Almost a barn find - Bahama blue '66 Fasty

Hooray, I finally found an early type 3 fastback. I have been looking for a long time without much joy. Hoping to get a registered vehicle but I was getting pretty frustrated until now.
What I found quite by chance in a small text ad online was an unmolested original vehicle with so much potential that only you guys would appreciate. I'm truly gushing great gobs of joy at this dusty old car that most avaerage people wouldn't look twice at.
Unregistered and sitting under a car port since '93 in NSW central west it has all original panels, never been crashed and most importantly, no serious rust repairs needed. I guess that has something to do with the location. NSW central west has been in drought for a very long time. Paint is dusty and a few car park dents and nudges here and there, rubbers perished and tank rusted so it doesn't run but overall it's a beauty with nearly all the original chrome, interior intact except for the drivers door arm rest, battery tray surface rust only, no rust holes in the pan. Vinyl seats aren't even cracked. Hopefully the engine will fire eventually. Brakes need doing for sure and a general machanical overhaul.The Empi look mags were a bonus, so was the mouse poo in the spare wheel well. The owner I bought it from had secured the car off a local lady whom had it stored for nearly 20 years in her car port after the tank got rusty and it never got back on the road after that. Someone dropped a beetle tank in there but gave up on trying to make it work. The guy I bought it from has had it on a concrete slab in front of his house for about a year and a half but decided his plans for a resurrection were not going to happen and he had better sell it before it started rusting out in the weather. He got as far as putting the new empi look mags on it but that's it. I got it for a very reasonable sum which I don't want to disclose but suffice to say it was a good price.

Good fine dude, drop that front and she'll be sitting sweet

Nice find!
Lucky you!

Thanks guys!
Paint and mechanical resto first then blue slip. Lowered after that for sure.
Not sure about the drums up front. It's been a long time since I've driven a car with front drum brakes. I don't have really fond memories of them but my plan is to build a cruiser so if they pull up reasonably straight I won't worry too much at first. I'm also not sure if installing disks up front means that I may not be able to retain the same wheels.The wheels are 5 1/2 inch wide. There doesn't look like a lot of room left for a spacer plate/stud pattern adapter if I run the disk brake front end. Let's see what happens eh!

Nice score, sure it isnt Zenith or Diamond bule (my money on Zenith) -- the empi 5 spokes wont work if u wanna lower it, u will need to do axle swap.😁

Yep it could be a different blue. I'm not 100% sure. it's very pale and under certain afternoon light and slight colour blindness you could mistake it for pale green. Will have to investigate it once the weather clears up. I basically got it back in darkness and it has rained ever since so I haven't even had the chance to pop the engine cover since I bought it.

I'm currently looking into the axle swap because there is sweet fa room between the guard and tire. I really would like to use those rims if I can.
Well there's a bit if work to do first. I also gotta sell a bunch of stuff I'm not using. will help me fund this project. If I can fund the paint with a big sell-up of unused gear that I have accumulated through expensive hobbies (cameras, rc cars and mountain bikes) I will have more money left to spend on mechanical and getting the suspension sitting at a nice stance.

great score mate, cant wait to see what you do with her, keep us posted!

Yep for sure, I plan to keep a photographic record so I'll keep it updated as I go.
As far as I can find it's likely Baltic blue but I'll confirm once I get a chance to spot the code on the plate.
Here's a refernce I found as far as colours. Seems Baltic blue was correct for the 66 year model. Diamond blue was available later but Zenith blue was not a type 3 colour as far as I know unless Aussie cars had different colour charts to those I found.

Paint code link 1

Here's another pic of the car, loading the car backward on the trailer was a tip from a friend reminding me that the weight was at the back of the car and it would make towing more stable if there was more weight on the hitch. Seems rather logical but too late to find that out once your trailer starts getting the death wobbles.

I have owned a 65 notch and square in Zenith blue.

http://www.clubvw.org.au/vwpaint

http://forums.aussieveedubbers.com/viewtopic.php?action=attachment&tid=86711&pid=865568&aid=90323

http://home.clara.net/hallvw/vwpaint.htm this one is a US ref site.

I love hearing these types of stories. Great find, looking forward to seeing what you do to it.

