Restoring the "Stuttgart Express"

[bill stipe]

Thanks guys for the kind words.  I must say, my son does nice work.  He started welding at an early age.  His welds put mine to shame and is an integral part of the rebuilding process.  


With all the windows in, except the doors, we've turned our attention to getting the body back on the pan.  That way, we can go in so many directions in the rebuilding process.

One thing we've done is remove the Wilwood master cylinder (it's gone to another project) and have installed a VW master.  This one looks so much "more at home" on the Stuttgart pan.  Since these things eventually turn brown from surface rusting, it has received a coat of clear.
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And we've purchased some aluminum for the floors.  As you may remember, the originals were suffering from extreme corrosion and were crumbing along the edges.  The Stuttgart surely had raw aluminum panels for the floors, but we've purchased some aluminum that is factory polished with a coating, so it should be low maintenance.
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Here's a close up of the floors.  Maybe I should have said a mirror image of the roof of our shop.
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With the ali installed, we've lined up some friends to help with the body installation this next weekend.

[speedwell]

 

[kittycat50]

Just WouaHHHH , great job , you've done here .... the dragstrip is waiting for you

[Liou]

wow I look at since 1 to 4 pages great work !! congratulation ;o)

[bill stipe]

It was great to have some good friends to take part of their weekend to help with the body installation.  The body assembly team began showing up about eight a.m.; Brian, Biggg, Les Fryar, Randy Aston and myself.  Since Les has a bad back, he was nominated to be our camera man.

Randy had brought some glue, an industrial type of Super Glue, so we began installing the pan seals.  We let the glue dry about 15 or so minutes and the body lift began.
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[bill stipe]

We had replaced both heater channels earlier in the project and didn't use a pan for alignment, so we were pleasantly surprised that all the holes lined up nicely.  We had purchased some AC Industries pan bolts and they're "all" installed.
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With all the bolts tightened up, it was time for Brian to weld the down tubes to the rear torsion housing.  As time permits, we'll brush some gloss black over the welds.
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[bill stipe]

The body bolting and welding went so quickly, we started work on the front suspension.  The front end support went on first, followed by the axle and radius rods.
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That brings us to the close of a good day of assembly.  We can now branch out and attack multiple areas as parts are available.

[bill stipe]

We decided to stay at the front of the car, installing the battery box.  With that done, we cut some more of the shiney stuff and installed it under the front support.
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As we unwrapped the fuel tank, we discovered quite a few spots that needed some additional cleaning.  With that done, the tank is again where it had been for over thirty five years.
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[speedwell]

bill no words to describe the work you've done  , i'm hurry to see the car on a dragstrip or why not another report in hot vws xxx year later after the first report

good luck with the rest of the rebuild
rgd
fabs

[bill stipe]

Thanks to all "Loungers" for their comments about our restoration project.  We are trying to stay period correct, as if we were back in 1975, during it's first outing.  That's why the Wilwood master cylinder came off, thanks to a comment that made me realize we we deviating from our goal.

No criticism toward our original vinyl guy, but the outcome wasn't looking good.  We contacted Custom Vinyl Designs and talked to Rodney about the project.  A long time racer, he's really gotten into the project and has made some progress.  We've offered some comments and are awaiting the next rendition.  This is what we have, so far..................
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[Baked Beetle]

WHere is that decal going..? On the side doors?. 

If your still finding it hard to get what your looking for in terms of design, give me a shot!

If this is a copy of something original then that's that, but I have some sweet ideas .

Blair
Blizare@gmail.com

[Jon]

Fantastic work so far Bill! Love the car!

About the artwork, it was never a nice design... so I guess you would "have to" keep it as it was... 

[bill stipe]

You are correct.  The train was never a work of art.  It was designed by some school kids, who used this as an art project in class.  On one hand, it might be better to some if the train mural were more enhanced, but it wouldn't be correct.  To us, that graphically challenged train is just another part of restoring the car.

