Most of you would have seen my thread in General Chat about the Baja I crashed http://forums.aussieveedubbers.com/viewtopic.php?tid=79561&page=1#pid740019 

Well not 20 hours after I had crashed my old one I'd already bought a new one to build up as my new daily driver.

Named her Alyce and seeing as I'm back home from TAFE now I've kicked the build into top gear and got stuck in today.

These first few pictures are the day after I got her back to my place.












Yesterday after noon I pulled the engine out and this morning I got stuck in and pulled out the front and rear seats.








Last picture shows under the bonnet with the fuel tank removed, steering shaft disconnected and brake line removed.






Disconnected rear brake lines, clutch cable, starter motor, shifter linkage and removed handbrake and it's cables. Then undid the gearbox mounts and spring plate bolts and rolled the backend out of the car.









Undid the body (luckily all the bolts that go up into the sills weren't there so it only took a few minutes). Got a couple of mates around and conned them into helping lift the body off.
That's all I got done today cause I was also helping dad put and new waterpump and radiator in the VG ute he's building. Plus I was a little slack and was taking my time.
Definately getting up early tomorrow to do some more though!












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dude... part of your car is missing... the bit at the back!

Good stuff smiley! should be on the road in no time :P

I bet ur missing her already.

Yeah, sure am. Was the most brutally reliable VW I've ever had.

Good thing is that I'm using most of the running gear off the one I crashed on the new one. So I know it's going to be just as reliable.
How's yours coming along Chris? You'd be in your last week of uni by now wouldn't you?

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Yup! i'm on holidays now. exams finished early for me...
I been getting stuck in and am finding it hard to find things left to do to the floorpan, which is a good sign.

Gotta bit of work still to accomplish when the pay cheque comes in this fri. Last couple of days i been working on the body, cleanings up the interior, firewall and front trunk + a few cracks in the fibreglass that have popped up over the last 12 months since the last paint job. Along with modding the lift kit & getting the shifting rod adapted to the kombi gearbox hockey stick. Learnt the hardway that China empi was poorly cut. so had to machine and make it work. Couldn't find anyone else who made adapters for it though.

Should be good. Be nice to finally reach a conclusion.

Nice. Do you have an ETA of completion at this stage?

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with the way i'm going, Feb easily.

Thats if work, weather and available time is consistant. I don't like to be optimistic though, lol disappointed myself too many times.

Can't wait to pop over ur way, let alone drive something that isn't mainstream

That's great. How's the engine coming along? Sourced a blower yet?

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nah. reasonably priced sc12's disappeared as soon as i started lookin. Penty of sc14's but they are harder to fit. would be good to work out the sc14 as the whole supercharger setup could be shifted to a 2ltr in the future. (although i haven't even got thoughts of that, but he work involved i want universal-ability)

The motor is lookin schmick though, heads all torqued up right now, cams on, bling new tinware, valve covers, pulleys, gen pulley and stand, oil filter and german h/d larger oil pump. Haven't fitted go-fast bits yet.

Bought the acid from my pool shop today to dip the dog house fan shroud and clean the surface rust off it, then give it a red coat of gloss :P

I don't wanna buy a new one cause i haven't seem em available in red. lol, although it would be much easier

I've got a spare SC14 lying around. I bought a pair of blowers off a dude from work for $150.

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Got the front end pulled apart today. I was going to remove it then strip it, but of the three bolts that were in it, one snapped off and two were welded. After I ground the heads off the welded bolts I still couldn't get it to budge.





When I looked underneath on the RHS the beam is welded to the cradle!! What kind of idiot does that. So I just left it for now and started pulling the tie rods off. Removed the wheels and knocked the link pins with everything on them out of the suspension arms.








I was keen to weld adjusters in but now i'm going to have to flip the pan over and see if i can cut the beam off. Wish me luck.

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You have done well to spot a weld apart from dirt but good luck.

I planned to try and take the beam off this afternoon but I spent most of my time sorting parts out and moving stacks of wheels out of the way. Did get my brother to help me flip the pan so I could get a better look at where it is welded. And it turns out that just behind where it is welded has started to crack accross the framehead. So now I have to try and separtate the beam and repair the framehead too. At this point I was getting frustrated so I called it a day.











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Maybe he was trying to fix the frame head susing one of those old helmets that need flicking down and his hand moved and he welded the beam...Jks

mate....youve set a cracking pace on this one....well done!!

doing well looking forward to the next instalment

I got stuck in and cut the beam off the florrpan this afternoon.
These first pictures show the welds after I wire wheeled them.









I ground the welds down as much as I could without eating into the parent metal of the beam or framehead too much. Lucky the welds were of fairly poor quality.








I then grabbed my big cold chisel and gave it a belt to split the final bit of weld holding the two pieces together. The front end came free and you can see in the bottom picture the beads on the beam.






You can see the two bolts that were welded that I had to cut the heads off. Fortunately one of them came out with vice grips, unfortunately the other one snapped off. Both the bolts on the other side are also snapped. So I soaked all three for a while then drilled them out with successively larger drills. Then I soaked them some more. I'm going to bring my easy out set home from work tomorrow and see how I go.









