Aust delivered '66 RHD Teak T34 Razor

Well i thought i'd start a thread on my T34 restoration. This is how i bought it, looks fantastic doesn't it! Stupid me, I bought it sight unseen from another state and had it trucked to me in Sydney[/img].

Pigalle Possibly??

As sonn as I saw it something was wrong. I measured all the diagonals and they were all out. Must have had a massive accident, so we stripped some panels back to bare metal to check it out. What a f^%king disappointment








the car is full of nicky / bog. even the dash and rear boot floor is creased.

ouch ! Im feeling for you that is a disgrace are you fixing it?

Post the original Add so we can see where it came from.
M

Please post original add if u can. Pretty fair guess this wont be the first or the last time the seller pulls this kind of shonk!

I feel for you as its ok when you know about the issues and are prepared but when you think that you have got something special it sucks. If you need a really good panel shop I can highly recommend "innovative Body Works" in Helensburgh. call me or PM for a reference.

Lets be fair here. The person who sold it to you may not have been the one whom repaired the damaged vehicle. They may have bought it as it is. Did you buy it from Victoria?

Thanks for your empathy. I blame myself for not going down to Adelaide and checking in mydelf. "Buyer Beware".

The seller didn't repair it, I don't know who did and I don't have a copy of the ad as it was 2 years ago.

Whoever did repair it is a f&*king shonk and the worst pretend tradesman around. I would not ue the word tradesman, because no real tradesman could do this.

Anywa, I don't give a hoot about he past now, nothing i can do but move forward.

The car is at Sydney Vintage Car Restoratons. I am very confident they'll do a great job on the body.

So i bought this body, virtually no rust and no accident damage, only thing is, someone has butchered the rear apron. Not to worry, We;ll fix it.

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Lucky score getting such a nice body

Love these things

I saw one in Victoria about 18 years ago that was very squashed rear and front with creases in all inner panels.

Hi Helbus, what colour was it? Mine was originally from Victoria and arcona white with a brown interior.

How many bodies come up for sale.... not many.

walter64 wrote:Whoever did repair it is a f&*king shonk and the worst pretend tradesman around. I would not ue the word tradesman, because no real tradesman could do this.

Mate I feel your pain and had a similar experience with my Ghia - but not quite as bad, but you've got give the repairer some credit.
It takes real talent to build a Bog Sculpture - this guy is the Michaelangelo of Bog😂 If you don't have a bit of a laugh you'll end up hating the car. Great score with the new body 👍

On the bright side.................. you have all the parts for the new body 👍

Yep👍

It was white, I cannot remember the interior. It was in a VW workshop in Airport West.

walter64 wrote:Hi Helbus, what colour was it? Mine was originally from Victoria and arcona white with a brown interior.

How many bodies come up for sale.... not many.

It was white, I cannot remember the interior. It was in a VW workshop in Airport West.

Do you know the name of the shop, I'll ask them if they repaired it.

fcfcedc

this car used to be up the road from me in Adelaide - Hampstead Gardens, the guy has another razor which has a dark blue roof and light grey body....beautiful original car. If only you knew he had the other car!

okrasa5462 wrote:this car used to be up the road from me in Adelaide - Hampstead Gardens, the guy has another razor which has a dark blue roof and light grey body....beautiful original car. If only you knew he had the other car!

Are you sure ?..... There was a very very similar one that got sold a few times quickly very recently .....I think Walter knows which one I mean.

okrasa5462 wrote:this car used to be up the road from me in Adelaide - Hampstead Gardens, the guy has another razor which has a dark blue roof and light grey body....beautiful original car. If only you knew he had the other car!

Yes I bought the car from Paul Shaz in Adelaide, he told me he bought the berrmuda blue T34 and that's why he is selling the red one. Apparently he bought it from a old guy and it's in excellent original condition.

C'est la vie. We move on.

Well I have not updating anything here for a while, so here goes.

This is what the teak looks like now

The body also came with a rare sun roof turret

So back in June dropped off the body to the body shop, "Sydney Vintage Car Restorations". I was excited. Then when we put the new body next to the teak Karmann T34-1, I could see the following extra issues needing rectification:

* The front and rear guards were flared. I am not interested in custom stuff, it's got to be a stock body. Shit more work.
* Out in broad daylight I could also see the engine inner guards were also really butchered to fit custom brackets for the porsche motor More work again. F@#k!$g Hell!
* the rear engine tray was gone, ok we could use the the tray from T34-3, problem was when the cut the tray from the car they must have used an air chisel and damaged the rest of the body.

