Grelland's Ghia

[louisb]

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

--louis

[Grelland]

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:


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:


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:


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:


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..


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




Also a small mishap when mounting the rear deck lid:

[stealth67vw]

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

[Grelland]

No thanks, I have them, just not mounted yet

[Grelland]

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:





Not so sure about this, though:




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

[Grelland]

I got around to mount the rear bumper today

[Grelland]

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

[speedwell]

yes looks better without overriders 

[Grelland]

You're not the first one to say that

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

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   

[Grelland]

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?

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

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

[Grelland]

that costs more than a complete set of stainless ones... 

[vwcab]

Looks better without the towelrails.

[alfie the monster]

Another vote for straight blades, looks much cleaner.

Car's looking good 

[JS]

You're not the first one to say that

[Zach Gomulka]

Nothing wrong with the seams, IMO.

[roland]

Euro guards is your answer! Nice work overall!

[Grelland]

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:

[Grelland]

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...

[Grelland]

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:

[Grelland]

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:

[Grelland]

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.

[Grelland]

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:

[Grelland]

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

[Grelland]

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:


Then I masked out the openings from the backside:


I flipped the wheel over, and made sure it was level:


Then I wiped off with some solvent, and then simply started pouring paint:


And kept pouring until I was happy with the lip:


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:


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:


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

[Peter]

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

[roland]

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...

[vwcab]

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.
 

[Grelland]

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...

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