Picked uptake new door seals ordered from Walloth-Nesch at Vintage Sports & Restoration Friday January 15, 2021. Had been waiting a year for the set of new door seals to become available & bought them the day I was notified of their availability.
First step was to label where each seal went, wash off the mold release powder & sand the gluing surface of the rubber.
2nd step was removing the desicated old rock hard door seals & clean up the old glue with Xylol. Thi
The door shuts and sills have been painted tonight, along with the inside of the bonnet, boot and doors (no photos of that though).
After a final flat down tomorrow with some fine sandpaper tomorrow morning the body should be painted!
BIG updates coming!
Today I removed the fenders to check and see how bad the rust is on the pillar. Not Bad!!! Great news.
I was pretty anxious to tackle the leaded joint up front. I mean I have taken so many fenders off cars - dodge dart, plymouth valliant, vw Bug, (never a ghia though) and NONE of them had a leaded joint!
OK so I started there first. ground off the paint to see only shiny metal - got out a pic and sure enough it was soft.
Then I got out the h
Welp, almost 2 years since my last blog post. High-level overview of what's happened since then:
2019:
Bought a property to build a new house (and more importantly, a bigger garage)
Pulled the motor back out (couldn't get the 5-speed trans in no matter how much I cursed at it)
Reinstalled motor/trans
Fab'd a new trans mount
Installed IE gas pedal
Completely re-wired engine bay and fuse box
Built battery holder and installed AntiGravity Lithium Batt
Evening everyone,
Another post from me! Tonight the car had its final sand off and then primer, which I'm totally chuffed about! The colour is going on next week.
After what feels like a million times the car has finally been properly flatted off for the last time - it will have a light going over between the primer and the final colour but it's there.
The car is so straight, I'm absolutely chuffed with the finish already and can't wait to see her in black and back a
I had a look at the centre caps that came with the wheels and they were a bit shot, I wasn't happy with the finish at all.
I've seen some limited edition centre caps online that some JDM cars are running in yellow rather than chrome, and I thought they looked awesome. I sent WORK Wheels UK /Driftworks an email last week on the off chance they had one or two left in stock (not likely as they were launched in 2017 and were really popular) and they came back and said they didn't.
Happy New Year to all.
I hope you're all well. Thought I'd post a new years update as a bit more progress has been made. I got a drill press for Christmas which I'm chuffed about and this year the interior and boot of the car has now been painted in the final colour!
I think it look epic.
Over the Christmas break I got a bit carried away and ordered some WORK Equip 03 wheels - 15x8 Et-3 and some TOYO R888R's, 205/50r15. Absolutely chuffed with how it all loo
Since I am getting brave on the exterior I decided to open up the next can of worms. The quarter-panel. Besides W&N is having a sale!
This was my first quarter on this car and I had no idea what I was getting into - could not really tell from inside what was behind it - and the manual was vague to me too- just some vague ideas from a guy named Barney and his Ceylon in the FAQ. Thanks Barney!!! 🙂
So I went for it. What you see here is me cutting open the rusty panel and find
Here is what was to me my first exterior panel work. It was fun and easier than I thought. I am done with it and will let the painter finish up the detail. No more rust. A member Coloincaalpine donated the sheetmetal from a donor car. Here is the donor panel... I lined up the two factory holes with my rear panel factory holes and did some eyeballing of the lines for what seemed like hours.
Then I cut out the rust and clamped the panel behind scribed it, cut the shape I needed out the
Well after a few months I'm calling the engine bay about done, Wiring seems happy, plumbing has ben revised a few times for little things like sensor placement. CandelaMFG did a great job on their portion.
This was much harder than it looks to make so it fits
As Fugly as these Heatshields look they work incredibly, another builder told me to be sure an keep them, I'm shocked at how ell they work
Interior next
I was having some hard times with oil accumulation on the crankcase ventilation filter which resulted in oil dripping down the side of the engine block. Patrick O'Neil of Midnight Motorsport hooked me up with a custom fab'd catch can. Ah yeah! Here is a video of my drive to his shop in West Seattle for the install.
This was a successful weekend project that I wanted to share.
Since the pinch welds from my car were really dirty and rusty, I decided to try restoring them. I started out by cleaning them with Simple Green and then soaking them in Evaporust. Afterwards, I tried gently wiping them down with acetone to remove overspray (note that acetone, paint thinner, or any other solvent will easily melt the pinch weld). This is the end product:
Its OK, but you can still see s
I'm getting pickier since seeing my car's new paint. My previously OK radiator is now starting to look cosmetically unacceptable. I tried to clean it up and spent considerable time straightening the smashed fins with a plastic spudger. Even though I achieved decent results (better with a repaint I'm sure) , I decided to go with a new radiator and keep the old one as a spare.
Here's what the old radiator looks like after cleaning. This clearly isn't the radiator that came with my c
Well folks these last few years have been filled with ups downs and everything in between. Finally getting my feet back under me and determined to get this car on the road this year. Lots to do but feels like I am starting from the start, only this time with enough parts to build a few M10s a M20 and a M50 and if I had another shell a second car 😮
Going through posts again to develop a plan but just wanted to say hello. Hoping your posts and help will help me get this done!
So I found a good deal on a TI air cleaner, which inspired me to go dual DCOE with my engine build. My goal is to attach it to the shock tower with a custom Alpina-style bracket.
But in my excitement I didn't test fit anything and took the air cleaner directly to the body shop to have it repainted...
Of course it came back looking beautiful, but when I attached the clips, they didn't line up correctly. So the air cleaner now has to be modif
My car had a gauge cluster housing from a late-model car.
The wood grain bugged me so I went to Autobahn Dismantling to find a correct style one worthy of restoring. Interestingly, the wood panel can be removed but the housing itself is actually quite different. The early style has a clear plastic window on the side, mounting holes in the top, and no provisions for attaching the fake wood panel.
The gauges themselves went to The Speedo
In the 80's, my aunt had the seats reupholstered. Unfortunately, the upholstery was done in black when they should have been blue. This was something I wanted to fix.
The first thing I did was tear down the seats. The horse hair padding was basically powder so this process was really messy.
Once the seats were dismantled, I pressure washed all the crud from the frames. The rust was removed using Metal Rescue Gel... this stuff works am
My car came dealer equipped with a FrigiKing AC unit as a console. However, in the 90s, the whole unit was unfortunately removed and tossed because it had broken. I wanted to replace the unit with a non-AC variety. My goal is to have something period correct that allows me to play music from my phone.
In my '66 Beetle, I used a RetroSound stereo with a vintage faceplate and knobs. This time I tried something different. Inspired by what I've seen on this site, I decided to use a v
When I received the harness from the body shop, it was clear that most of the electrical components themselves were heavily degraded/broken. I had anticipated that most of the electrical components would need replacing so I began buying NOS pieces on eBay when I embarked on the restoration. Here is my collection of new and refurbished parts:
The harness itself came to me in a giant tangled ball because the tape had mostly fallen off. Any of the harness that had been exp
After all of the repairs, the car was sealed...
Then primered and sanded
Then final paint!
Next will be black out work on the dash and core support. We decided to do a silver fuel-resistant epoxy on the fuel filler neck since it wasnt removable during repaint.
When the engine came out of the car, it was very tired and it needed a rebuild.
But after taking care of the fundamentals, I was left wondering what I should do with it? A lot of the original equipment had been changed over the years so it wasn't practical to return it to stock. Therefor I decided to strip off the remaining smog equipment and go with a side draft setup.
I started with a new mechanical distributor setup and higher flow fuel pump (133112606
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