Queenie, '68 T1

Howdy all,

Ive been away from the VW's scene for a while now, and dabbling in the Jap Crap. But the Skyline is now gone, swapped for a Subi for the wife.
and now I have her '68 to have some fun with, until such time as I fix my old '59 up again.....but that will be a long term project. and the '68 will get some love in the mean time 🙂
So here they are (the fact that I now own 3 blue cars is entirely coincidental).

The '59, which Maureen named Bitch (on acount of them not getting along)

This was bought from down in northern NSW a few years ago.....and was the burden of my life for more than 12 mnths of fixing and trying to keep it alive as a daily. But all is well now and drives well.....just not well enough for my likings.

This thread will be mostly based on her (Queenie, also named by the wife...and loosely based on the previous name, which I can't recall)

👍

Yeah, Buddy! I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the 68 🙂

already started on new door trims the last few days.

I'll get around to posting pics of the work so far.....lots has been done, despite its appearance not changing much

Queenie is a 1968 1500 (I think), but came with a 1600 SP.
After driving the poor thing home from NSW for almost 4 hours on and off while it overheated and had all sorts of problems, I finally got it home in one peice......and luckily not in a fire ball. As I discovered after I got home, one of the fuel hoses to the Kadrons had split and was covering everything electrical in fuel.

(to this I must add, it was an epic afternoon of trying to get it all together and get me home after the engine swap that was completed that same afternoon)

first photo shows the engine as I got it home, second is the cleaned up one with fuel filters and all rubber hoses replaced and redirected. The kadrons had too much play in the butterflies, and were constantly out of tune.

Third photo. As a daily I thought a stock 34pict would be a fine replacement, so on it went......for about a month before it had issues with massive overfueling that no one could figure out...so out it came too.
At this point I discovered what can only be described as massive amount of end float in the crank. So a stock rebuild happened with 1641 barrels for that extra gusto

Fourth photo is it's current carby and engine layout with the 40mm DCNF off my old 1916cc, which required EMPI single port to dual port manifolds, and this works a treat, after quite a few trips to the tuner for fine tweaking.
It doesn't sound as good as the Kadrons did, but works just as well and has now done about 20thou flawless km's as my wifes daily.

sorry about the picture quality...most of these were taken in the middle of the night while working on it.

The ratchet in first engine pic is to keep the crank from falling out ?

With the end play it had, yeah probably would have helped.

Now that the car was running, time for a few creature comforts, and a new coat of clear for the roof rack slats.

She came fitted with late model high back seats, which were extremely wobbly (due to the rails being entirely different. So I sold them off, and installed some nice Jap import seats. The difference is remarkable.

Cool,.. good to see another 1500 getting some love.

I like the bumper over riders. They're from the USA right?

Is it Zenith Blue?

thanks 🙂

no idea on the over riders origin or the actual colour sorry.

Next in line was a very basic stereo install. Seeing as it already had the DINN size hole cut in the dash I bought a basic head unit with AUX input and attached 2x4inch in the front parcel shelf (came with the car, terrible little things), and 2 6inch pioneer speakers in the rear parcel shelf. needless to say it wasn't great but it was something......And radio could be avoided easily 🙂
no pics of that install. nothing much to see.

A few minor cosmetics were seen to on the outside, like painting the lower half of the front bar black....as it is "quality" and already rusty when I got the car. So an angle grinder and some Black galv fixed that nicely. Eventually some new chrome will go on them.


And then the speedo started having issues.......1 brand new cable and a bunch of head scratching later, the conclusion was that the stock speedo had packed it in. So off to speed hut I went for a GPS speedo! Fuel gauge was added a little while later, but is a matching one to the speedo. Tacho coming soon to match the set.

Next up came headlights and a Fuel gauge, cheers to my brother Nils for the machined alloy grill for the gauge 🙂

I still havent sorted out park lights yet. Not sure what I'm going to do about them, as the lights didnt come with anywhere to put them.

Here's what i did on the HQ

http://www.bigrigchromeshop.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?page=BRCS/PROD/HDLITA/UP37001

Cheers, I went looking for these last night but could only find them in America for a million dollars. Will order them tonight.

Brakes needed renewing as it had developed a small leak in one of the calipers, so a full new set of rotors, calipers, and bearings went in 🙂


From here on the car came into my possesion and no longer my wifes daily, as I swapped my skyline for a nice boring Subaru Forester for her to drive to work.
And well timed with loosing my licence for 6 mnths......so let the work begin! 😀

First thing on the cards was to get the interior cleaned and sorted.

I made my own trims (which I'll never do again)....everything I bought was too thick, from the backing to the foam it all became an ordeal of the clips not holding anything and the door handles not having long enough bolts to get thru it all.

But with full sound deadening, the ultra thick cards, and screwing them into the doors. The sound quality out of the very basic speakers is beautiful. not to mention the solid door close feeling 🙂

It's no dyna mat, but does the job. all factory bitument fruit cartons still remain 🙂

A headliner attempt was made of the same material I've used elsewhere in the car, which looked anf felt great just glued to the old vinyl.....but after 2 days it just let go 🙁 so a new Vinyl headliner is now at home awaiting installation.

New matching tacho arrived and installed, as well as the saas classic wheel and boss kit.

Brakes painted, and rear sway bar installed. front swaybar and new shocks are on their way.

G'day boozo. looking good 1 small thing if don't already know it you can get small buttons that fit into the Phillips head screws on door linings really finishes trim of instead of seeing the screw head most h/ware have them I used them in a job on mates r/rover it was the best thing about it's trim
ernie

cheers, my original plan was to use nice fancy allen key screws. But couldn't find anything I liked, so the black alloy washers were used. I'll keep that in mind though 🙂

more bits and peices.

Repainted the black lower half of the bumpers and the brackets while i was there, and added some nice little fog lights

H4 park light adapters as suggested by Nils, they look great and well made.

my new favourite sticcker aswell

Headliner is up....not overly happy with my install.....and its EMPI quality, this was by far the worst thing if ever bought from "EMPI". But it looks better than the trashed mess that was in it. Was also very cheap, so no big loss on my part other than my time.