Cargo door repair

Well its Bug Jam weekend and sadly I’m not there, so it's a good time to focus my VW passion somewhere else and get back into the garage. Fueled up with leftover Chinese and some classic Aerosmith on repeat, I've decided to skip any attempts to repair the front arched (dog legs) and move further around the bus and start on the cargo door bottoms.

I've had a pair of cargo door inners for a while from the first batch of panels I bought a long time ago. They have weathered well but the quality of these is something to be desired, so I've recently ordered another pair from Auto Craft Engineering, They actually look like the bottom of the doors, they also include a box section to help locate the door handle locking rods.

A bit unsure where to start, I decided to try and keep as much of the original door inners as possible while keeping the length of the doors wright, this meant starting on the inner panel and getting that all to fit before cutting away the outer skin. My first cut was just below the first inner radius, I then tried the repair panel against the inner door and found the top hat section of the repair panel is a little thinner than the original. To recover from this I flattened out the inner radius of the repair piece to give me the length to cover the bad material (gap I'd cut out), this would not have been a problem if I'd just cut the old bit out at either end.

Once the panel and door were cut and filed, and I was sure they matched against the outer skin, I then made the bold move to cut away the outer skin. Using the tape as a guide and a 1 mm cutting disc I sliced off the lower portion of the repair skin to keep as much of the original door skin as possible.

How time flies by

It’s been a while since the van has been out from under its' cover, everyone who has a car project know how fast time goes by, and in the back of your mind you're thinking 'I must get something done on that car'. All the normal things in life have got in my way, lucky I don’t have kids otherwise I'd never get to see my van on the road. But a major part of garage time has been taken up by my other VW Beetle.

A bent con rod caused by a lost tin wear bolt I dropped in the inlet manifold. Remember to cover your inlets! A good 200 miles of tinkling noise coming from the engine before the bolt finally passed the valve and seized between the piston and the cylinder head.

 

Then a Ford Focus decided to cut in front of me while pulling away from the lights. After I jack-knifed him for trying to push me into a lamp post, I had to get the front of the car repaired. This then led to finding a cracked front suspension beam upper mount, this is probably due to going over too many speed humps in a lowered bug.

 

To top things a rotten heater channel that had stored a puddle full of water from the floods a few years ago decided to break through just before the MOT. This took up the week off that I'd put by to get the van restoration going again. The joys of owing an air cooled V Dub. May be next weekend I'll have some time to work on the van.

Still on going

The van project is still on going but work and exams have taken up a lot of time at the mo, I hope to post more on the project before the new year.PB

OK so its been a busy Christmas as well, so it will be updates in the new year.

Machined front caliper mounts

Every day priorities like moving home, exams, barbeques and playing new playstation games have unfortunately put the van's rebuild on the back burner for the last month or so (I just don’t want to miss out on any of the summer sunshine, you never know how long it will last). But I have managed to get the front caliper mounts machined.

A friend that knows their way around a CAD program was able to help me in a morning produce an engineers' drawing. We started drawing all the known dimensions e.g. brake disc size, caliper size and spindle mounting hole pitch, from these we were able to calculate all the dimensions required for the mount, then with an outline added we created the virtual caliper mount. This wasn’t far from the rough sketch I'd made in the garage to produce the wooden prototype, the hardest part was calculating the curve that would match the profile of the caliper inner mounting lug.

I sent the drawing to a local machine company (Cranford Engineering) that was able to do the machining at a decent price. I chose solid steel as I didn’t fancy trying to calculate the strength and shear properties of aluminium. I was very pleased with the end result, with a clean up, coat of paint, a few new bolts and the front brakes will be ready. Unfortunately I won't be able to test them until the van is rolling.

Van Restoration Relocation

Haven't had much time to get on with the panel repairs because the restoration has had to be relocated, I was able to find a nice big double garage with power and water, this means I'm now able to work on the side of the van and not just the front and the back. Amazingly, through a door in the back of the garage I found, tucked behind some bushes and an over grown garden a house that also had electricity and running water. My girlfriend was happy to stay there while I get on with the rest of the restoration.