[bill stipe]

We have now turned our attention to the steering box.  There was evidence of the bottom seal leaking, but the pitman arm had been welded to the shaft, so replacing the bottom seal was out.  We cleaned the gear box, inside and out.  The aluminum top was bead blasted and received a coat of clear, while the paint was drying on the box.  Before installing the box, we applied some wheel bearing grease on the inside.  After some more parts were cleaned up, it was time to install the steering box and column.
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After acquiring some switches, we installed an aluminum panel at the bottom of the dash.  There is a new Stewart Warner oil pressure gauge installed and looks just like our original, we've had in our stash for about twenty years.  The old one will be cleaned up and installed.  Hopefully it still works, but if not we have this new one available.  The original ash tray was cleaned and installed about the same time.  
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[bill stipe]

An aluminum spacer plate was fabricated to install our vintage Autometer tach in the speedometer opening.
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[bill stipe]

Made some progress recently.  With the heat (ugh!) and my day job getting in the way some of the time, we've managed to get some things done.  We made a sketch of the proposed wiring layout and that helped quite a lot in getting the wiring purchases done.  With the front firewall being base coat/clear coat paint, we installed some paper to keep the scratching of the surface down to a minimum.  I'm not a painter, but maybe the clear coat could have received more hardner.
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We decided to keep the wiring open, in most cases, and used electrical tape and white wire ties on the installation.  The connectors are the crimp-on kind, but we took off the plastic protectors.  With those protectors gone, the shrink wrap over the connections looks less bulky.
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Keeping with the open wiring idea, we now placed that bunch of wires along side the tunnel, next to the 1/4" tubing for the oil pressure gage and the battery cable.
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[bill stipe]

In that last photo, you guys might have caught a glimpse of the seat.  It has made it back from the upholstery shop, recovered as an exact to the original.
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We're delivering the door panels to the same shop, probably this week.  They will be plain black panels as were the Stuttgart's, back in the day.

We received our mainshaft back from Rancho.  They took our super beetle shaft and turned it into a "keyed" shaft.  After another mock-up completed this weekend, we're back to the machine shop with the pinion shaft.  When the shaft was modified for a tapered bearing, it appears to not be cut deep enough and we have way too much preload.

We attempted an installation of the drivers side door window and promptly scratched up the new lexan.  So it got tossed into a corner of the shop, awaiting a time when we can cut some more.  For now, we'll work on completing as much of the wiring, at the back of the car, that we can, hoping for a tranny to be installed in a couple of weeks.

[Geoff P DVKK]

Great job! I love this thread, keep up the good work.

[too old for this]

Just a thought...you are doing an amazing job,keeping it as period correct as possible and yes,you should stick with the og style door logo/decal..............................................................

but it really is ugly,could you maybe have it made up as a magnetic,that way when it is sitting at home in the shop,you can take it off and not have to keep walking past and going "great looking car ,but man that logo is just so "FUGLY"

[bill stipe]

"Too old", you made me laugh.  Way back in 1980, I remember when my issue of the HVW magazine came in the mail, I thought, WOW...finally a gasser from Texas, but OMG....that train is weird.  Man, that was so many years ago.  Who would of thunk it...  

I'll pass the magnet idea around the group and see how they vote.

We have been making some progress.  Don't know if you guys have heard, we have set a new record for Texas heat;  some 30+ days over 100 degrees.  

With the lexan in both doors, we've gone about assembling the doors.  The outside left door handle was too far gone to reuse, but we've cleaned up the non-keyed one on the right and it's not too bad.  The internal bracing was aluminum angle and has been cleaned up and re-installed.  Also cleaned up and reused are the door latch assemblies.  Take note, the door opening assemblies are from two different year models, with the right side believed to be the original 1956 ones.  Don't know how long it's been that way, it's the way it was when we took it apart.
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[bill stipe]

We've finally gotten back to hooking up the tubing to the oil pressure gauge, along with our idiot light sending unit.  With our seat finished we've also installed our Simpson seat belts.

[bill stipe]

A bit of bad news on our Pauter crankshaft.  The guys at DPR said that because of pitting, it needed to be turned .030".  No way were we going to spend a lot of coin on a .030 crank, so they are preparing a fresh VW welded stroker, 82mm with VW rod journals, wedgemated to a 12 lb. flywheel.