As you can see the frame head has cracked everywhere. I'm not sure if this is a result of extra stress added due to the welded beam or whether it's just had an incredibly hard life. Probably a bit of both. I'm going to have to straighten it out and patch all the holes and cracks.

Lucky I bought a welder.












More cracks and dodgy welds up the sides of the cradle.












The top picture here is the beam off the Baja that I crashed. Although it was bent spectacularly, see pictures at bottom of page here -> http://forums.aussieveedubbers.com/viewtopic.php?tid=79561&page=2 






I plan on using everything from the link pins out, and probably the steering box too if it's not damaged. I know that the brakes on the car I crashed are good cause only a few months ago I had all the drums machined and replaced the shoes and front wheel bearings. So the new Baja will be getting all of this.
I'm also going to weld adjusters in the beam, leave the bump stops standard for now and seam weld the towers.

The bottom picture show the framehead how I left it this evening when I stopped. I drilled all the broken bolts through and blocked it up to allow them to soak overnight.





That's all folks!! Well until tomorrow anyway.




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Might be time to cut that framehead off and weld on a new one. Mick Motors sell new frameheads

x3...too dangerous to repair just get a new one

Quote:

Originally posted by MickH x3...too dangerous to repair just get a new one

Could I use the framehead off another floorpan? I have a few here at home. I just think it would be easier and cheaper than buying one. Does anyone know what the quality of the new ones are like? And what one would set me back?

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Dan , Shit your having some bad luck dude , like vwcool said i'dd be haveing alook at one of those other pans up the yard

PS Seen two other Buggies cruising around here in Yeppoon

I started to get my beam ready to weld the front end adjusters in this afternoon. I gave the centre section of both beams a wire wheel to clean the gunk off of them. And what do you know. There's more weld on one of the tubes. I used a flapped wheel to grind this down smooth.











There are still a few other stray welds on the beam that I'll have to grind off, but I want to get the adjusters welded in first. Then I'll clean off all the old and unnecessary welds and get it ready for paint.



I marked all the trailing arms. Then undid the centre set srcews and the RHS one. Removed the right trailing arms and put them in plastic bags to prevent getting grease on everything.





Then I got my old man to give me a hand pulling the LHS arms out with torsion leaves still attached. These were then wrapped in glad wrap to stop them coming apart and mixing the leaves up. As well as to prevent the grease attack once again.






Then I started marking out for the adjusters. Make sure you read the instructions!! I had to read then a few times before I got the jist of what was happening. If you get to this point and don't understand what you're doing I suggest you stop and ask someone for help, you're about to cut the middle out of your beam and I'm sure you don't really want to get it wrong.

I started on the top beam. I found the easiest way to scribe the horizontal lines was to clamp my steel ruler to the beam with some stainless hose clamps. First I marked a horizontal line straight across where the set screw's hole is. Then I marked a line parallel to this 3mm higher than the first line. This is because I'm going to install the adjusters with a small amount of lift. So with the adjusters wound down as far as they go the front suspension will sit slightly higher than stock, then I can only go up from there!!





After I marked the horizontal lines, I scribed a vertical line straight through the centre hole. Then I measured one inch either side of this line and marked vertical lines. This gives the two inch wide piece you need to cut out to fit the adjuster in.

I marked around the beams on the outer vertical lines with green tape so it's easier to cut. Make sure that to tape is as square as possible. I then cut the middle section out by hand with a hacksaw. After I removed the piece I test fitted the adjuster. It's a little tight and only just won't go in. I'll hand file the ends of the torsion tubes before I tack it in place.








That's all I got done today, I'm going to try and finish the top tube off tomorrow and hopefully start on the bottom one.

Thanks to everyone for their interest so far. The only reason I write build diarys like this is so I can get feedback ans suggestions from other people.



Smiley

When I 1st saw the welds,I thought exactly the same thing,don't mess around wasting time and money persevering with it,look for another pan.

I had to file a small ammount off the inside of the tubes so the adjuster fitted nice and snug. Then I chamfered the edges so the weld can get better penetration. Then I cleaned the grease out of the tunnel as far into it as I could. You don't want heaps of grease inside the beam where you are welding otherwise it'll get sucked into the weld and ruin it.





Bottom picture shows the adjuster fully welded in place. I tacked in place to makes sure it was striaght first. It looks like it's not straight in the picture but this is because the little angled bracket wasn't quite straight when they welded it to the adjuster, I can say with all confidence that the tube section of the adjuster is straight and that's what matters most.





You can also see the green tape I wrapped around the locking screw. This was to protect the threads from any spatter the weld was throwing around. The set screw was wound in to hold the center collar in place in the middle of the tube.

I'll going to let it cool and start the other side.


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I've been majorly slack lately with the car, but decided to hook in this weekend and at least do a little before the heat stroke got to me. The beam has been all welded now and both adjusters installed. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning wirebruching and sandblasting in ready for paint. After sandbalsting I found a few cracks that were covered by gunk that I welded up. also one of the bump stops was bent so Andrew and I straightened it with a bit of pipe then rewelded it.
We also ran a straight edge down the length of both tubes and there is a couple of mil gap in the centre. I'll be taking the beam to work tomorrow so I can straighen it in a 30 ton press at work.








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