I did realise these needed fixing
* The dash was removed, I can live with that, I can swap the dash from T34-1
* Front blinker lights welded up, minor work, cut out back to original
* Rear apron butchered to fit some sort of custom taillights, not too bad because the T34-3 has a rear apron that seams OK, we could use and weld in.
* LH & RH rear quarter panels modified for the custom taillights, not too bad this can be repaired with some new metal, oxy welding and hammer and dolly work

However
* The front guard had a petrol filler neck cut into it. I thought this was part of a stock volkswagen model change just like on the 1969 type 3's. I thought this was possible a '69 body. Boy was I wrong.

This project is going from bad to worse.

Man, i need to see a psychiatrist for some counselling. They are too expensive. What can I do? I go see Greg who sold me the body, how can he help me? Well he has another really, really rusty T34, which he says I can use for spares. Great! So one Sunday morning in September he organises his friends Dick & Brad to help strip the rusty T34 down, I ask my mate Joe the my specialist VW mechanic who knows all these guys as well to help as well. So we pull it apart. All the boys help, given Brad's trade experience, best he gets the coffees and bbqs the bacon and eggs.

I am a panel beater and haven't picked up tools since 1992, so back on the tools which feels really good.

So now I'll call the rust bucket T34-3.

A very very special thanks to Greg Jones.

So this karmann T-34-3 was originally sea blue.

So i drop the T34-3 off to Sydney Vintage Car Restorations (SVCR). Slight inconvenience they are 3 hours drive away from me.

Gill who owns SVCR, looks on in horror at the body. I was considering calling 000 for an ambulance. Now he has 3 T34 karmann ghias at his shop, he's not that happy about it.

He should be happy, never have that many T34's been to Crookwell or the Southern Highlands

Am I the only person in Australia with 3 x T34s?? Andy they are all shit!!

What would a therapist say about this? Don't know, but my answer would be, hey I'm dominating the market. If there are 40 T34's in Australia, then I would have 7.5% market share. I sound like a lunatic justifying my insanity.

In October the boys at SVCR strip the body back with paint stripper and clean and strip discs.

November, SVCR start working on the engine bay of the body, unfortunately badly butchered by the previous guys who installed a porsche motor

So they cut up T34-3 to use its engine bay, but its rusty, so some hand forming of new metal is required.

So inner engine bay panels fit, now let's sort out the rear apron / beaver. Unfortunately the rear apron from T34-3 was also in a bad accident and was full of nicky/bog/filler/bondo whatever you ant to call it. So we use a NOS apron I bought and repair the quarter panels.

The quarter panels are repaired by oxy welding in new metal, so it an be dressed up with a hammer and dolly. No MIG welding.

Trial fit, still need to do some more work to the quarter panels.

To continue with the fitting of the rear apron I need this rear engine piece, it was removed from the T34-2 body, the one in T34-3 was rusted away, I didn't want to chop up the body of T34-1. So I put the feelers out.

Low and behold, there's one in Holland. Pieter Grabijn kindly gives it to me. However it is too long to freight cheaply so he cuts it and sends it. Uncut it would have cost 300 Euro to freight over.

However it still needs some rust repairs and needs to be joined together. So it's all sandblasted, nicely oxy welded together and the rusty area cut out and replaced.

The arse end is finally coming along. All metal, no rust.

After some rust repairs the engine bay is finished. Yee haa!

The boys want to paint it first before its all welded together and installed so paint can get into all the nooks and crannies to prevent any corrosion.

This car will be painted in the areas that weren't painted by the factory.

Back in March, I was alerted to a teak interior for sale on the samba by Carsten Klein and Tristan Robinson. I was very luck to be able to buy a complete Teak interior for my car, steering wheel, seats, pads trims etc etc. from Pieter Grabijn. Although everything will be redone, at least I have something to go of now.

Now I'm at a cross roads.

Do I use the body to be my teak car?

or do I use the body and build a sea blue car like T34-3 was and shelve the teak for a few years?

Where is the therapist?

Well, I made my mind up. No body swap for the teak. I'm shelving the Teak for a few more years. Hell, according to Lee Hedges who runs the T34 registry, its the only RHD Teak known, and they only know of 5 other teaks in the world.

Anyway, all systems go on restoring a 1965 sea blue 1500s T34. T34-2 & T34-3 are both originally sea blue. Birth certificate on its way.
I'll start the new thread for the 1965 sea blue 1500s T34.

That's some inspiring work!

Great work. This car could have so easily been junked with all the rust. All respect to you for saving it and doing such an awesome job on the resto.

Yogie

PHAT BUG wrote:That's some inspiring work!

Yogie wrote:Great work. This car could have so easily been junked with all the rust. All respect to you for saving it and doing such an awesome job on the resto.

Yogie

thanks.

Congrats on the work that you have undertaken to date. Well done and its great your saving another razor from the scrap heap.

okrasa5462 wrote:Congrats on the work that you have undertaken to date. Well done and its great your saving another razor from the scrap heap.

Thanks mate, when you are that far down the track what choice does one have?