The Squareback arrived this week from northern NSW that will be a daily driver for my wife, we bought it from a forum member.

I picked it up from the transport depot on a day permit as its not registered, and tried taking it to Regency for a rego inspection, unfortunately knocked back due to loud exhaust and wobbly seats. Here's how it was when we got it home








To fix the exhaust I had to helicoil the lower #4 stud, while I was at it I've put new metal gaskets on each exhaust port. I loaded up the slip joints with hi temp silicone as the one under #4 was also leaking a bit.

A couple of progress shots of my awesome uncovered driveway midnight workshop:




While the exhaust was off I hit it with some hi temp paint for good measure as I had it left over from a previous project, not exactly bling city but better than rusty look. Yes I know putting the car on bricks isn't exactly the best for safety but the car is too low for the ramps and I didn't have a jack at that time.


After the exhaust was done my wife washed the car, next night I put on some NOS indicator lenses and wiper arms & blades I bought off thesamba




So by the end of the week it was looking and sounding a little better, ready to take to Regency for try #2 at rego




So off I went last Friday, made it about 1km or so down the road and the clutch cable snapped, so back home again for more work

This time while I'm at it, I'll do a bit of maintenance stuff on the motor like the carb linkage and other bits and pieces, hopefully for another shot at rego in about a week or so.

Longer term there is a TMI interior on the way here (seats, door trims, headliner, sunvisors), and we have a Banjo steering wheel & retrosound stereo to fit when I get around to it.

Hopefully in the next 3-4 months I'll be ready to build a new motor for it and change wheels, but I have a car to sell (not VW) first which needs a bit of work too.

Cheers,
Greg

Looks good mate....hope you get it rego'd soon! Regency can be a pain!!

All the best,

Scarab (aka: Paul)

Cool mate.
When I got my Ghia from Queensland,all I had to do was take it to Lonsdale Inspection station for a numbers Identity check.
In and out in 5 minutes,straight to rego office,sorted!

That was all it was meant to be, just an identity check, not a roadworthy. They did check the VIN # etc against paperwork and that all checked out OK.
The guy's justification was that it would just get defected anyway so it wasn't worth giving me rego. I tried telling him we were doing the whole car up anyway so all these things would be gone through, but it didn't matter.

Couldn't work on it too much over the weekend due to rain and now I can't due to study for my next course at Uni this Friday (full time work, part time study). The way its looking it will be this time next week by the time I try for rego again.

Well good luck anyway mate,hope ya get it sorted soon and see ya on the road.
Youre a bit far from me at Vale park tho

Thats not unusual for them to send it for a roadworthy when doing a Rego Check. I've heard of it happening on a regular occurance. If they think its not roadworthy, they wont give you rego... It sucks, but that the way it goes!

Well I've been tinkering away over the weekend and got a few things done. Pulled the pedals out to replace the clutch cable and found a very sad looking hook at the pedal end, so had to weld it up before re-installing. My welding skills are far from the best but at least it should hold together now, I added a bit of width too so it should be pretty strong. Following the idiot manual for how to keep tension on the cable while installing the pedals I followed the procedure for "clean help" and attached a rope for the 4yo helper to pull on. He loves working on the car with me, he's so keen to help every time I go out there.

We've had these bits lying around the house for ages now and had to fit some of them, so got the banjo wheel on, kmh speedo in, and bamboo parcel tray fitted.

So I made it down to Regency today and this time it PASSED, quickly went into town and picked up my new plates and got it rego'd. At last I can drive it on the street so we're back to 2 cars!!

Before & after of the clutch hook:




Banjo wheel:


Before & after of speedo:




"Clean help" on the clutch, rope was tied around wingnut on the end of the cable, worked well:


SA Rego!!:




I had a call the other day about the interior, its in the country but in quarantine at customs due to the sisal. So hopefully it will be here soon and I can start on that. I got stabbed in the back by the seat again and tore my shirt when I jumped in on a push start, cant wait to get those seats done!

congrats on the rego mate! look forward to seeing this out and about on SA roads!