Cheers Paul.

cool car looking fprward to watching this, im with adam loose the empi 5s get something good for a slammin

dragsters for life wrote:cool car looking fprward to watching this, im with adam loose the empi 5s get something good for a slammin

mate congrats.
great find... worth the wait.
yeah piss those rims off. go old skool stocks. dont slam it... lower it to a good drive height🙅 & enjoy it.
cheers matty

^^^^ Dont listen to Shaven , he aint with it!! he is suffering from altitude sickness as his type 3 u can fly a plane underneath!!

I think leave the 5 spokes on (just make em fit). i think the light blue and polished 5's would look great.

My old 63.

Hey great to read all your responses. By the way, My name is Paolo. Nice to meet you all. 🙂
I'm in two minds about the final wheel combination. It might end up with two pairs of shoes. I like steelies with stock caps and white walls but the the Empi 5's are a look that I also like quite a lot plus it's one less thing I need to buy so I can spend the money elsewhere until I get the car on the road. Rear narrowed axles seem pretty straight forward in order to make the empi's work although I might need to read up a bit more about it or ask the audience or phone a friend.
Front narrowed beam I'd like to avoid doing if I can help it. I kinda like the look of the narrowed beams right now but i'm not sure about it in the long term. It could be a passing fascination for me so I'll wait and see. Might save those decisions for later on. The car is gonna get a lot uglier before it looks better. Gonna start stripping it down in about a week. Body will stay on the chassis but I am gonna paint underneath. Haven't worked out how yet but I'll think of something. Maybe tip it on it's side somehow after I drop the engine and box.
I would like it lowered though. I tip my hat to shaven for resisting the popular opinion to go-low but I've wanted a lowered fastback for such a long time now. It won't be fully slammed though.
Think; completely-slammed 'defect-bait' then back up about 30-35mm. That's what I like! A smidge higher than Empi's old 63 notch (above).

Ah that pic is slightly photoshopped, check out the current notch in my members rides thread. 46mm clearance!!

Oh yeah, saw those pics a few times. Great looking car. You'd get a lot of admiring looks driving that fasty! 46mm eh, ooohhh, that's low!

Yeah but handles quite well.🥷

Guys, I'm having a little trouble finding the paint code. I thought it was supposed to be on a little sticker in the spare wheel well. Can anybody give me an idea of where to look for it?

eXraycer wrote:Hey great to read all your responses. By the way, My name is Paolo. Nice to meet you all. 🙂
I'm in two minds about the final wheel combination. It might end up with two pairs of shoes. I like steelies with stock caps and white walls but the the Empi 5's are a look that I also like quite a lot plus it's one less thing I need to buy so I can spend the money elsewhere until I get the car on the road. Rear narrowed axles seem pretty straight forward in order to make the empi's work although I might need to read up a bit more about it or ask the audience or phone a friend.
Front narrowed beam I'd like to avoid doing if I can help it. I kinda like the look of the narrowed beams right now but i'm not sure about it in the long term. It could be a passing fascination for me so I'll wait and see. Might save those decisions for later on. The car is gonna get a lot uglier before it looks better. Gonna start stripping it down in about a week. Body will stay on the chassis but I am gonna paint underneath. Haven't worked out how yet but I'll think of something. Maybe tip it on it's side somehow after I drop the engine and box.
I would like it lowered though. I tip my hat to shaven for resisting the popular opinion to go-low but I've wanted a lowered fastback for such a long time now. It won't be fully slammed though.
Think; completely-slammed 'defect-bait' then back up about 30-35mm. That's what I like! A smidge higher than Empi's old 63 notch (above).

his only resisting sop he can win best stock type 3 at day of, i bet its low the next day, he knows he wants to slam it

dragsters for life wrote:

eXraycer wrote:I tip my hat to shaven for resisting the popular opinion to go-low but I've wanted a lowered fastback for such a long time now. It won't be fully slammed though.

