Summer's Over- I'm Motivated

The long hot summer has finally come to an end and mother nature is slowly starting to show some relief. The past couple months have been rough on us including an evacuation from hurricane Rita. Highlights of our evacuation include:

• I was in San Diego and rushed home in time to board windows and evacuate 11 hours after I landed
• 25 hours from Houston to San Antonio(normally 3-1/2 hours)
• Started with 3 cars, one ran out of gas 10 miles outside the Houston city limits
• 2 hour emergency room visit in Gonzales
• 5 adults, 2 kids, 2 cats, a labrador, and a gerbal
• Spend one night in San Antonio then went to our fish camp in Riviera Beach for 3 nights
• On top of this, I had a miserable summer cold

At the end of the day, we can say that there was no major damage to our house, only a few limbs down.

So what's next? I spent Saturday morning cleaning the garage so now I'm motivated to get back to work. Over the past several weeks I have had several visitors stop by and encourage me to do as much body work myself as possible. I have even had a couple offers to help me with the labor and shoot the paint. After the estimates I have received so far from the professionals, I'm giving it more and more consideration.

Brakes Complete - Except for a Leak

Seems like it's been a long time since I've touched the car. It's really only been about 6 weeks but it's been 6 weeks with no car activity at all. It's just the beginning of the Texas summer. If you followed my posts from last summer, you know that I tend to favor indoor activities this time of year. Strange as it may seem, we actually had a cool weekend this past week and Theresa was motivated to work with me.

We finished off the brakes by filling and bleeding the lines with DOT 5 brake fluid and chasing the leaks. I chose DOT 5 because it is a synthetic fluid as opposed to a mineral fluid as in DOT 3 or 4. The synthetic fluid will not eat away at the rubber in the system over the years. One benefit of the DOT 5 is that when you get it on paint, it won't take the paint off. One word of caution - don't put the DOT 5 in a system that previously had DOT 3 or 4. A reaction will occur that will slowly eat away at the rubber in the master and wheel cylinders.

I was shopping for a power bleeder by Motive Products when someone suggested that I use my air compressor to bleed the system. I modified the cap of the fluid reservoir to accomodate a compressor fitting. Once the reservoir was filled with fluid, I opened the bleeder valve and put about 20 psi of air pressure to the reservoir. Slowly the fluid would purge through the system pushing all of the air out. Theresa operated the regulator on the air compressor while I laid under the car and caught the fluid coming out of the wheel cylinders with clear tubing watching for the bubbles. As you can see from the photos, I had a leak in my tubing from the reservoir at first and fluid ended up all over the place.




We are not actually 100% complete. The tee at the rear brakes is leaking for some reason. I'll have to dig into that soon. We also completed the parking brake assembly on Sunday. We can't go yet, but we can stop.

Other activities this weekend included filling the transmission with fresh gear lube. I want to run Swepco 201 in the long term however in the short term I want something cheaper (Swepco is over $50 per gallon). After about 1000 miles, I plan on flushing the oil out and filling it with the Swepco. In the interim, I used Sta-Lube hypoid 80/90w which is a GL4 rated oil. I have found others are running this oil with good results. Sta-Lube is made by CRC Industries and is a good brand. I have used their other products in the past with good results.

Next on the agenda was to pull the wiring harness a little bit further. This is one of those frustrating jobs that will take time. It's really a two-person job as one looks at wires and the other looks though various wiring diagrams and the vendor literature. We have at least pulled all of the wire to it's general location and we can now start installing lights and switches in a temporary fashion. Joe Leoni's books are a big help with this.

Next major task is the passenger side door. It was getting difficult to work on it with this door closest to the work bench so we rolled the car out and turned it around. Many of you haven't seen this side of the car yet. As you can see, the lower few inches of the door has rusted away and will need replacement as I did on the driver side door.

New Look

I got a wild hair last night for a new look on the site. What do you think? It's the same content, just a little cleaner and simpler (I like simple).

