OZ Towdster wrote:With your snubbers made from rear bump stops i don't believe you will ever get them to be strong enough in that they are going to end up to close to the pivot point of the arms and as such the arms will have to much power over them and continually destroy them .
On the up travel it should be ok cause I can move them up the shock towers a bit and get further away from the pivot point. Plus I don't think I've ever bottomed out the front suspension that hard anyway. With down travel there will only be a tiny bit of tension in the torsion bars and then the weight of the spindle/tyre assembly. And I'm only running stock arms for the time being. I'll fit them and see how it goes. I will try and move them down as far away from the pivot point as I can.
And I know it's going to be heavy, turned out to be a little thicker than what I really needed. I'll have to do it lighter if I ever change the pan again in the future (about 20 years at the soonest I hope!!)
Might just have to get to work on a fat Type 4 once she's back together again!
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
I got a pretty package today, now what could be inside??
Sexy new custom gauges from Speedhut! The quality is very impressive, I can't wait to get to the wiring so I can fit them!
We have speedo with built in fuel gauge, oil pressure, oil temp, voltage and tacho.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Craig Torrens6 times Australian, 7 times State Hillclimb Class Champion
OZ Towdster wrote:With your snubbers made from rear bump stops i don't believe you will ever get them to be strong enough in that they are going to end up to close to the pivot point of the arms and as such the arms will have to much power over them and continually destroy them .
On the up travel it should be ok cause I can move them up the shock towers a bit and get further away from the pivot point. Plus I don't think I've ever bottomed out the front suspension that hard anyway. With down travel there will only be a tiny bit of tension in the torsion bars and then the weight of the spindle/tyre assembly. And I'm only running stock arms for the time being. I'll fit them and see how it goes. I will try and move them down as far away from the pivot point as I can.
Smiley 🙂
The main force on your droop stops is when your backing down a steep slope etc under brakes as your arms will be hard against them and trying there hardest to end up out the front which is never a good look
Don't let body work get in the way of real suspension travel
Nice Smiley, look forward to see in them fitted in.
After posting this I ended up rereading this whole thread.
Smiley this thread is awesome. It is close to becoming on a par with Hibbards book. There is so much to help others building a baja. Well done mate!
68 Baja - It's a growing pain!
58 Baja ute - and the pain spreads!
85 T3 Kombi - still growing
89 T3 Kombi - parts car
baghall wrote:Nice Smiley, look forward to see in them fitted in.
After posting this I ended up rereading this whole thread.
Smiley this thread is awesome. It is close to becoming on a par with Hibbards book. There is so much to help others building a baja. Well done mate!
Aww shucks man.
I don't do anything special. I just build and breaks things so often that something tough is bound to come out eventually.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
I've made up a cardboard 'dash' so I could start working on the positions of the gauges and switch panels.
The plan is to make this out of steel (or aluminium) and basically screw the whole thing back to the dash in the car. And cut out most of what is under it.
Then I started bracing the body up ready to cut the sills out to replace them. I also added a cross brace to the lift kit. To help keep it square and so I had handle to lift it with 🙂
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
So seeing as I wasn't going to be using the heater tubes inside of the new sills, I decided to remove them. I had the sills bolted down to the lift kit for this.
It was actually very easy and straightforward. First drill out these 3 spot welds.
Then you need to cut these two off.
And then the whole thing slides out the back with a little wiggling and some gentle persuasion.
And then repeat for the other side.
Then I welded caps onto these holes here.
And made up some plates for the other two holes too. Make sure that you use a good weld through primer on all of the surfaces.
And while I was at it I ground down and seem welded the joining flange in this spot. This is the inner front guard area. Smoothing this off stops the tyre from grabbing on the flange when you are turned full lock.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
The next order of business was removing the old sills. Not too hard when I have to replace most of the door pillar and inner front quarter panel anyway. So just chop it all off.
Started with removing the door opening section. Cut as much as you can with the angle grinder then finish it off with the hacksaw.
Then cut the front bit off as mentioned above.
After that it's onto the rear. Take you time to find all the little spot welds and drill them through. And soon you will have this bit out too, ready to discover more rust hiding in the back corners.
I then got to work on this back corner. As you can see there are a few nastys hiding under here that the blaster couldn't get to.
Ordering some more panels to replace the rotten bits and more chopping.
I have now go the other sill cut out too and the back corner on the other side. Soon there will be more new metal than Alyce!!
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Next, or before, or during, some of the pictures are a bit out of order. I fabricated the new bottom piece for the firewall at the front of the car.
made it out of 50mm angle trimmed down to 40mm wide, the same as the firewall. Cut and bent and welded it up to match the lift kit.
I added six M10 bolts and welded the nuts on the inside. This area of the car is prone to cracking and pulling the front bolts out when you do lots of driving with front wheels in the air like I do. So I wanted to make it area strong and nice and stiff.
And then added the flat bar on the other side to finish the C shape off.
Then we sit the lot in place and work out what else extra has to be trimmed off the front of the body for it to fit nicely.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Ok. Last update for this evening. What I was working on tonight was getting the gearbox connected to the gearstick. Not an easy feat when you have a side shift 5 speed and no one has ever put one in a Baja before that I can find. Time for some pioneer work 😀
As posted previously I have the Weddle linkage fitted to the box which made lift a bit easier. Now all I have to do is connect it to the shiftrod.
Got the gearbox in place, all the lines are working out where to cut and where the linkage will run etc.
Trimmed a little extra metal out of the way.
I am adding a second shift rod bushing as the back of the rod. This is to keep the shift rod straight while uni joins will take the motion around the corner to the side of the box. Here I am cutting out a second 'gearstick hole' which will be used for replacing the rear bushing. I will be making a cover plate up for this. It is all under the backseat area.