Think; completely-slammed 'defect-bait' then back up about 30-35mm. That's what I like! A smidge higher than Empi's old 63 notch (above).

his only resisting sop he can win best stock type 3 at day of, i bet its low the next day, he knows he wants to slam it

hey paolo,
mate love the idea of 2 sets of shoes... thats why i dont want to swap my axles out... i want to be able to go shiney & down but have the option of putting the old stocks back on👍

mate, with you on the ride height. yes the Squareback will go lower But not too low🙅
everything seems to be slammed these days👎
chris... it should be seen how it was built😂

Let's say you narrowed the rear axles and then got a couple of steelies re-dished a little wider for the rear. That's my evil plan anyway. Stock looking with a twist. Empi's for Saturday night cruises, stockers for a Sunday drive. .

More about this colour. Going by the link Empi put up Bahama blue looks like the most likely colour. From what people say it could be mistaken for pale green very easily.  If you look inside my car at the paint that isn't oxidized that description is spot on. It also looks like the only pale blue that year manufactured in Aus. 
http://www.clubvw.org.au/vwpaint

Here's a couple of examples I found online.
The dash colour is a dead ringer for my interior and under bonnet colours where the sun hasn't hit it.

Just really noticed those stickers on the beetle dash I posted. Made me laugh. I'm not German but those words seem a little peculiar. 🙂

Hahah the stickers are great!! Bahama blue was an import colour i believe, have a look at the compliance plate and see if its an Astralasain car or German??
I had a square that was Bahama blue and an import, send me a pic of yr dash and the inner top of your doors.. Oh and the 3rd digit in your vin.

empi wrote:Hahah the stickers are great!! Bahama blue was an import colour i believe, have a look at the compliance plate and see if its an Astralasain car or German??
I had a square that was Bahama blue and an import, send me a pic of yr dash and the inner top of your doors.. Oh and the 3rd digit in your vin.

is that the same as Australasian😘

that dash looks ascot green to me

empi wrote:Hahah the stickers are great!! Bahama blue was an import colour i believe, have a look at the compliance plate and see if its an Astralasain car or German??
I had a square that was Bahama blue and an import, send me a pic of yr dash and the inner top of your doors.. Oh and the 3rd digit in your vin.

I'm not sure how accurate it is but Club vw paint page does not list any import colours in '66. I assume it took quite some effort to put that list together. Clubvw.org/paint

First three digits of my vin are 316xxxxxx

I'll get a pic of the dash soon. Now that you mention dash - Somebody glued some shag pile psychadelic carpet over the vinyl dash top. It looks like the stuff that hot dog van in 'Dumb and Dumber' was carpeted in. I'm hoping to find crack free vinyl under it but I have my doubts. Why would anyone stick carpet on vinyl if it was perfectly fine? Need to find a way to dissolve the glue without dissolving the vinyl. I'm thinking tea tree oil or just mineral oil.

Turps will do contact cement, if that's what they used. Also if you use a hot air gun (on low heat) or a hair dryer (on high heat) it will soften it enough to remove the carpet.

Yeah looks like contact cement. Thanks. I'm sure the smell will dissipate by the time the car is back on the road. I'll give the heat gun a go too.

316 =1966👍

Will consult my australian type 3 colour brochure... back soon🤓

empi wrote:316 =1966👍

Will consult my australian type 3 colour brochure... back soon🤓

How did you go with that?

Currently I'm almost certain it's an Aussie built or at least Aussie assembled car. And most likely Bahama Blue although the colour number sticker is long since gone..
Still trying to determine this cars origin or find out all I can about it. Whether it was completely made in Australia or assembled here from a CKD (Complete knock Down) or a combination of import and locally made parts. The interior looks original and in Brown colour. Vertical stitch lines but no perforations or two tone colours for the interior. Z shaped front arm rests. One of which is missing, drivers side. (If anyone has one to spare I would be interested in purchasing it from you).
The car might be sporting German made glass from the german sounding inscriptions but i will take a pic. (Will take more pics of the markings and dash and door tops on the weekend) although no rear pop outs on this car again suggesting Aussie made vehicle if i'm not mistaken.
I thought the glass was made locally on the Aussie made cars??? but I guess in those days they probably did whatever they had to in order to fill the quota or meet the demand.

Found the Body number plate in the spare wheel location suggesting that it might have been assembled in Australia from what I've read here on Aussieveedubbers. Is that true for 1966? Is is possibly a CKD kit or completely made here. How would I be able to tell the difference? or have I got enough information already to work that out?????
Chassis and Compliance plate numbers match. Definitely 66 model. (316XXX)

Zenith blue is looking less likely - am I right in saying that?

