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Old December 12th 2011, 03:13
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owdlvr owdlvr is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Canada - West Coast
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hahaha...I think this might be the longest I've gone without an update. Three whole days :P

Friday and Saturday were basically spent prepping items for installation. Painting parts, finding baggies of nuts and bolts...basically boring tasks in the garage which must be completed. But boring tasks lead to quite productive Sundays...so here we go:



Front suspension, steering box, tie-rods and related kit are all in the car. Also finished up the brake lines, brake master and various grommets. If I had the front calipers (which I sold with the '69) the brakes would probably be bled and ready to go. I must say mounting up all the suspension pieces from new is a fun "which goes first" puzzle, the sway-bar to control-arm nuts being the toughest of the bunch. It was all relatively smooth, just had to come up with a good method for compressing brand new urethane bushings!

One thing I'm not too stoked on is the upper strut mounts I've got. The left-side bushing is sitting all the way forward while the right-side sits center-outside. The old factory VW mounts sat perfectly centered, so it's a case of aftermarket replacement units just not being made as well. These ones do have a sealed bearing though...so you win some while you lose some.



I have marked out the car for the gas heater. I've got to cut holes for the intake, exhaust and cabin ducting. The VW Eberspacher installation book includes the templates required, which I've printed out and confirmed to be dimensionally identical to what the book says they should be. As you can see, however, the template doesn't exactly "line up" with holes. Its supposed to be used on a "built car" (dealer install), but that shouldn't change anything that I can think of. There is a *bit* of wiggle room in the brackets, but not much. Haven't cut any holes yet...not until I know I can get it right.



I also managed to get the pedal cluster installed, as well as the heating controls for the standard heater boxes. I've got the shortest VW clutch cable in the car now, and based on the length I think this one might work for me. Will need to setup the clutch fork and adapter tomorrow to see.







...and finally, proving that I'm probably going a bit insane...I went around the car and painted all the bolt heads which weren't acid-dipped and painted before assembly. Can't have rusty items showing through on a perfectly new paint job!



Pretty rad that if I needed to I could bolt on the wheels and roll the car around! Next up is the gas heater cut-outs, steering column, and then the headliner. I'm going to give a one-piece headliner install a shot myself. I figure the Porsche trans internals scared me before I opened it...and it wasn't bad. How terrible could a headliner job really be!?! Worst case, I do a horrible job and waste the cost of a one-piece headliner. Best case I end up with something passable for now :P But at this point I don't have the budget to pay someone to do it. So rather then hold things up for the sake of headliner, I figure it's worth the chance.



-Dave
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'58 Type 1 - I bought an early!?!
'73 Type 1 - Proper Germanlook project
'68 Type 1 - Interm German 'look' project
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'93 Chevy 3500 pickup - Cummins Swap
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