Progress Update

I look at the car and think "man, I'm never going to finish." I look back through the blog and find that I really have accomplished alot in the last 18 months. If you were an ant looking up from below, you would think it was a new car.

The interior is now clean and painted with the wiring harness installed and ready for interior installation. All of the structural work is complete with the exception of rebuilding the passenger door and the front nose skin. Brakes are complete, engine is complete, tires and suspension are complete with the exception of installing shocks. It's actually starting to look like a car!

I really wanted to get to a point of painting by the end of the summer however I've been told that I should make sure that everything fits well before I do so. This would include installing seats, dash hardware, bumper hardware, rocker and bumper decos, and the engine. Everything except the engine will come back off before I send it to paint. With this in mind, we may be looking at another six months before the paint work takes place.

I received 2 used bumpers from GG Tyler last week but I am still in need of bumper brackets and over riders. I have a replacement nose skin coming in from WW Autowerks this week as well. Once the passenger door is installed and the new nose skin installed, I'll get started on the body work.

Upgraded Master Cylinder

I installed all of the components to my new dual cylinder master cylinder. As I mentioned before, the components requires were no extensive. I bought the master cylinder and reservoir from California Import Parts and the tubing and gromments I bought at Theresa's store.

I mounted the reservoir on the left side of trunk just forward of the gas tank leaving enough room in the event that the tank ever need to be removed. I fabricated a bracket to held the reservoir from an left over floor pan ledge material. I used 1/2" clear tubing and drilled two holes just left of the gear box access cover and installed grommets to protect the tubing from the holes. For added security, I installed hose clamps at both ends of the tubing and then tie-wrapped the tubing to the ridged brake tubing.



It looks clean and functional. Just too bad it will be a while before I find out how well it works. More photos here.

Door Repairs

I took a week of vacation the week prior to Memorial Day expecting to get a considerable amount of work completed prior to the heat of the Texas summer. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much accomplished as I expected. Between the early heat and the non-stop customer calls and urgent emails, I spent maybe two full days on the car during the week.

My biggest accomplishment was the repair of the drivers side door. I would image that I spent a total of 24 hours this week on this one door. The first step was installing the door on the hinges and aligning the striker plate. It takes some time to get the right combination of the right number of hinge spaces, hinge alignment, and striker plate alignment. Once the door opened and closed relatively easily and had a relatively good door gap, I started on the lower 4" and bottom. With the door on the car, I aligned and scribed a line on the door where the lower skin would be installed. I flanged the door and spot welded the skin to the door with spot welds every 3/4"-1".

The door bottom was more difficult. I had to remove the door again from the hinges and clean the inside structure of the door. The bottom attaches to the skin with a rolled edge which I spot welded every 4" or so. The door was installed back on the door and I spent several hours trying to the get the right alignment of the bottom of the door edge to the rocker panel. Once I had this alignment, I spot welded the inner door structure to the door bottom. It will still take a little filler to make all of this perfect but will be less than 0.030"



These doors were in terrible shape and I've heard that most people would have started with better doors. The primary reason I reused them was the fact that these are the original doors with the original SN stamped inside. I have even found that the front to rear door gap is pretty good and will take very little filler to finish off.

A couple of things I learned. Never take the doors off by unbolting the hinges. Leave the hinges in place and pull the hinge pins. Proper door gap is 3mm which is about 0.118" This will be consistent for the doors as well as the hood and deck lid.

More photos of the door repairs can be found here. I have found that there are no real publications to tell you how to do this. I posted a couple of messages on the 356 Registry Talk List and found a couple of guys who have done this before and offered plenty of help.

Cleaning the Little Things

The past few weeks have been spent cleaning and painting small parts. Not much real progress. I installed a new reverse switch on the shifter mechanism along with all of the shifter linkages. Another tip for everyone, when you disassemble the "monkey motion," match mark everything so that you know where the shifter shaft should be aligned. I spent well over an hour trying to get things set right. I think I'm close but won't really know until we get on the road.