TS fastbacks are Australia only and have panels pressed in Australia not CKD. They still have "Made in Germany" on the tag because not enough of the car was made in Australia to say that.

It will have mostly Australian glass.

Interiors where Australian.

Tail light lenses, starter motor, gennie say made in Australia.( lost of other part as well. Even later CKD cars had lots of Australian parts)

If it was a German 66 fasty it would have disc brakes and would have a TL badge and all German parts.

Thanks a lot for the clarification. Just the sort of info I was looking for.

Can anyone confirm the Aussie fastback colours for 66?
The light blue oxidised paint exterior takes on a warmer light green hue in the areas with less paint oxidation. I'm gonna hit a test patch with polish I think. From descriptions I've read about Bahama blue it sounds very similar.

2c anyone??

I agree with Empi's earlier post - looks Zenith to me.

As Dean from the Curiousity Show used to say..."here's one I prepared earlier":

OK, finally I've had confirmation and its definitely Bahama blue so I have updated the thread title. Was confirmed by two experts in the flesh both of which have owned Bahama blue vw's.

Anyhow there's been some progress. Pulled out and panel beated the front beaver. I found an old school panel beater who wasn't scared of a few hours solid work. Together we pushed out the beaver using the car jack against the front beam to stretch it. then more than a few solid hits and some hammer and dolly work and she's nearly done. a bit more work to do but the shape is looking good.



Now some more work required on the front right light bucket damage and a little rust repair required under the back left tail light. Oh and the rear beaver is a bit bent too. Hey it was a Bathurst car. Probably ran over a wombat or a stump in a paddock at some stage and pulled out the rear beaver.

Some more panel repairs.
Here - the light bucket damage. Odd spot for isolated damage. Took some oxy heat and some more panrl beating.


Here some rust repairs. replacing the hard to fix area with part of an easier to fix panel. The lesser of two evils I guess. Couldn't really find a perfect panel to fix it with so we fitted the slightly better green section then fixed a little bit of rust that was in that peice.

Slow going but I managed to drop the engine, gut the interior and separate the body from the chassis in the last couple of weeks with the help of a friend. Would have had more done but I'm also trying to settle in to this new garage I built at work. Making benches, fitting compressed air lines, shelving and roller door has all slowed me down a lot but I'm ready now to go full steam. Just finishing my body frame so I can remove the chassis and work on it concurrently. Thinking of doing an IRS conversion, and adjustable rear spring plates. Not sure yet. Will mull it over some more before I decide.

The engine in my car is quite the paradox. It is rusted and corroded beyond beleif but then you look at the body with only the small amount of rust we cut out of the rear qtr and a small hole under the front corner of the fuel tank. It is really baffling. But the motor looks like its been under sea water. Anyhow if you got to know the history. The car was bought from central western NSW. They've gone through a number of field mouse plagues in the past and the fan housing, air ducts and muffler were litterally full of mouse sh#t and organic matter. My best guess is that the engine was pi$$ed on by a million hungry mice in their frenzy to find a place called home so they can crap in it. Thank god the interior was locked up and windows shut tight.

And here is the proof I found on Saturday as I pressure washed that crap off the engine. One dessicated mouse trapped in the engine tins.









Not sure if this is gonna work. I thought I'd improvise and make a car body wheelable frame to sit it on whilst I work on the chassis. I Have since bolted the orange crossmembers to the uprights to give it more stability and will put a third u bolt on each corner of the blue crossbars for redundancy. Supercheap were having a sale on trailer hitch wheels at $20 each which I thought was pretty good. I Wanted to make it without welding. Also to save cost I used steel and unused racking I had in the warehouse. I think the pallet racking should hold no problem. We put over a tonne on it in the warehouse.

great idea for the rack. loving this thread keep up the great work.👍 looking forward to the next instalment 👍

This is great, I can be a passenger to this rebuild, whilst I rebuild my '71

A little bit more prep work before I lift it. As I'm not sure how strong the A pillars are I thought I should brace up the door openings before I lift it. Here's the handy work. took bloody hours to fabricate them to a tight fit. The old 'measure twice, cut once rule", worked out for me. They fit like a glove.

