Restoring the "Stuttgart Express"

[bill stipe]

Thanks guys for the comments. 

What can I say about Randy Larsen, one of the most exciteable VW people I know, and a good friend.  When our searching would grow stale, he would "jump start" the effort with a new lead.

After we had received the color photos from HVW's, we then knew of the colors of the signage and the train mural.  Our attention turned to trying to find out if photos existed of the interior.  That was the driving force to seek out anyone who might have those photos or a recollection of the interior.  When we would find someone, we just started writing down everything they told us.  The search for information became a history lessen of the Stuttgart Express and the people that made it happen.

The details of this posting, as well as the restoration, would not have taken place without a contribution from several people.  This is the best information we've been able to assemble with the help of, in no particular order, David Crow, Eric Ellis, Meridith Horn Jr, Randy Larsen, Olly Otten, John Pelton, John Pierce, R. K. Smith, Lee Williams, Frank Wurz and of course Glens daughters, Michelle and Minka.

[Ole]

Hi Bill,

wow, thats really amazing! A great thread about a cool car! I just can imagine how much fun you had tracking the history of the car.

Greetings from Stuttgart/Germany.

Ole

[Biggg]

All right Bill,  It's been long enough. Continue with the story.  Biggg

[bill stipe]

Well, I thought of starting another topic for the actual restoration, but decided to keep the story together.

After getting the body off the chassis, we took it to be media blasted.  This was around the end of May in 2010.
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With the body gone, we finished the cleanup on the pan and sent it and the suspension parts out to be powder coated.

The body came back, media blasted and primered inside and out with epoxy primer. 
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There were about 40+ holes in the front firewall area.  I guess when someone wanted to mount something new, over the last 30 years, they just decided to drill some new holes.  We began the body cleanup by welding these up.
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[bill stipe]

We didn't want to make too many changes on the car, but some things couldn't be ignored.  The rear bumper mounting areas were both in need of repair.  They both looked about like this:
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After using a fender to locate the replacement panels, Randy Bownds (we just call him "Big") did the clean up for some welding.
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We decided to over lay the panels, to make the joint stronger, and then attached the two together with cleco's.
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At that point the panels were welded together, with my son Brian offering to do the honors.
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[volksnut]

GREAT STORY...keep that train a rolling

[bill stipe]

This photo shows how much the roof was lowered at the rear.  These pieces had to be modified to tie everything back in.
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So, Brain worked on the panels and we ended up with this.
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After Big did his thing with the grinder and flapper wheel, we applied some primer and will leave the rest to the paint and body man.
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[vwracing65]

Looking good Bill!!  I need to come over one weekend and see the car.  Its changed alot since we brought it home

[bill stipe]

We had been searching for some vintage parts for some time, i.e. magneto, Autometer Tach for magneto, etc.  Not knowing exactly what tach was in the Stuttgart, we found this one and on Ebay,
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and not knowing if it even worked, sent it to Autometer, just to see what they would tell us.  

They said it was in perfect working health, for a standard ignition V-8.  I'm not sure if they knew how to convert it, or they don't want to get into that end of the business, they just said they didn't have any of the old parts to convert it to four cylinder and/or magneto usage.  After some surfing on the net, we found an automotive “instrument repair shop” that was willing to take a shot at converting it to four cylinder.  We felt fairly confident since they restore vintage auto gages and clusters, and sure enough, we received the tach back in two weeks, as a four cylinder unit.
Around the same time period, we had procured a magneto off The Samba,
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that was said to have been working.  With the tach back in hand, we contacted Joe Hunt Magnetos about the use of a converter (such as the Autometer one) to allow the mag to talk to the tach.  They said to send both items and they would see if the converter would work, before I purchased one.  Thought that was pretty cool, so both were packaged up and sent.  A request was also made for them to provide a brown cap, new wires and perform maintenance on the mag.

As I was typing this series of posts today, I received a call from Joe Hunt, stating that the converter box worked.  They said the needle followed the rpm curve nice and steady.  We should have these items back by next weekend.
 
According to the HVW article and Lee Williams, the Stuttgart had a Hurst Shifter.  When we took possion of the car, this Hurst was bolted in the Sudden Impact.
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We sent it to Jeff Shan, in Florida (he's "glandnut" on The Samba),for a rebuild and it came back looking like this
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[bill stipe]

One of the last things to address were the heater channels.  Even in the early photos we have seen of the Stuttgart, it appears the heater channels were bad, even back then. 

As stated earlier, the original roll bar in the car was long gone and replaced with a roll cage.  The cage was then eliminated during our demo of the car.  After some discussion and input, the decision was made to install a minimal roll bar per NHRA requirements.  With the floors and rear firewall not original VW, this would require the new roll bar to be welded to the heater channels.