Scarab (aka: Paul)

I wouldnt mind a parcel shelf of some sort under the dash on mine, got no where to put phone and shit when i have someone in the car with me at the moment. Got a shot of it all installed? Might have to make something up for mine...

How about ya make a parcel shelf out of that foam shit you need for ya floor?

Quote:

Originally posted by Wannavee How about ya make a parcel shelf out of that foam shit you need for ya floor?

I've been driving the square around for a few days and now its developed a pretty annoying misfire. Have already changed the plugs, dist cap & rotor, checked points gap but its still there. Only other thing I can think of is timing which hopefully I'll have a look at tomorrow. Anyone else have an idea?

The turbo I needed for my other car (Mazda) arrived from the US today so it looks like I'm working on that too! Lucky its a long weekend, lots of work to do.

Quote:

Originally posted by Doctor Quote: Originally posted by Wannavee How about ya make a parcel shelf out of that foam shit you need for ya floor? How about ya shut ya face ya wanker! Next time get motors out of vans on your own Lee!

or manifold leak as i found recently

leads?!

if its idiling okay then it could be leads (run a ohm meter over them) or carbon build up in the cyd heads causing hot spots. Was there a build up on the spark plugs when you removed them?

Yeah it idles OK. I put the tach-dwell meter on it the other day and the point gap is spot on, it sits on 1000rpm idle and sounds as good as a stock old volksy motor does. I'll try leads this week I think, I want to be on that swan reach run next weekend Dave!
Spark plugs looked OK, I only changed them as I didn't know how long they had been in there since I just bought the car. Black around the ring on the end of the threads (dry so carbon, not oily) and the electrode was varying shades of brown on all plugs.
I drove it a bit today, didn't work on it at all, and it doesn't seem as bad as it did the other day before I did the plugs & point gap. But the miss is still there.
Haven't checked the timing yet, but I believe its pretty close to right.

Thanks for the ideas.

Hi Greg,
Sounds like the same problem mine had. I ended up dropping a valve. Could be ignition, mine also did that for a while before I fixed it.
What mazda do you have for a turbo - Rotary?
Heath

Have you tried running the car without the engine bay inspection cover on??? i had a very similar issue with my type 3 i found that one of the leads rubbed thru the aluminium foil on the underside of the lid and was causing a misfire, its quite common when the incorrect leads are used... beetle leads arnt the same as a type 3 leads.

Take a photo and post it, correct type 3 leads do 90degree comming out of the dizzy

Yeah they are 90deg at the dizzy end. Pic is from before I changed the dizzy cap, there is a new one on there now.

I'm going to replace all the ignition parts and be done with it. If that don't fix it I'm in trouble!!

Haven't updated in a while so......

In general the car has been running pretty good, did a the tappet clearances and went through all the ignition stuff and for the most part it has been running good. I did have a couple of days where sometimes the car would miss and backfire a bit, but took it on a club run tonight and it ran good. In a few weeks I'm going to pull the motor and fix some of the tinware issues, and also have a good look at the carbs & intakes for vacuum leaks. I have another pulled exhaust stud now too (#2 top one) so I'm going to helicoil all exhaust studs while its out and maybe put some heater boxes on it.

Other progress has been bits and pieces with the interior, all the TMI stuff has been here a while now. So far I have replaced the door trims, rear hatch trim and finally have done the passenger seat. Most of the seat work wasn't that hard but the TMI foam pad was way too thick for me so I had to get some closed cell foam cut which was 20mm thick. Worked a treat and got it all back together but set me back $35 for one piece of foam thanks very much!!

Have also put the retrosound stereo together, just need to figure out how I'm going to hang it from the dash and get it to look neat. I think I will get one of the sheetmetal shops that work for me to bend me something up.

I've left my camera at work so no pics till next week some time when I remember to bring it home.