We have lift-off................
After a long cold night we finally dropped it's pants. The frame worked out pretty good. Just fits under my roller door and the chassis will wheel under the body no probs to give me more room in the garage if I need it.

Here's how we did it. I'm sure everybody will have their own method and it is dependant on the equipment available to you so I'm not saying it's the only way, just my way.
Wheel the frame into position without the front crossbar attached. Jack the rear of the chassis up as far as you can. Lift the rear of body up a little more so you can wheel the crossbar of your frame under the chassis mounts at the top of the shock tower. (i'm lucky I had a little mini forklift but its light enough if you had 3 blokes or if your floor jack had a bit more lift than mine had. Then drop the chassis down. (That's assuming you've done all the prep works and removed all the chassis bolts and attached wires). You could do it on your own with the right method and equipment but this sort of job I felt it was good to have at least one other person around.



Next, lift the front up and slide the front crossbar into position. Again we jacked up the chassis most of the way but this time it was easy to manhandle it and slide the crossbar onto the 'u' bolt cradles I made. You'll note the front crossbar hangs below my orange beams about 150mm lower than the rear. It gives you a pretty level car this way. I used threaded rod to make the 'u'bolts and used three per corner to give me some redundancy.




At this point we just dropped the chassis down and wheeled it out.







(Note if anyone decide to make their own frame like this, a word of warning. Add in some high tensile bolts to lock the orange beams to the posts by drilling through the lot. The normal pins that lock the posts to the beams are dependat on weight. If you happen to wheel the unit around and one corner becomes un-weighted the leg keyholes will let the leg drop off the beam and your whole thing could topple over. Also with regards to the trailer hitch wheels, I used 'u' bolts that were not for round posts they were squared 'flat' on th 'u' shape which wanted to squash the vertical hitch/shaft of the castor wheel and it restricted the ability of the wheel to change direction. If you do something like this you might be better off to weld some conventional castors to the base of the corner posts. It's a whole lot of mucking around that can be done a lot easier if you get your hands on a mig welder.)

Here's how I lifted the body up tha last little bit to let me roll the crossbar and frame under but I reckon you could do the same with two men or a block and tackle or a taller trolley jack. I like having the chassis up under the body only a few inches away for safety until I knew the crossbar was in the right spot and supporting the body. Probably a little bit of overkill on my part but it was really hard to find a straight car and I'm a little protective of it.

Been cleaning up the pan. it's in pretty good condition. One small hole to repair near battery and two other tiny spots where i punched a hole where I thought it was thin. I will patch them rather than replace with a large pan section cause the pan is sound. At some point in its life somebody saw surface rust in the battery area and coated the back half with a red rust preventative paint. It surely saved the battery side pan so I got lucky.

Some pics of the stripping. Tried straight sand blasting at 90psi but found an easier workflow was to wire wheel it first with the air grinder then sandblast with Aluminium oxide.

Time for an update here:

Its been a little slow but I keep taking small steps forward.
Front beam is reconditioned and painted. Ready for assembly. ( leave that for now )

Chassis still up on its side. I left that for now, almost ready for paint on it. Just want to get the rear subframe sorted.

Rear subframe is a project of its own. I'm in the process of installing pivot boxes on the early swing axle subframe in order to go full IRS suspension.

Judging from the quotes I got I knew it wasn't going to be easy to do so I prepared myself for a hard slog. It's definitely not a fun job but I've cut no corners so I'm happy with the progress.

Thought I'd be clever and bought aftermarket pivot boxes but I didn't like the angle they attached to the beam at. It meant notching them into the frame horns a huge amount. So not wanting to cut the frame horns a great deal I opted to cut the pivots off the donor IRS rear end.

Cut the beam then grind them from the rear so there was no loss of metal around the circumference where they attach to the beam.



Must say, this is one of the hard jobs. I hated doing it. Slow, tedious, intricate grinding from an obsessive compulsive meant it took hours. Yuk.

Next was another slow and tedious cut to do. The notch into the frame horn. Measure twice cut once. Unfortunately you also gotta do a little at a time or you'll end up with a bigger hole than required.