All trimmed out and deburred. I am considering making a plate to weld around this opening. Like what you do if you add a clutch access hole at the front. Do you guys think that it is necessary? The normal gearstick hole doesn't have one.
The next step was to trim the shift rod to the correct length and add the splined piece to it so it matches the uni joints. The splines piece was a loose fit once I cut the end of the shift rod off so I cut a slot every 90° in the end and folded the end in slightly so to grabbed tight on the splined piece.
Just tacked together for now to check that is actually works.
And here is the uni jointed piece that I mentioned. This the is steering shaft that connects the rack to the column in a Holden Commodore. And I am happy to report that with a gearstick installed that it seems to work. But because the box isn't bolted to anything it is just getting pushed around at the moment. I will have to try it in the daylight hours with someone holding on to the transaxle for me.
I will get some better pictures of the entire thing not in the tunnel so you can see how it all looks.
That's all for now folks, thanks for reading.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
I started fabricating the rear transaxle mounts today.
First off here is a picture of the mounts that I was running on the old 5-rib box. These are front suspension bushes from a Ford Falcon. Now the new setup that I have built is the same but different cause I am using different mounts and the bellhousing is a slightly different shape on the 5 speed.
So we start with something that looks a little like this.
Drill a few holes and had to clearance the rib a little bit too. Then start making the plates up in cardboard templates.
And then make some real ones.
Then weld these together.
The other side is pretty much the same but is a little shorter on one side due to the shape of the bellhousing.
Drill some holes in the plate and this is where the mount bolts on. The mounts that I have here are Toyota Camry engine mounts. I wanted something bigger than what I had but softer so that hopefully some noise is taken out of the car.
And then I put the transaxle back in place on the floorpan and assembled the shifter setup on top of the tunnel so you can get a better look at it.
That's all for today. Hoping to get a bit more done tomorrow.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
nils wrote:Stand up work as always. Are all your mods carefully sat down and planned out? Or are they flying by the seat of your pants?
Not really sat down, more laid down. I lay in bed at night and think about what I have to do and try and think of every little detail. Probably why I can't sleep half the time!
Aside from that I have a pretty good idea of what I want and just build it.
nils wrote:If you decide you want to make that dash out of aluminium instead of cardboard let me know, ill help you out.
You have PM.
nils wrote:And i swear smiley, everytime i see that new body. I picture you painting it yellow and renaming it swiss cheese
You're not wrong there. The worst thing is that when I got it, it looks very straight and rust free. I am so very glad that I decided to get it sandblasted. Otherwise it would have been full of holes with a year or two.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Shocked at how much rust you have uncovered Smiley. Makes me worry about mine even more. Great work on the shift linkages. How do you plan on sealing it all against water ingress?
68 Baja - It's a growing pain!
58 Baja ute - and the pain spreads!
85 T3 Kombi - still growing
89 T3 Kombi - parts car
baghall wrote:Shocked at how much rust you have uncovered Smiley. Makes me worry about mine even more. Great work on the shift linkages. How do you plan on sealing it all against water ingress?
Swingaxle gearbox boot should be a perfect fit from my measurements 🙂
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Thanks for all the positive remarks everyone. I'm surprised that there is this many people reading the thread.
Haven't had any updates lately. I have been out at Emerald working night shift the last week. Just starting my new job, so I will finally have some extra income to start spending on the bug now too.
I really want to get stuck into the bodywork this week. I will keep you all posted.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Between starting a new job a few months ago and working flat out, and I've been in Perth for the last 2 and a half weeks for the Australian National Rover Moot for Scouts, I haven't even been in the shed to look at the car 🙁
Hoping to get stuck in now things have settled down a bit and get some good progress happening.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
G'day Smiley. like the work to the linkage assembly the beauty of what your doing with shows a simple fix to a problem with out spending big dollars on a fancy cable shifter. this helps the shoestring budget builders. As VW hobbyist's we must all have the same thought patterns that work better lying in bed at 3am that's when most of my ideas for ECLECTIC come to me.
ernie
Alright, so I guess it's time I post a proper update for this.
Where did we leave off? I was mounting a gearbox that isn't meant to go...
After setting up the linkage I started cutting the framehorns to fab some rear mounts. I got as far as cutting the ends off and then cleaning about 3 years worth of mud and dirt out. I sure most of you would be in the same boat if you had a look inside your floorpans!! After that I really didn't do much on the car in a long time.
Then the decision was made to have someone come and do all the metalwork on the body. It was a tough choice to make cause I wanted to do it myself, but at the end of the day I just wasn't getting anywhere so a local panel beater (Henry) came and did the work over a period of about 3 weeks. It wasn't just repairing rust but also a massive list of mods and changes that I wanted done. I did bits and pieces here and there when I had time on the weekends. But mostly Henry did the lot, I am very happy with the work he's done. And I'm going to get him to come back and help with a few more little hings and then help prep it for painting.
Remember how much rust was in the back corners? Well that's where he attacked first.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
After the back he moved up to the front quarters and tying in the new firewall that I made. This was all working towards the goal of completely tying in the new sills. You might also note that we have the lift kit fitted, this was basically used as a jig to hold the sills in the right place. They were bolted to it and then the whole thing was flipped over and dropped on top of the body to make sure nothing moved around too much.
After that the sills are pretty much completely tied in. Just have to do the door pillars once she is back up the correct way.
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
Next he fixed the massive gap in the top of the firewall. And then some more tidying things off and some welding on the inside so we can flip her back right way up.
A bit more welding on the backseat area.
Henry also made a start on the back corners where the guards bolt on. But then realised it would be easier the other way up.
Starting to look like a whole car again!! But something is still wrong.....
...there! Much better!!!! Right way up again for the first time in many months!
Smiley 🙂
If you said I was a Volkswagen man, you'd be right.
