Yet another Project '66: Happiness definitely is a HotVW!

[wolfswest]

NICE! and all that behind my back! 

I'll be over for a checkup one of these days though. 

[Peter Roberts]

Dezz put the engine money to good use and bought this 58 Bug , that had been started as a project by a friend of ours .

Dezz picked it up last night , and has been down this evening . We gave the sides of the car the flat and polish treatment , as they were a bit ' peely ' , much better .

He's like a dog with two dicks , and i can't blame him , lovely car to start off with :cool:

[Peter]

And Tim,
is all installed yet?
testdrive?

[wolfswest]

And Tim,
is all installed yet?
testdrive?

you guys are going down both.    says the man that never been on the strip before... 

[Peter]

Yeah Dem, i have a heavy ghia now 

[Wünderwolff]

Well, the holidays are here. Still too lazy to get out of bed and into the garage, so had a go at the wiring shedule of my 2276 Sedan.

I have a few questions, first of all how to wire the fuel gauge sender and the gauge itself? Ground the fuel sender and attacht the other end to the gauge or put positve on the sender unit?

Second is, why not ground both the light as the gauge with the same wires, is that to make absolutely sure there are no false readings due to grounding issues? This is per Autometers instructions (the seperate grounds).

And lastly, the grounding per autometer instructions to the extreme. They say to ground the Tachometer with a wire all the way to the negative clamp of the battery. Could this again be to avoid false readings?

[lowfastbus]

Stop playing and go to work!

[Peter]

just ground them together

[wolfswest]

never grounded my autometers all the way to the battery, and certainly not all separately.  Did this with my autometers and also with my vdo's (which are by the way, waaaaay cooler then you autometers  ) and never had a single problem with them.

DWS

[Peter]

Isnt it finished yet?

[Peter]

How are you doing Tim,
when will you install the engine?
If you need help call me

[Wünderwolff]

Yesterday the 66 was back on all fours, the short gearbox is in (supported by a midmount), brakes have been mounted and today I even shoved the engine into its bay    Apparently the constant nagging of the Wunderwaffles did have the effect they were looking for.

In the mean time the car is pulling eternal wheelies (using axlestands) as I'm putting dropped spindles on at the front. I didn't reaaly like the harsh ride with the lowered to the max Puma. And apparrently the balljoint rubbers didn't either, they were worn to death after maybe 2000 km at the most. I hope they will be less strained with the dropped spindles used for lowering and the Puma only used to adjust to the perfect height.

Next up is installing new wiring, converting to 12V in the process and then I'll be ready to rumble for one more season.

In the mean time I guess my word might not be worth that much anymore, but this time I will add some pics tomorrow. Because the age old adagio still stands: this thread is worthless without pictures!

[Wünderwolff]

Well, here it is, as promised: my new power source

[Wünderwolff]

And some outstanding (as in late, not as in good photography) stills of the Porsche 914 seat and its custom/standard frame and the roller gas pedal of which I'm highly positive.

[Diederick/DVK]

nice tim!
didn't know you had 914 seats too. aren't they a little low now?
i still need to get my frames cut and welded.

[Wünderwolff]

They are indeed mighty low, I don't mind, I'm tall enough to pull it off. I actually like the driving position, but can imagine that most people would loathe the way you sit mere inches above the chassis. It is also pretty upright, again something I rather like, though most like to be laid back.

I've seen others adding a small platform on top of the seat frame, however if I were to do it again and if I wanted that higher seating, I'd go the extra effort of doing the exact same as I did now except for cutting the upright bars as well and adding a bit of tubing to get to the required hight.

What I did is cut out the bar through which the backrest pivot point is attached to the original seat and welded it back in, lower in the frame to keep it rigid, yet allowing me to mount the seat right onto the frame. I shaped 2 long pieces of sheetmetal that bolt to the bottom of the seat (standard mounting holes) on the left and right hand side, each not wider than 5cm and 30 to 40 cm long. I welded two supports to each side of the frame to which I could in turn bolt the pieces of sheetmetal, as such attaching the seat to the frame. I also cut the rails off of the bottom of the frame only to weld them back on, moved to the front some cm, so I could slide my seat a bit further back as to accomodate my long legs (really needed when sitting so low). I won't be doing that on the passenger seat though, as the passenger does not need to comfortably reach for the pedals. If I do the passenger seat I'll take a few pictures for the copycats.