I got it very close to perfect. Happy with the result. One side done after about 2 hours if back and forward cut/test fitting.
Take a template then stick it onto the other side. Second one was a lot quicker.
I used an air cutter. (reciprocating air cutter.) to do the detailed cutting. Best 90 bucks I ever spent. (tip; do not buy the really cheap ryobi air saws from bunnings. After two units packed it in within 3 minutes I gave up and bought a better quality unit fromTotal tools).











At this point I must tell you about the pivot box jigs.
I borrowed one set from someone i knew that are production items made in USA for bugs but they don't clear the shock towers on a type 3. I was about to build my own but during a casual conversation with Mike at Vintage Veedub he mentioned that they had a custom made set that would work and are available for hire.
Sometimes you get lucky. These jigs are awesome. So solid and absolutely spot on when I test fit them into the old donor IRS rear end. So, a big thanks to Vintage Veedub. Access to these jigs saved me about a whole day of trying to fabricate my own jigs.



I will upload a few more pics soon. Just need to tack it on and think a little more about my Kafer bar setup I'm going to make from chromoly tubing. Gonna do that too before I give it to a professional to weld up the whole job. I want a frame builder to weld this since its a structural suspension component.

u should just get a later irs subframe and bolt it in. dont foret the engine hanger mounts on the body.

Hi Empi,
I was not going to do the rear engine hanger like later models which bolts to the inner guards. Welding mounts to the sheet metal in there just didn't seem like a solid way to hang a warmed up motor. I thought it might be prone to cracking and warping the inner guard area but I can't say from experience, just didn't seem like the best way to do it although I'm sure it would have been a lot easier. The whole point of doing the IRS conversion to the swing axle sub frame with the frame fork design should support the gearbox and motor like an IRS beetle. The Kafer bars (yet to be made) will further support and minimize the torque effect of the motor on the frame fork.
If you see I already had a later subframe which I bought for parts and pivot boxes.

I had seen a few custom builds like this and chose to follow their lead. Being a bolt in subframe and having another spare swing axle subframe I bought really cheaply on eBay I felt that the mods are easily reversed if I choose to revert the car back to stock one day.

I think you made a good choice. As you said, the body cracks in the rear even with a standard engine.

Great job.

the jigs! awesome. so they are available for hire?

matberry wrote:I think you made a good choice. As you said, the body cracks in the rear even with a standard engine.

Great job.

yes thats my experience too and I am going with this same setup plus kafer bars.

Make sure yr Cvs clear

empi wrote:Make sure yr Cvs clear

good point. Never thought of that when using stock gearbox.

vlad01 wrote:the jigs! awesome. so they are available for hire?

Yep for hire, just speak to Mike at vvds. Gimme a couple weeks before you ask for them. I wanna mock up my kafer bars first and then get the whole lot welded professionally.

Yes I heard about the CV's requiring a little massage (dimple) to the frame fork where they touch.

yeah if you use the suby box it can clear it, stock probably not and need to be clearanced.

Thought I'd never have to do this but I dug out the old motor and bolted it up to the transmission. I needed to see if the heater boxes where going to interfere with my Kafer bar setup so it was important to have them in plain sight before I tacked anything together. The old measure twice, cut once theory.

So I started with this. My converted swing axle rear suspension with IRS pivot boxes in position ready for welding.



Cleaned and ready.



Cut crossbar. Used 1.5" chromoly tube for crossbar and 1" for the diagonals. Crossbar and forward diagonals will be solid welded. Rear diagonals clearly need to be removable in order to be able to remove the transmission so I decided to use clevis joints for a double shear connection to the through-bolt.



I notched the crossbar to sit on top of the shocktower shoulder.



Welded clevis joint tabs onto the HD rear trans mount.



Same for the top on the crossbar. Note, I found using hose clamps holds the Clevis joints on the tube until I weld them. Decided that I'm not gonna make any of the diagonals adjustable. I see lots of Kafer bar kits with adjustable ends but I figure that's only necessary from a universal off-the-shelf product perspective. Since I'm making my bars specifically to suit my car then there's no need to have them adjustable.



Its really tight trying to make it work with the heater boxes and heater cable lever. This is the only way to do it if you have any intention of keeping the heaters.



