Saturday September 26th 2020. Drove Veronika up to Belgrade Maine to visit Brenda & Tanya Athanus. They each own 2 2002s. Both of them had 2002s new from a Maine dealership as far back as 1972. Nate Williams, from Sports Car Restoration in Plainville Connecticut, was there to visit & successfully had Brenda's 1969 Nevada 2002 running after sitting for 2 years.
I parked next to Tanya's 1973 Golf Automatic, as Brenda zoomed around the road & driveway loop.
We enjoyed s
My fit-up number umpteen - going well. front to rear location, shock tower location, floor pan location all good. getting ready to plug weld all the holes from drilling out the previous brake fluid rotted rail. Once those are plugged I plan to fit in the rail once more and weld it in. Nice working with such a solid California car - no rust in the pan or any other portions along this mount up. I would say the most difficult fit area was here where the fire wall meets the floor pan and the ne
So the title has a bit of history - my first resto project was a very rusty Karmann Ghia - back in 1977 or so I restored a 1968 for a friend of mine. It was fun but it was crude. Lots of Bondo and lots of sheetmetal and lots of rivets.
Well I am finally in the big time - during Covid I decided to get me a TIG/MIG welding machine from ESAB and get to some serious work on my pride and joy. First order of business.... about a 1000 test Rosette welds (aka Plug Welds) before get even
Home and ready to start plumbing and wires 👍😃
Thanks to Emergancy Hookers Towing for a prompt on time delivery
Ready to plumb and wire
Exhaust also needs to be sorted, supposedly not to hard
Lots of room for Radiator and Electric Cooling Fan
For reference, a quick visit to see Jags in Vegas to see his wiring
Only 5 wires modded into ECM
1 HD Wire to Starter from Battery 1 to Alternator
1 easy ground point
It’s hard to remember all of things that have taken place since last I updated this blog but here it goes:
With the shortblock/trans/subframe in the car I turned my attention to the shift tower. I’m using the early style linkage as that’s what I had available to me. I shortened the the tower to fit centered in the opening in the tunnel, then cut down the shift rod to match. All new bushings/isolators/and a shortened support rod were installed.
I ended up ordering a new clutc
So I am back in the T. Hundreds of boxes later, and not even close to thinking about anything other than taking the car out once every three weeks for an hour or so.
The garage is a disaster, I have to rearrange everything. Move hoses, wiring etc.
I have a whole shop air filter to install. If anybody is doing anything somewhat serious then think about one. 200-400(ish) will get you one on Amazon. Some people put a bag of activated charcoal in the filter pockets to try
Veronika was awarded Best in Class at the Lime Rock Sunday in the Park Meeting of the Marques, Lakeville Connecticut. 2020 Sunday in the Park was 1/4 or less of the cars usually on display. The Golf Tii was in the Concours & a fresh restoration by SCR in Plainville CT.
I’m happy to report that my getrag 245 is installed and shifting as intended by the engineers who designed it. I did use the Blunttech 5 speed trans kit . My overall assessment of the kit is that it’s probably the best you can buy.
1 note of Caution - the transmission tunnel of my 68 is more narrow then the the later models. The Blunttech kit comes with a nice looking transmission bracket / brace (with mounting tabs-see pic) for mounting the getrag 245 to the trans tunnel.
After quite a few hours fitting, the Motor Mounts are just about done, all tacked up and ready to be Finish welded and painted. Meccanica did a great job Fabricating these up.
Next week the driveshaft will be done and the new center support bearing can be welded in and the transmission tunnel welded up
The wait for body shops begins and now it the right time to start working on trim that was removed from the car.
Will try to save and restore majority of parts.
Waistline belt trim was bent on several places so we straighten it out before it goes to galavanize shop.
Mask is also in bad shape but can be repaired nicely (we will see that). We took it apart and straighten what was bent. One slot fell off and few others are barely hanging.
Well the Backlog of 02's slowed me down a bit but now the shop is making it happen.
The subframe and Transmission tunnel were pre-cut so the motor could go up and get positioned.
first lift showed that the Intake had to com off for a rough location, once that was done we installed the Intake to get the position dialed with the dimensions bianchini provided.
Nice amount of room for the Radiator and Puller Fan
It was tight but the Intake went on
Coolant
I would have never guessed that when the car was finally ready to drive it would coincide with the outbreak of an infectious disease pandemic. I’m in Seattle where the streets are normally clogged with traffic. It’s been liberating to cruise unimpeded by the usual congestion that plagues these streets, at the same time, it’s strange not having a destination other than the grocery store.
It took me 10 years to bring this build together. There are several reasons why it t
We’re doing another round of vintage BMW emblem shirts in custom colors; $30 each with free shipping to US. (Contact us for non-US.) Many new designs (turbo, touring, 1600, etc.), but which will get the needed minimum orders of 12 to do a press run?! We’ll find out, I guess. Pre-orders only, through August 22.
https://fountainsquareroundie.com/shop/
This was the 2nd video to air on The Peterson Automobile Museum presentation of the 2020 virtual Legends of the Autobahn. Mrs. Wilson does a great job.
We removed remaining trim and windshields and simple shell dolly was welded to move shell down from lift.
New rust spot/hole was found hiding under passenger side pop out window.
I found color label in which car was repainted back in the days
Subframes and its parts were painted.
Rear axles were restored.
Idle hands are the Devils tools....
So with some down time I bought some bits:
Craigslist HKS Clone Header and the last InStock drop swaybar:
Aluminum Radiator as seen in bianchini car:
Order a few of these guys for the future:
Got WAY carried away in the fueling prep:
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