This is how the left channel looked after media blasting.  The opposite side wasn't much better.
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Some of you know the routine , drill spot welds, cut, grind, and %*%_@%#@ a little.
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Skipping the %*%_@%#@ part, this is the new right side channel in place and we're ready to start some welding.
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[bill stipe]

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Thank goodness this part was done.  Looking back, half the battle was just deciding to get started.
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[speedwell]

looks good bill , keep up the good work 

fabs

[bill stipe]

Thanks Fabs. 

We have about three or four more post to get the story up to date.

[simon uk]

awesome thread, cant wait to see more pics!

[bill stipe]

When the pan returned, it was time to re-install the body and start the roll bar.  We had already received our roll bar kit from S&W Racecars.  It was not their standard kit; they had sent us a work-up drawing, earlier, and we had modified the dimensions and eliminated some of the bars, for our “minimal requirement” roll bar.  Since we don’t have tig capabilities, we ordered the kit with 1 3/4" x .134 wall mild steel tubing. 

First thing was to get some .125” plates rolled, trimmed and welded to the heater channels.  With the roll bar width being narrower than the heater channels, it allowed us to bend the bottom of the tubing out, to contact the plates at an angle.  This way, we had adequate body clearance at the top of the bends.
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Next we installed the down bars and cross bar.  The door bar, as supplied, was a straight piece of tubing.  We bent it to curve out toward the door, for driver clearance, and then down to the heater channel by the front pillar.
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The original seat mount was constructed from thin-wall, galvanized electrical conduit that was brazed together (brass).  It had been cut up and welded on a couple of times.  In the name of safety, the seat mount was rebuilt. Just like the original, it attaches to the heater channel, tunnel and cross bar with bolting. 
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[bill stipe]

Before sending the car out for body work and paint, we needed to address the rear apron.  We had noticed the original Stuttgart Express had a rather odd looking rear apron.  Lee Williams does not remember where it came from.  Maybe some of you guys can assist in whom the manufacturer may have been.
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We had never seen one of these and had little hope of finding one, so we decided to purchase a new fiberglass apron, one that resembled a stock type apron.  We started trimming the sheet metal for fit and used dzus style buttons for attachment, the same style that was original to the car, on the glass front end.  Also, a rear tubing support was fabricated to help hold the two rear fenders, in the event the apron was removed for maintenance, etc.

This was a trial fitting of the rear apron.
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Finally, we ended out body work with mounting of the deck lid.  We still had the hood pins, which appear to be the originals, to mount our donor deck lid. 
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After the car went to paint we found an apron, on The Samba, which appears to match the original and has never been mounted.  This was shipped to us from Islip, New York.  The outer coating seems to contain a lot of cracks, weathered from probably thirty or so years of just being kicked around.  If it’s the gel coat, it’s starting to crumble and will need lots of attention.  We need to get it to the body man and see if he is up to the challenge.

[71CALRIPPER]

thank you kept me going on my early morning work shift

Pure class !!

[bill stipe]

With the body gone, we now turned to getting some things done on the pan.
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We had found some old Chenoweth tranny mounts.  They were in need of re-coating, but we had problems finding someone in the area to re-plate them with gold zinc, so the next time I went to the powder coaters, we picked a transparent gold and had them coated with powder.We also had received some brake parts and went about getting these sorted, adding a residual valve, toward the front of the car. 
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This is a little bit long, but worth the read...........in how NOT to clean out the emergency brake cable tubes.

Next came the emergency brake cables, used during the Stuttgart days as a staging brake.  We cleaned up the original cables and sleeves and started sliding the left side one thru the tube.  It didn’t go very far and came to a stop.  I guess the fifty year old grease had been hardened, even worse during the powder coating process.

The only thing long enough; around the shop, was some spare brake lines.  Cut one end off and flatten it like the end of a screw driver.  Hooked the other end to my cordless drill and I started reaming out the tube.  Felt pretty good until the drill motor stalled, hitting something quite solid.  Ok, just reverse the drill and back the brake line out.  When the brake line came out, the end looked like a cork screw…..with about 10” missing.

I went to the local hardware and found a drill bit with a six foot extension on it.  What can I say, it broke off and joined the broken brake line, up inside the tube.  About now, I had this real sick feeling come over me.

It was now time for some more &@#&&_#%@.  As a last resort, what I should have done in the first place, was to find some all thread rod, that would fit inside the tube, and proceeded to force (with a hammer) it through the tube.  Little by little, the pieces started appearing out the end of the tube, up by the hole in the tunnel where the e-brake handle bolts. 