Last week, we got our pinion back from the machine shop (it needed some more clearance for the Timken bearing).  This past weekend Larry came over and we went about putting the gearbox together.  We had purchased the case from Rimco, who installed a single gusset and they provided some pro sliders (no syncros in the box) and some other bits.  I better get on the ball and order some axles so we can install this thing in the car.
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While Larry was setting up the shift forks, I went about bead blasting our Crown steel side cover, sent courtesy of David Crow, and our gearbox is now complete.  It contains a 3.88 ring and pinion, super beetle mainshaft (ground and keyed by Rancho), stock first and second gears; with a 1.59 third and 1.31 fourth.  As mentioned earlier, a vintage Berg "Beef-A-Diff" was installed in the carrier.  It should be a high winding gearbox in the quarter, but the motor we're gathering parts for should handle it.
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[bill stipe]

We started working on the front fender wells this weekend, after the gearbox was finished.  The original Stuttgart Express had inner fender wells under the one piece front end, so we went about using the old ones for patterns.
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Good news for our area, with a tropical storm moving into Louisiana, we received some much needed rain this Saturday evening.  It was a perfect time to stay in the shop and finish the front fender wells.
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We're starting to feel under the gun on the restore.  With a vintage racing and car show event taking place on October 22nd near San Antonio ( http://texastiming.com/circuit.htm ),  it would be a perfect time to get the car out to that area, a place where it was so sucessful in AHRA racing.  We probably wouldn't race the car, just show it, since we would want to shake it down first.  With Glen's family living in the area, we have extra incentive to try to make the event.

[speedwell]

nice work bill , and cool to see you're in the finish lane with the rebuild of stuttgart express

[bill stipe]

We had made a little progress at the beginning of the month, but have been suffering from some allergies and hadn't touched the car in about a week and a half.

Our axles arrived about two weeks ago.  They are some SAWs; about 5-6 years old and had been highly polished.  We were in such a hurry, didn't get any pics of them.  The assembly went real well, the axles slid into the fulcrums without much agrivation and it was time to install our axle tubes.
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We then went about installing the torsion bars, spring plates and the aluminum retaining plates with new inner grommets.  After that, we installed the gearbox.  Notice the extra bolt in the middle of the spring plate.  The Stuttgart team had doubled up the spring plates, something common for the day.
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With the rear bottom shock mounts being cut off to save weight, the Stuttgart team had welded new mounting points on the inner spring plates.
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[bill stipe]

With the gearbox in place, we went about cutting our battery cable and installing it from the cut-off switch to the starter solenoid and then terminated the wiring from the solenoid to the dash switches.
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With that done, we installed the clutch tube and cable; fairly straight forward stuff.
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That's when we discovered we would have to change the throwout bearing arm and shaft.  I guess with the Crown side cover, we're needing the curved throwout bearing arm.  We have those in a donor tranny so at least we don't have to scrounge parts.
This pic shows the misalignment.............
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On the power train side of things; we have received our 82mm stroker and flywheel from DPR, so we've taken those and our other engine parts to the builder.  We've hoped, all along, to put some type of VW head on the gasser.  Some of CB's CNC 044s would have been the easy route but we've kept looking and have now acquired some "old" Autocraft Stage 3 heads and expect their arrival next week. 

[bill stipe]

We couldn't find a clutch arm to our liking so we put some heat on it and bent it to align properly with the clutch cable.  Then we dipped it into a bucket of oil for some strength.

Also, this week, we've received some things in the mail.  The Stuttgart had some fairly large tires on the front, some 5.60x15's, so the modern skinny front runners wouldn't do for the restore.  We've acquired some tires from a company on the east coast.  They call them "classic front runners".
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Also, UPS has delivered our M&H's, bought through "JEGS".
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And last but not least, we received an oil pump cover from good friend David Crow;  a DDS oil pump cover....WOW.  Can't believe he gave it up.
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[bill stipe]

We've also been able to assemble the rear brakes and we've managed to find some rear drums.  We still need to drill them and press in some studs.  Sure wish we could keep them looking like this without some type of coating.
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That's a dummy motor you might have seen in the background.

[bill stipe]

Our search for some heads ended when we received some Autocraft Stage 3's, based on 040 castings.
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After cc'ing the heads, we decided to flycut the step out of the heads for more compression.  Oops, upon unbolting the flycutter, we discovered we now had a nice hole where the barrel seats.  Seems the early 040's were known to have this problem with deep fly-cutting.  They're being sent out for some serious welding and repair.  While at the machine shop, we're asking that they remove another fin, to clear our NPR cylinders.  That will also take off that broken fin.
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[bill stipe]

The Stuttgart Express is looking a lot closer to being done.  It's funny how a project can seem to start coming together when you get some color and signage on the body.  Rodney Owens (Custom Vinyl Design) started out first with applying the train mural to the doors.
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Early on, the phone number was placed on the rear fenders.  In later photos and in the article in HVW's, we notice the phone number and city showed up under the train.  Those later photos are our basis for the restoration.
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