Tacked rear diagonals in position.



Made front diagonals but they will not be tack welded. Will give us more room to get the IRS pivot boxes welded first.

Major milestone hit. Dropped the subframe to the fabricators for tig welding. Using a shop in Seven Hills called Racers Choice. Recommended by Rod Andrews Race car supplies who supplied the moly tube for the kafer bars. Was going to use Rod for the welding but he's too busy at the moment.
A final thing before dropping it off: The area on the top frame horn metal near the pivot bolt exposes the pivot bolt a little and needs to be raised so that you don't inadvertently weld the pivot bolt in the process. A little massage with some pliers and a hammer. Note the top of the frame horn is thinner metal to the bottom half of the frame horn. I'm guessing that's because the top is in tension with the weight of the motor so it doesn't need to be as heavy gauge. This is not the best when it come to attaching the Kafer bar forward struts to the top of the frame horn near the pivot bolt. The Racers Edge fabricator recommended plating it with 3mm thick plate to spread the force then weld the diagonal brace to it. I was very happy he mentioned that. I was gonna ask his opinion on the strength of that connection and if he though it needed reinforcing but he beat me to it. Gave me more confidence in their work. I'm by no means building this to be a racecar but I think it's important to build it to last. I don't want to pull it all out in six months to fix cracked welds.

This is the area I'm talking about.



You know if you want to do this sort of conversion you should consider doing the notching-in work yourself if you have the patience. It will save a lot of money because most shops will charge it on hourly rate or if they quote a lump sum figure then it will either be expensive or worse still, too cheap and then they will rush it to save their arse. You just can't rush this sort of work. It's the worst part of the entire job and consumes hours of tedious work but you'll know it's done right and if you're careful and don't get over-zealous cutting the hole you can present the job to a welder with very small gaps (1-2mm) suitable for intricate welding without too much filling. When they have to fill gaps with weld it imparts a lot of heat into the surrounding area and could lead to brittle metal and cracking. Near-enough is not good enough unfortunately. I got the OK from the welder for my prep work so I'm happy!

Wow dude. Thats some really great work. What engine are you going for.

Yeah it's a solid motor that i picked up as an unassembled box of new and reco parts based on a reconditioned AS 21 block that will be set up as a 1916cc.
Mahle pistons a barrels 94mm I think. I know the head is reconditioned but not standard with double valve springs, larger valves, higher ratio rocker arms, electronic ignition instead of contact points, crank is stock length welded and balanced. Some of the exact specs I will get once my engine builder puts it together. Bought for less than the sum of its parts so I had to roll with what I got. Figured that since it was the cc config I wanted with high quality core components that it was a solid start. My engine builder is a formula vee racer who is a personal friend. He's builds very competive f'vee engines for himself for 30 years and is enjoying this build cause its a refreshing change to build an engine unrestrained by class specs.
Some extras I'm doing are a mini 60 amp alternator conversion, 40idf webers (reconditioned Italian made), engle 120 cam, straight cut forged timing gears, external oil cooler, shallow depth sump extension. The list is growing. Should be a solid unit.

Is there welders like this in Melbourne?

Skinned Knuckles in Melbourne might help. Check out his website. He does a lot more than narrowed bus beams.
I'm sure anyone who builds racecar roll cages can do this work too.

Update.
Picked up the rear sub-frame from the welder. See pics below.

5.5 hrs worth of welding and fabrication in addition to all the prep work I did. It's really a far better welding job than I could have done.
I am very pleased with the results. The reinforcing plates next to the pivot boxes were an addition. So was the additional welding
welding of the Empi HD rear trans mount. Although it's heavier guage steel it was a little light on welds we thought.

Here's the pics. The Mohr mid mount is just placed under the frame. They don't require any welding. Was going to use a Berg mid mount but to be honest
I like the simplicity of the Mohr style one.

thats very nice work, I see you got all the other weak areas welded too.

This is me tonight.

One small step for veedub,
One giant leap for sandkind.

must be so good having your own blaster. I bet you would save a heap by having it done your self.

vlad01 wrote:must be so good having your own blaster. I bet you would save a heap by having it done your self.

Biggest advantage is you get to do things at your own pace.
Ebay for the blaster $165 cheap.