[Lil Gasser]

Before sending the car out for body work and paint, we needed to address the rear apron.  We had noticed the original Stuttgart Express had a rather odd looking rear apron.  Lee Williams does not remember where it came from.  Maybe some of you guys can assist in whom the manufacturer may have been.
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That looks really similar to the one on Stutt bee,I dont know the manufacturer though,sorry

LG

[bill stipe]

Good catch, I looked up some photos of the Bee.  Looks a lot like the apron on the later chopped Stutt Bee.

This is the one I just received in the mail.
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[bill stipe]

There were several layers of paint on the fiberglass front end.  So many that what we thought was stress cracks in the fiberglass, was cracks in the paint.  Both sides of the front, where the top of the fender meets the hood, and around the bottom of the hood where it transitions into the front apron, looked like this.
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Instead of sanding all the layers of paint, Pablo (body man) wanted to get someone to media blast the front.  Since the fiberglass was hand laid, there were hundreds of air bubbles, just under the gel coat.  We didn't know that until the front end came back.
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So he went about filling all those holes and finally got it to the point where he could put a couple of layers of primer on it, block sanding between each.  Finally he made some head way and the front now has a coat of finish primer on it, awainting a final sanding and color.
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[bill stipe]

What we thought would be a problem, the deck lid, actually was a lot easier. 
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It also went to the media blaster, but those guys first took a gasket scraper and started flaking all the old paint off.  After that, they gave the deck lid a dusting of media, just to clean it up.
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After Pablo filled the holes we weren't going to use and repaired some cracked areas, again sanding primer was applied and block sanded.  It is now in final primer, awaiting a final sanding and color.
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[speedwell]

good job bill , it 's cool to see another gasser returning to  life

 

[bill stipe]

We have had the worst time deciding what brake master cylinder to use.  The Stuttgart Express probably used a single master cylinder from the early 70’s and I have secured one for the car.  Then one of our team said, why use something like that when you can use a Wilwood?  It's only 3 3/8" long, comes coated in black, can be direct or remote mounted and should be safer.
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So we mocked up each one and still haven’t made a decision.  If it just didn't have that (white) Wilwood on the side....
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As can be seen, we haven't put the clutch pedal on yet.  I'm leaning toward the VW style master, just to be period correct.  I hate little things like this, so I’m looking for feedback.

[bill stipe]

We had taken the fuel tank to Sani-Weld (a food grade fabrication shop in North Houston) to be cleaned.  They have a complete facility to fabricate and polish stainless steel for the food and hospital industries.  If you remember the earlier photo of the tank, this is how it looked when we brought it home.
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Other things that needed cleaning up were our wheels.
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We found a guy that used to polish wheels many years ago, and he still had his mechanical polishing equipment.  He wasn't able to provide a finished product but we felt he could at least give us a jump start on getting our wheels polished; less work for us to finish the polishing job.

At the front are the spindle mounts that came on the car, and appear to be the original Mitchell wheels.  The wheels in the center are some Deanos we had in our stash.  The Centerlines, at the rear, were on the Sudden Impact car, when we purchased it.  The polisher couldn't get between the rivets on those, so we have some work to do on them.
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The Stuttgart Express had many wheels on the rear, from time to time.  We've recognized slotted VW wheels painted white, what appear to be Centerlines and Douglas wheels in some of the old photos.

While we know the spindle mounts will be on the front, we haven’t decided which wheels to use on the rear.  White painted VW wheels or Centerlines would probably be an obvious choice, but it’s going to be hard to leave the Deanos on the shelf.

[Wünderwolff]

As can be seen, we haven't put the clutch pedal on yet.  I'm leaning toward the VW style master, just to be period correct.  I hate little things like this, so I’m looking for feedback.

Hey Bill, question is: Will you show it or will you race it? If it's the first, I'd love to see a 100 points restoration, so go for the original item. If you're gonna race it, make it safe and compromise on the tiny details by using a better master cylinder, but do paint it all black.

[beatnik beetle]

wow ..so nice to see another ol racer being restored..keep us posted..Si

[bill stipe]

Thanks for the reply Wunder...., I was thinking along your lines.  The old master cylinder linkage has also been powdercoated black as well, so whichever one we use, it's a small bolt-on to go with either master.

[xavier]

While we know the spindle mounts will be on the front, we haven’t decided which wheels to use on the rear.  White painted VW wheels or Centerlines would probably be an obvious choice, but it’s going to be hard to leave the Deanos on the shelf.

If it is becoming too hard send the deanos my way I think I could stand it
Great job Great story by the way
Xavier

[Critter1]

I have an 1-1/2" Fourtune merged header if your interested. I don't think i'll be using it.. Its used but has new ceramic coating. I purchased it as it is now.