I have spent a considerable amount of time researching painting processes and visiting with a couple paint shops. I want to choose a paint shop prior to starting the body work. I want to make sure that the primers that I use to prep the body are by the same manufacturer that the paint shop will use. I'm not hung up on paint manufacturer so long as it's a good brand name such as PPG, Dupont, or BASF.

I've ordered the replacement panels for the lower door area and door bottoms and plan to spend next week on the doors and the final metal work on the body. I was hoping that I might actually start some filler work but with the heat already rolling in I may not be working as fast as I would like.

I've ordered the balance of the hardware to finish the brakes from California Import Parts. While I did install the original drum brakes, I will be installing a dual master cylinder. This will be a '71-'79 VW Super Beetle master cylinder (vw pn 113.611.051.BH) with a remote mounted fluid reservoir. All of the other brake lines and hoses are replaced with new as well. This will give us a little more reassurance while driving. In the event that one of the brake lines leaks or a wheel cylinder blows, I'll still have a working circuit.

While in San Diego on business last week, I stopped by Autos International. I would really like to install all leather in the car as original but I still have a little sticker shock. Everyone says that Autos makes the best and their work is top notch. Still a little time before we cross that bridge.

New Dash Installed

The rusted out dash was replaced this weekend. I chose to replace all of the material from the horizontal split line inside the car under the dash pad forward to the hood. The area under the windshield was terribly rotten so bad that the vent ducts had fallen out. Repairing this damage would take more time and work than what I spent to find a donor dash.



The donor came from the '59 coupe where I got the brakes and looked to be in pretty good shape. I cleaned it up and found about 5 layers of paint, most of which peeled up easily. For the balance, I sprayed it up with aircraft paint remover and scraped it off. I then buffed it down to the shiny metal.

The old dash was split at the interior dash line and then along the seam where the dash meets the hood. I cut off the vertical material of the old dash at the hood seal and left the matching material on the donor. The tough parts was cutting the old dash front to back. After making a rough cut on both the donor dash and the original, the process involved making small incremental cuts and fitting the new to the old. Once I was close, I tacked the donor to the car at the interior dash line and then at the hood end. With a thin cutting wheel I cut the overlapping material leaving me with a 1/16" gap. This was a good gap distance to seal weld the donor to the car. It took time and patience but at the end of the night I think it looks pretty good. In all, about a 5 hour process.





All the photos can be found here.

Annie Gets Some Sun

Today, we bought tires and rolled her out into the sun for the first time since December of 2003. The tires were bought at Discount Tire a few miles ways. The tires are 195-60-R15 Barum Bravuris mounted on 5-1/2" chrome rims. When we were at the Gulf Coast Holiday a few weeks back, we surveyed tires and the car's look and selected the 195-60. Our rims are chrome 5-1/2" and the 195 gives them a little bit bigger diameter. These tires are directional and have a tread similar to the Goodyear Aquatread. Some may say that they are wrong for my car since they are not period correct while I think they are actually a safer tires. Since the front tires have so little weight, I am concerned with hydroplaning. With this type of tread, the water will displace much more quickly and in turn be a safer tire.


Earlier this week we installed the rear radius arms and completed the rear suspension. Setting the correct angle for the swing arms took some time. Once I leveled the car using the tunnel as my plane, I measure the distance from the ground to the center of the torsion bar and the ground to a point at the end of the radius arm on the same line. Using a little engineering I was able to figure that the relative vertical distance should be about 3-1/8". The following hour was spent with various combination of rotating the torsion bar within the fit in the body and then the radius arm on the torsion bar. Since there are 40 teeth in the fit in the body and 44 in the radius arm, there is quite a bit of flexibility to set the angle.

A couple of lessons learned. Install the swing arm and mount the axle tube to it before you install the brakes. It takes some prying of the radius arm to get the axle tube to fit correctly and the backing plate of the brakes get in the way. You should also attach the e-brake cable to the brake before you mount the brakes on the axle. The cable housing is pretty rigid and you need the flexibility to install the cable.

In all of this, I found that I had the e-brake lever on the wrong side of the brake shoe and that I had left out the spreader bar. I was able to change the lever quickly however I had to order another set of the spreader bars. I'm getting pretty good at installing the brakes.