Aluminium oxide. 3 x bags. $60 each. It's exxy but you can use it at least 10 times. I started with a heavier grit on yhe chassis and reuse. Do chassis first then by the time you need to do any panels it's clearly finer grit. you can buy fine grit from the start but I plan to down grade it for finer use the more I use it.

Edit: I should mention, you need a good air supply to run this sand blasting rig. About 80-90 psi. Also you need to fiddle with the lower supply lever under the tank which lets out the pressurized sand from the tank into the jet stream of the gun hose. At first it was just pouring bucket loads of sand at low velocity until I reduced the amount of sand coming out of the tank. After that it worked fine.
Also the rubber hose blew open right at the lower exit of the tank feeder after a couple of hours. admittedly I wasn't aware but I had a bit of a tight bend coming out of the tank so I probably should have kept the hose straighter. Its a thick hose so I imagine this sand is very abrasive and the hose will be a consumable item.

Gonna be a long night. Last night finished late sandblasting and tonight got a late start after my day job and did some final prep work. No point waiting any longer to get paint on. Using up some POR 15 I had bought already but I think I might do the underside with KBS cause its a little less shiny and I want to top coat the underside with satin finish polyurethane.
Doing the pan floor with a brush cause its a little pitted and I want to get an extra coat in this area. The rest I'm gonna spray. Two more spray coats over the whole lot. The tunnel I didn't strip cause was not rusty. I just sanded a little and sprayed with POR acid etch primer.

Not much else to do between coats. May as well update photos.
First full spray coat. Thinned down 10%. Seems to spray well.
Underside will have to wait for another day cause I'll have to use the metal ready rust converter to re-apply the zinc phosphate coating. Its been a while since I sandblasted the underside. I spoke with the supplier of POR 15 a while back when I realized I needed to do a bit of welding after I sandblasted the underside. Knowing it was gonna be delayed a while before I could paint I asked him about the procedure. He said no prob, just do the work then reapply the metal-ready coating before painting.

Did the old 'strip-n-flip' last couple of days, preparing to paint the underside.
All things going well I'll get some paint on the underside today.

mate great job... love reading this thread.

A productive weekend. Achieved that OEM look with satin black but I doubt VW ever layed this much paint on the chassis.
I also sprayed over my front beam which I did in grey gloss a while back. Wasn't a fan of the glossy grey so I went for satin black. It's the UV stable top coat you paint over the rust sealing paint. $80 a litre for top coat is not cheap but if you spray it in the same paint session as the rust paint you can get away doing 2 coats black rust paint sealer followed by one coat of black Top coat satin.

Update.
Put dimples for cv joint clearance.



And did more sand blasting.



Took parts to powdercoaters. Have no time to paint atm.

Damn engine tins have a couple of cracks in them apparently where everybody gets cracks. Slight design flaw i'm told so got to weld that up and reinforce before I get tins powdercoated.
Would have been nice to drop them all off at the same time.

Fresh powder coat on the rear subframe and a few other parts. Looks very close to the satin black I sprayed under the car and should be a little tougher. I try to save money and do work where I can but I just wanted this done so I could move on. Good choice too cause today would have been my first chance to spray paint and its a miserable, rainy day here in Sydney. I'm itching to start work on the body soon. Kills me to let it just sit there while I'm preoccupied with other jobs.
Once I bolt these front and rear ends on the pan I can have a big clear-up and get back onto the body.

Just an update. I've been spending some time with small parts prep, rust removal and such. I purchased a nice bench grinder with a wire wheel. Can't believe I've lived so long without one of these. I also constructed an electrolytic rust removal bath. Works a bit like molasses except its a lot quicker and no sticky goop to contend with.

Anyhow, I recently turned my attention to zinc plating. Wanted to set up a little hobby style tank and plate a few nic nacs on the car.
After much trial and error I've got a reasonably good finish on my first few parts.
It uses vinegar and epsom salt as the electrolytic solution and sugar as a supposed brightener but the finish is quite dull straight out of the tank and it requires a hit on the wire wheel to get the finish I want. Overall I'm pleased that I didn't spend a tonne of cash on a DIY kit considering I'm only doing a few parts and not requiring a 'copy-cad' yellow zinc finish.