Hi All,

Though it about time to post my Oval after following closely some awesome builds that have been shown here ie. Dasdubbers ex63 ragtop, nbturbo's yellow oval etc.

A fair few of you all would have seen my oval in the latest issue of VWMA under "Censored - Bare Metal Oval" so I though I'd share with you in detail the build up.

I'll start with the pics of what I started out with all those years ago. It isn't pretty, in fact it was pretty rough. So rough in fact that if I had build another oval again, I would've walked right past it and kept looking for a better body. The whole lower part of the car has been replaced now. The pan halves were classic Flintstones style. If you were to have stepped into the car, you'd be standing on the garage floor again as the pan was so badly rusted there literally was no floor to the car. Not that it really mattered for me as I had other plans.

And for those of you wondering what the relevance of GTO is, it stands for Grand Touring Oval

Caio for now

Cheers

Hi

You have been a busy boy. The car looks great, cant wait to see it finished.

Steve

Hey mate, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress shots you've taken thus far! The article in VWMA certainly whetted my appetite to learn and see more about some of the mods you have done - full credit to you so far for what has been achieved.

All the best with the remainder of the build - keep those pics coming!
Alan

As above.
T54

Thanks Guys,

I'll start from the bottom, being the Pan.



I knew from the start that I wanted some serious power for this Dub, so I set about creating a strong chassis that didn't have to rely on the heater channels for strength. I used 50 x 50 box section for the main perimeter of the pan as well as 3mm angle iron and boy didn't just that alone add huge amounts of strength and this was without the actual flooring being welded in!!!
For the flooring, (this gave me no end of grief) I spent soo long in trying to find anyone that could fab ribbed paneled sheets. When I thought I had found what I needed it was always too thin......In the end I went to the wreckers to see what I could salvage from something that was made in the masses. After a few hours I eventually found what I needed. I walked out with 5 x XE station wagon rear seat backrests.
The backrest was made from approx 1mm ribbed sheet which was perfect. The reason for 5 x Backrests is because the original XE seat has a lever to to allow you to fold the seat down to increase the luggage area. It's quite a large piece that needs to be welded in and the 5th piece was cut down to suit the area so that it was consistence with the rest of the flooring.

While I was at it I pushed the gearbox forward as well as making my own inboard front gearbox mount as well as permanent sway bar mounts. The reason for these is apparently the sway bar mounts that are supplied in the kit rotate over time, which is really useless especially if you going hard through turns etc......

Any way enough ramblings for me I'm sure the pics can tell you more. In the first pic you'll see the massive jig I used

for the foundation of my floor hehehe

Anyways, it's late, I'm tired, and need to get to bed. Enjoy!

Cheers
D

C'mon Dino-you've had a couple of sleeps-more please.

Hi Gary, just got a few things on at the moment, after tonight prolly won't be on for a couple of weeks as my wife is due to give birth to twins!!

Following on, I fitted a heavy duty gearbox cradle but turned it around 180 degrees to push the gearbox forward to allow extra room at the rear of the car.
In the next pic is how I've finished off the 40 x 40 RHS at the head of the chassis. From here I will make chassis stiffeners (similar to a VW Thing) to tie it in with the bottom of the BJ beam .
You will also notice that I have stitch welded the top and lower half of the spine together. I also stitched welded the gearbox forks as well.

With the RHS I have drilled these to accept the chassis bolts on the top side but bigger on the bottom side to allow the washer to fit through as well as a socket to tighten it to the body. Once bolted I will fit grommets to seal it from the elements.

I've tried to replicate the original style of the floor with the dropped down section for the rear half of the pan. I have created new seat mounts for the front, and also battery mounts in the usual spot.

I painted the chassis in POR15 but to be honest, I don't think it's that good unfortunately. Considering the cost I haven't been happy with the finish, it now looks dull and it's never been out in the direct sunlight!!
The grey colour I went with, I found out after the fact it comes in different shades which I wasn't told about at the time when I needed to purchase more.
I'm going to strip it down and repaint it in the traditional manner to achieve the look I'm after.

Anyone powder coated a chassis before? If yes, can you give us your thoughts on how it has handled the the weather, road conditions etc

Cheers
D

The underside

Powdercoating is the way to go mate.. I had my pan blasted, etchprimed and powder coated for under 1000 last year.. Pity about the por15.. I bought the same stuff and have never opened the can so can't give a comment on it.. I was much happier with the durability, coverage and seal that powdercoating gives..
The place i used was in Padstow and I highly recommend..
Good luck with your project

Dino,all the best to you both and hope all goes well with the births.

All the best for you, your wife, your bubs.....and your dub (whenever you get the time to work on it again may be a different story!).

I too painted my ragtop pan with por15 and despite the distributor's assurances (I checked 3 times) that it could be applied over the etch primer after the pan was blasted, it flaked off easily. So I had to strip it down back to bare metal and start again. Next time I will just paint it in two pack. I thought about powdercoating (nice and easy and looks great) but was worried about A) potential for big flakes coming off if hit hard enough (worry may not be justified but thats just me), and B) difficulty to patch if I had to do any work to the pan (eg. weld brackets on etc).

Alan

Thanks guys, appreciate the support.
Well my twins have joined us and it’s been great. We have a healthy baby boy and we now have a daughter as well :o)
They are a lot of work but the good far outweighs the bad. Soon I’ll get back into the GTO, but in the meantime I’ll keep posting.