I finally found a place to turn my rear brake drums. I called Ask Imports, a local VW specialist and legend in Houston, and was referred to Hare Repair near Richmond and Chimney Rock.

Gearbox Installed

We reached what I feel to be a pretty good milestone this weekend, we installed the gearbox (transmission).

It took me some time but I final got the gasket thickness correct between the sideplates and the axles tube plates. The left side only needed about 0.020" (2 gaskets) while the right side needed about 0.080" worth. Since these axle tubes were not the original, it doesn't surprise me that they required different spacing. I also received new axle boots and got them started while the gearbox was on the floor. Once we get the car on it's wheels, I'll put the boots in the correct position and tighten the clamps so that they are tightened in it's neutral position.



We have spent the past few months slowly installing all of the tunnel hardware and I must admit that I am glad that we did. Once the gearbox is in, it would be very difficult to feed through the wiring harness, accelerator and clutch cables, and the brake lines.

We did have a little problem as the transmission was going up. We found that we mistakenly pulled the wiring harness through the hole for the shifter nose rather than the correct hole for the wiring. Once we corrected that, we raised it, had it hanging on the hoop, and found that I had the hoop installed backwards. Back down we go and a I flipped it quickly. Remember, the hoop side with the larger boss goes towards the front of the car.

The brake assemblies with new shoes are ready to install and I have new wheel bearing and seals from Zim's. I am having trouble finding someone to turn the rear drums however. The splines are the same as early VW and all the shops I have spoken to have either lost the adapter for their lathe or have started to buy replacement VW drums since they have become so cheap.

I'm not real clear on how to set the rear alignment. Once we have the car sitting on the ground, I'll have to get a little help with that. Trailing arms are currently being painted and should be ready this next weekend. Hopefully next weekend we can roll it out of the garage for the first time.

Safety Notes

I have always considered myself to work in a pretty safe manner. What I mean by that is I wear safety classes, gloves, and ear plugs as second nature. My father, a oil refinery machinist, preached safety to me when growing up and as my career developed in the oil and gas industry, safety has always been first and foremost. As we do at work, when we have a near miss, we tell others and hope that we can all learn from it.

This past week I was assembling the rear brake assemblies. As I was trying to install a spring that holds down a brake shoe to the backing plate, the spring slipped loose and hit me square in the eye. The spring came off with such velocity that I felt the impact before I realized that I had lost it. I came off with such force that it left a pretty good groove in the glasses. I have to say I was stunned. If I were not wearing my safety glasses, it's likely that I might have had some serious eye damage.



So here is my safety thought for the day; Always wear your safety glasses when working with springs. It doesn't matter which way the spring is pointed, it can ricochet off of something else and come back at you.

Remember, it's a hobby. Don't force yourself to work on something. If it is frustrating you becuase it doesn't fit like you want it to, walk away. Come back later when you have a clear head.

Gulf Coast Holiday

The Gulf Coast Holiday was a real blast. We were one of only a few couples that did not bring our own cars with them. I would estimate that a third were from Texas, the rest were from all over the country. The longest drive (in his 356) was a guy that drove from Maryland.

Theresa and I did not participate in drive on Friday. Instead, we made the rounds in Gruene, TX. That evening, everyone boarded buses (3 buses) for a private tour of the Alamo and dinner on the River Walk.

The Concourse was set up for Saturday where almost 150 356's were displayed. My photos can be found here along with links to Bill Hamilton's photos. That afternoon we attended the swap meet and picked up a pedal assembly from Jim Kellogg and a 356A electrical book from Joe Leoni. The evening was finished with a fabulous banquet and award ceremony.

My two favorite cars were both from Jones Autowerks - a '59 Carrera Coupe and the 356A training car. The '59 Carrera was a marvel of it's own as it is the grandfather of the modern day Carrera.

The training car was great because it allowed me to take many photos of the way thing ought to be. It was used back in the day to train mechanics and was restored years later by Bill's shop.