All I need to do now is paint the frames, cut the seats so they will let the seatbelts go through the midlle of the headrest and in the long run have them re-upholstered.

[donder]

lookin' mighty good,

So you can still drive it to the dfl 1/4mile throphy in 2weeks   

[Diederick/DVK]

i'll see you in bitburg and check out your seat height then
i've got the porsche frames too and was thinking of retaining the porsche slider by the way.

[Wünderwolff]

Finally some progress, although it doesn't ad up to a driving car  Yet!

Out with the old:

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In with the new:

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I just ordered all the raw material and wired up my own electrical circuit. Much cheaper and it has all my gauge wires and customizations like turn signals in headlights incorporated in a rather stock fashion.

Oh, and this arrived in the mail today, I'm working now on laying out the dash and creating a template. And getting ready, mentally to ruin my cleaned dash 

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[volkskris]

I saw this car for sale a month back or so. decided to keep it?

[Wünderwolff]

I saw this car for sale a month back or so. decided to keep it?

Well, Yes and No. Long story short, we had 4 cars, my Golf I and 3 garage bound projects. It was just a bit too much so at least one had to go. It turned out the Girlfriends notch was the first to sell, so garaging problem solved. It's still for sale though  , sort of, and if the offer is right it might go. But that doesn't mean I stop working on it, anyway it will always sell better driving and scaring the shit out of the potential buyer 

So today I cut the templates out of some cardboard boxes (Ikea and Oatmeal) on which I used assorted kitchen utensils to draw the holes (Duvel glass, pot of mayonaise, scale, spice jar ...). I cut them out for the last fit and then transfered them onto the dash.

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And then I pulled out the dril bits. I didn't like the idea of using a holesaw as they are not that precise and do not always come in the required sizes. So I decided to go Vintage and drill the circumference of the holes with a 3.5 mm drill and use the file to get to the correct size, man what a job 

But the result is nice, I only got the Fuel gauge in today, but decided to Mock up for fun and courage to keep drilling.

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[wolfswest]

update?  I know you installed already a few extra gauges...

[Wünderwolff]

Well, I didn't want to spill the beans before I was finished. First picture is an example of the amount of holes I had to drill. Imagine doing that for the Monster Tach 

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And the result, I just need to ad some some warning light in between the Oil temp and oil pressure gauge (oil pressure and charging) and then a set of warning lights below the shiftlight: left blinker, high beam, right blinker

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And finally, for those who are wondering, this is by how much the tacho clears the window wiper assembly. Millimeters!

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[Wünderwolff]

The engine is out again, straight to the engine stand for a professional start-up. Just to satisfy the mechanics curiosity we have dismounted the oilpump (shadek) to know the camshaft: an FK10. From there on it was one small step to measuring the lift of the valves to get a reading on the rocker ratio. Those rockers are Scats, apparently known for not delivering the ratio rockers they advertise, always a bit wilder. Seems I have a sly bit more than 1.5 ratio rockers.

Tomorrow might be fire up day, depending on some other jobs, let's hope it runs 

[wolfswest]

allright! 

you can paint the enginebay already satin black so the engine can be mounted again in no time.

[Peter]

and how did she run?

[Wünderwolff]

Well gave the mechanic a call around seven if he was going to work on my engine. About to fire her up was the answer. So I hightailed it to Destelbergen to witness her barking back to life.

A bit of pre-startup testing and a bit of cleaning of the rusted out MSD later and thar she blew at 8 o'clock. The engine is running smooth! Idles good and low, purring like a kitten. Picks up very nice and revs up barking like a dog 

Thanks to the Geko Tuning Team.

[vwcab]

Hey Tim,"geko" tuning,is that still Koen Desmet?

[donder]

yeeehaaaaaaaaaaa, another WW car  ready for DDD !

[Wünderwolff]

Well, if they ever get to a DDD9, I'll be there 

As for Geko, yes indeed Koen is still wrenching. In the pictures, he's the one making the Geko favourite color proud: GREY