When I originally found the garage and measured it up for the fit, there was loads of room to work, but it was very close on height. I thought I may be pushing it in and out of the garage with flat tires, or having to start another project of raising the roof, and I don’t think I'll be able to keep a roof rack on for long.

The vans trip to its new home went smooth, A few curtains twitch as a rusty heap was unloaded from the flat bed on to the street, Then, what I forgot to do was measure the width of the access lane to the garage. Pushing a van enthusiastically down an ally when you have 6in or less clearance either side and you don't have any breaks is a bit scary.

Having all this room In the garage didn't last long, to accompany the van came all the VW parts I’ve been hording for the last 10+ years (just in case I might just need that old rusty part), gear boxes, engines, tones of engine tin wear, exhausts, front beams and boxes of all the smaller bits. It's going to take some time to clear away the unwanted parts, and sort out a working garage, but in the end it should make getting the van back on the road so much more enjoyable.

Left "A" pillar and cab floor

Another patch in the floor that needs filling up, I wonder if it may be easier to replace the whole cap floor with the time it takes to cut, file, weld and grind each repair.

I'm still teaching myself to weld, with this patch after the tacks were in place I tried to run a continuous tack weld with a higher weld setting to get the penetration with a pause so the seam didn't get too hot, this did work but needs a bit more practice or a faster wire feed speed to get the weld deeper into the corners and looking cleaner.

Cab floor and door seal carrier repair

I've managed to drag myself back to the welding, and attempted to deal with the rust holes behind the cab door seal carrier, and the parts of the floor I've cut out for the A pillar repair.

After cleaning up the A pillar skin under the seal carrier with rotary wire brush, probably one of the best rust eating tools I have come across so far. I cautiously welded up the holes and ground flush ready to weld the carrier back into place.

It took a few attempts and measuring to fold up a replacement length of seal carrier. Then butt welded this on using the magnets keeping it square while it was tack welded. I cut out a patch for the floor, bending it to suit the curve of the floor as it was tacked into place, this patch was then cut to suit the seal carrier and a seam weld to hold it all in place, all in a long days work, grind it all down and should look as good as new!

The bus also got it's first bit of sun for the summer.

Porsche brake conversion Pt3

I think I've been a bit sidetracked sorting out the brake conversion instead of getting all the welding completed, probably because it's more fun seeing shiny bits coming together.

The problem with the rear disc diameter being too small was solved with replacing the 944 >88 discs (289mm diameter) with 944t (928s2/928s4) 299mm diameter ones, these new rear discs are a little thicker at 22mm making it a squeeze fitting the caliper when they have new pads. The new disc cost an extra £30 a pair; this reminds me why I have a Vdub and not a Porsche.

The caliper is a pretty tight fit in the back off the 15" wheels; there is a slight rub on the wheels' inner shoulder where it rubs on the front caliper face so I'll need a wheel spacer of about 6mm to get the minimal clearance all around. It's not what I wanted to do. But it's something I'll have to live with.

Trying to find 14mm washers in the local DIY shops to use as wheel bolt spacers was harder than expected so I've resorted to using 15mm plastic water pipe. I first cut them 7mm thick that didn't work, then at 9mm and this still rubbed in a few places on the inner wheel, This meant pushing the wheels this far from the hub gives me the next problem of having to use longer wheel bolts, so I may just space the wheels enough to get to get 4mm spacing from the caliper keeping enough thread for the wheel bolts and clear the small amount of material from the caliper to clear the foul.

I popped down to a local Porsche show room in my bug to collect some caliper mounting bolts, after a scan of the 911,s I was greeted by a pretty lady behind a desk asking if I would like any help, explaining why I was there and a phone call later a suited gentlemen arrived with my £6 bag of bolts, a little surprised I paied and started to ask about caliper piston sizes and brake master cylinders, "sorry I don't study the breaks" silenced I decided it was time to leave. You can't beat speaking to a grubby mechanic who knows there way around the cars they work on.

With new bolts I mounted the front caliper to the wooden bracket I'd made and with the bearing spacers fitted I was able to work out that I needed 11mm offset to centralise the caliper on the disc. I'll now have this bracket machined once I decided the best place to position the caliper around the spindle. Although I'm still unsure if I should use my link pin or ball joint spindles and beam.

