higher than about 4500 rpm, so if the roads are free from ice this weekend, I will try again, to see if I dare taking it further ;)

Roy, i'm going to detail my 17" Fuchs reps. for my T4 bus the way you did them. Did you already detail your centercaps ? Any pics ?

Thanks,
Harry

sorry, haven't touched the center caps yet :-\