It was great to see so many 356's in one place. It was amazing to see many of the cars that you see on the web or in magazines. It was also great to meet some of the people that I have exchanged emails with over the past year and who have supported our efforts. I don't know if there will be a Holiday close to us again next year. Regardless of where it is we hope to have our car ready to go.

Front Suspension Complete

Since January we have not made much progress. Just not much interest with the nice weather and our recent travels. We attended the Gulf Coast Holiday this past weekend and have come home with a renewed vigor to work with. More on the holiday will be posted soon.

I had the front brake drums turned and then installed them with new seals and bearings. At first, the guy at O'Reilly Auto wouldn't turn the drums because his guide book didn't list my car with the specs on how far he could turn them. I told them that all I needed was for him to just take a skim cut to true them up and clean off the rust. He looked at me as if I was from Mars. After a little convincing, he let me go back to the shop with him and turn the drums myself. He didn't want anything to do with it if they were too far out of spec and the shoes wouldn't fit. According to my books, each of the drums is now about 0.020 oversized - not too bad for 47 year old brake drums.

I finally bought a pneumatic right angle drill from Northern Tool to drill out the broken bolts at the rear trailing arms. What a difference the right tools make. Within 2 hours, I had all 6 broken bolts drilled out and the holes tapped.

Progress With the Little Things

No major projects in the past couple weeks to report however we have completed a few small tasks. The front suspension is now installed complete with new bushings and tie rod ends.

The wheel cylinders were in suprisingly good shape. I cleaned them up with scotchbrite and decided not to get them honed as I was concerned with taking off too much material making the cylinders larger than they needed to be. With a straight edge I couldn't find any wear through the stroke and the pistons were very tight with only a 0.008" to 0.012" clearance.

Once I have the brake drums turned I'll install them as well as the front wheels to give me a little extra protection when I'm under the car. Both of the drums are oversized by about 0.015" and will probably be about 0.025" after they are turned. I have new shoes to install so I don't think that this will be too much of a problem.

The broken bolts for the trailing arms are still giving me trouble. I work on them every now and then until I get frustrated. Last thing I need is a broken tap or drill bit. I tried to recruit my dad the machinist to help. I think he knew how big of a job it is so the only support I received was a bunch of sharp drill bits, die grinder bits, and a big grin. I guess he's retired from rebuilding cars.

Transmission Completed and Engine Tested

We finished the transmission assembly this week. Not too difficult considering that we really didn’t take it too far apart. We replaced a couple gaskets and cleaned up a few surfaces so it now feels like it shifts a little bit better. We really won’t know until we get it on the street. I bought a couple new axles tubes this week that had been power coated. I really only needed one for the left where we had a broken bearing casting but I think I found a pretty good deal.

The real excitement took place at Hamilton Classics in Martindale where we took our completed engine to Bill Hamilton to run on his engine stand. The engine stand made the process starting up a fresh engine so much easier. Once it was installed on the stand, we needed a quick timing adjustment and it fired right up. We quickly found a few gas leaks from the carbs and some minor oil leaks. After fixing these, we fired it up again and ran for a few minutes while Bill adjusted the timing and balanced the carbs.



We found that things ran well with the exception of a knock on the left side. We adjusted the valves and found that we bent one of the push rods. Unfortunately, this did not fix the problem. Once we got the engine back home, we took the right head off and found that the piston was actually hitting the head just slightly. Fortunately no major damage was done. Now we will go back through the process of setting the head/piston clearance again with the shims between the cylinders and case. I’m confident that it should fix the problem.

In all the day was a great success. We had good compression, good oil pressure, fixed all of our leaks, set the timing, and balanced the carbs. We also found that we had a good generator however our starter solenoid was bad. I still can’t image how all of this would have turned out if we tried all of this the first time with the engine installed in the car. It would have taken me weeks to do what we were able to do with Bill in a few hours. It was exciting to see our hard work turn in to something that made noise and smoke on it’s own. We left Bill’s with a real sense of accomplishment eager to get the car on the road.