Thanks for the input regarding the powder coating guys. Think I’ll go down the 2Pac route for the chassis just in case I have some further mods

Going forward you’ll see what I’ve had to do to get the GTO in respectable shape.
Firstly I sourced a replacement front clip, as well as heater channels, A pillar bases and lower rear qtr panels.
I replaced the front clip as the original suffered a hit in its lifetime.
I made some inner guard replacement panels also. When it came time to replace the heater channels, I did both at the same time and braced the body to make sure the door openings didn’t “close up”
For those of you that haven’t seen inside the A pillar have a close look at the below pic.

This will give you guys some idea of why restoration places charge so much to do rust work, let alone modification and fabrication work.

Cheers

.

Boy has the time flown or what, didn't realize that it was this long since my last post!!!!

Anyway here's a few more progress shots of the body.
I initially moved the firewall forward to provide clearance for the throttle bodies and linkages as I moved the engine/gearbox forward. Also I raised the floor section of the luggage area again for clearance.

All closed up.

.

Then project's direction changed half way through as I decided that I wanted to go turbo which sounds simple enough.
The amount of extra work that was involved and that includes everything from planning (and I really mean forward planning to the point of catering for the cars general service once it was complete) took a lot of time.
Then there's the fabrication work.
Here I've mocked up the basic shape so that I can get base measurements of the structure but also for other items such as the soon to come roll cage as well as seat belt mounting points


Here you can see the new framework installed as well as the infill panels that are spot welded onto the side of the frame down to the wheel tubs


And finally the bracing for the chassis fork connecting the the roll cage frame.


Cheers
D

Nice to see some of the fab work, let's see some more!

what engine has it got in it? looks vw but with porche shroud?

Welcome back Dino-the floor raise turned out really neat-good job.Looking forward to some good stories and pics.

What size type 4 you building, i know that if your going with stock 2 litre a 2 litre subaru wrx turbocharger is the perfect size for it and you'll get around 300hp too.

Many thanks guys, and will try to get the pics on here more regularly.

10 points to matberry for guessing the engine config
66deluxe, I'm running a TO4 for this puppy with an external wastegate.

Some more progress pics for you all.
Now that I decided I was definately going to turbo the dub, I had to make life a little easier for myself for when it came time to install/remove the motor.
This entailed that I cut the rear of the car off. This is the time to be brave but seeing as I already put a hole in the roof, it made it a lot less painful. (I'll cover off the hole in the roof later on )

Firstly I had to make sure that where I put the cut, I could replace the strength of the car as it had to hold the weight of the rear clip as well as the rear bar and for the unplanned muffler (I'll cover this off later)
What I ended up doing after I marked out where I was going to cut, was to make 4 tabs and these tabs went just under the top corners and also in the gutter rails underneath.


Now when I did cut, I only cut down from the top a couple of inches under the guard line and stopped. I then welded in the prefabbed tab and bolted the clip section to it.


Next I started at the bottom and cut up a couple of inches and stopped. Now I welded in the tab in gutter section so that it could be bolted up. You will notice that the bolt comes up from below, this was so that I can get to it as there was no chance I'd be able to get my hand in from the topside once an engine was all bolted in place.


Once top and bottom were secure on both sides, I then proceeded to cut the remaining middle bit out. It is pretty flimsy at this stage so I reinforced the area with 2 bits of 3mm thick strap on either side of the panel with 4 bolts.
These straps are also stitch welded to the panels for strength but also for when it comes time for assembly.
Once it is all bolted up, there is no loss of strength at all.



And there you have it, one removeable rear clip.
you will see that 2 of the 3mm straps are welded onto the inside panel of the clip, and the other 2 straps are welded onto the outside of the cars panel. I did it this way so that it made fitting easier.
By the way, the holes on the outer straps are the size of the bolts so you can push the bolt through and the inner straps had nuts welded to them. Again so that you have access to it for assembly later on.


Any way I just noticed the time and I'm hitting the sack as it's extremely late and I need to get up in 4.5 hours time for work !!!!
Cheers
D

Clever stuff, like your work!

how funny the other day i was in my place of calm & relaxation & silence (toilet) reading my old magazine and came across this bug in vwma and thought "hmmm i wonder how that bug is going "and look here it is.
I like what your doing mate,brings back good slash bad memories of when i chopped up my oval.
good job
Alex

Thanks Cam.

Alex, I had enough grief shaving the body seam near the hinges, you went the whole hog and shaved all the gutters as well!!!! Looks good though.

Following on from above, I wasn't happy with the look of the cut outer panel (between the rear guard and the gutter) It kept bugging me (no pun intended) to the point where I'd say to myself "there's no way an OEM, would manufacture a car with a cut panels especially on an edge"
So I made a couple of "C" pieces that are now welded to the panels and clip.
I also added a dowel to the left and right side of the clip. These now help located the clip to the body so that they are in the same location no matter how many times the clip gets detached and re-attached.
Once located then a Bolt is used to secure the clip to the body. There is from memory an approx gap of 1mm between the clip and the body. This was done so that a seal is used to ensure that there is no rubbing between panels to damage the paint work.



In doing this I removed the top tabs, which also got rid of the bolt that was used where the decklid seal is.
This firmed up the cut edge and when all bolted together looks much nicer.

.

Cheers
D

Nice work dude... gonna be a sweet car.
The removable rear tidy up at the bottom of the drip rail is pretty much exactly what I did too.
I used a 2-3mm compressible rubber foam between the panels to prevent rubbing as you mentioned, which from memory was self adhesive on one side.

this is great stuff man, this is what custom is about. this if going to be a real winner once finished

i will keep watching this thread for sure

Can't believe another year has past, man does time fly
Thanks for the positive comments Blair.
Will have to dig out the photo's from my old PC and continue posting soon.

Cheers
D

Love the fab work on this....nice work!!

would definitely love to see more of the build up please!

Thanks,

Scarab (aka: Paul)