Dave's 1971 1302 Not-So-Secret, Secret Project Build

[owdlvr]

Had a pretty productive night in the garage. Second night in a row that I've gone in at about 5pm, found myself really hungry only to look up and realize it was now midnight!

Started off by grinding away all that POR15 I had laid on the pan (sigh). From there I welded on the mounts for my front transmission mount.





They allow me to use the urethane transmission mounts, or factory beetle transmission mounts, to secure the front end of the transmission to the pan. And with that sorted out I moved onto closing up the gaping holes in my floor pan. Originally I was going to use a CV joint boot as a seal, but that turned out to be too large. I figured a boot from a power-steering rack would be perfect, but turns out I don't have any kicking around anymore. In one of my bins, though, I did find a brand new set of balljoint boots. It's a perfect fit, but will be a PAIN in the butt to deal with at a later date if I use the wire clips. The wire clips will ensure a full seal though. Hmmmmm...



Behind the boot, holding it on to the sheet metal, is a .5" section of 1.25" exhaust tubing. Just enough to hold the boot on. The boot is pretty stiff, so I may only use a wire clip on the pan side and let the shaft slide in and out of the boot.

Tomorrow I will seal up the torsion bar housing, and then tear it all back down to paint it. I have a couple of items to finish on the actual transmission, then I can finally flip the pan over and sort out all the other issues. I still need to move the accelerator cable and clutch tubing coming out of the pan, solve the clutch release arm hitting the frame horn, finish modifying/sealing the speedometer gear and then I can move onto rear suspension.



-Dave