Porsche brake conversion Pt2

After all the previous measuring I realised that using only one spacer behind the inner bearing to take up the 8.5 mm lateral play would push this bearing off the flat running surface and over the tapered portion of the spindle, so I decided to (ask my kind, old school engineering uncle with cool 40 year old tools, at the cost of a portion of fish and chips to) turn down the inner spacer 6.5mm thick with a taper to allow for the spindles' inner radius. This slid on with a slight tap and allowed the inner bearing seal to sit on the original face and gave me a gap of 9mm behind the disc to fit onto the original wheel cylinder mounting holes a mounting plate for the calliper.

The vision of a shiney Fusch wheels and polished callipers isn’t as easy to pull off as “oh you need some 944 hubs to do that” Its hard to get the right parts when you don’t know the model and year of the car, you cant just ask for a rear disc with about this much diameter and the depth to fit the rusty hub you plonk on the counter, But the bloke at the parts shop was intrigued with what I was trying to do and was very helpful pulling parts off the shelf’s till I found what I thought would fit.

I like (more stare at each time I see one) the 996 / Boxster style of Porsche mono block (all once piece) callipers but these are for 320ish mm diameter discs to fit 16”+ wheels and would be to much trouble to fit in my 15”ers So the power of eBay drew me into it's grasp for a month while I tried to obtain a set of 944/924 Brembo callipers for a fair price (Inc postage). Of course the description is not always accurate. What I received needed a full check up. this included freeing a couple of pistons new dust seals and some corrosion treatment.

During my clean up and inspection it became apparent I'll have to sort a few things out. There was corrosion around one off the pistons holes that will need blasting to remove it and that piston was seized, this was because of corrosion on the surface. I found out after I levered it out that there’s a removal tool that probably makes the job a lot easier. Also the piston sizes weren’t matching and the rotation arrow was the same. Each calliper is manufactured with two different size pistons, the smaller of the two at the leading edge. I ended up with a pair of 36mm-40mm that Ill use for the front but have a right hand 32mm-36mm and a right hand 30mm-34mm. This is the problem of doing things on a budget, you get what you pay for. I'll look for something better later but for now they will help me get everything fitted OK.

Fitting the calipers’ to the rear 924 swing arms should be a bit easier than messing around with bearing spacers. With new discs trialed on and the calipers pads centered on these, I’m able to work out the spacing between the original caliper attaching threads on the rear swing arms and the calipers. If I sit the caliper so the pads are on the center of the disc it foul's the disc on the lower part of the caliper, and because the rear hubs came with out rotor attaching parts (two counter sunk disc fixing screws) Ill need to sources these to get the disc fixed securely so that the measurements I need to adjust the caliper are correct.

If I fit the caliper to the original mounting threads on the rear swing arm the pads over lap the disc. The easiest way to solve this is hope there a wider disc with the same offset for the hand brake drum assembly. I think the Brembro calipers are fitted to turbo 944 so that could be an option, although that may mean a bigger disc off set for larger turbo style wheels. I'll have to have a chat with the parts shop again and see if they have any thing that will help.

Grabbing a few spare bit of pallet wood I knocked up a front caliper mounting bracket this gives me a visual idea of the calculations and drawings I've been spreading around the garage on each piece of scrap paper I could find, With a bit of fine tuning. I'd like to get this part CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machined at a local shop, but if its to expensive Ill make it from plate steel and weld on and tap the spacers/ mounting holes. All of this and I still need to work out how to pressurise this lot? I'm sure the original single circuit master cylinder wont be up for it!

Front Valance Pt3

Well back to the job of repairing the front valance again. I’ve been going back and forth to this job for too long now and I decided to post the work once compleated..... ish. With the joining brackets fabricated I set up my new 160 amp welder to fit these on. Wow how much easier it is to weld with decent kit (although I’m still not perfect), the small old hobby welder I’ve been suffering with will defiantly get the boot. The bracket was tacked on with ease and the lower flange I decided to bend to the profile of the closure panel when its trial fitted.

I drilled and tacked some nuts inside the valance for attaching the cab floor belly panel because unfortunately this panel didn’t have the forming for these, I then trialled the valance front closure panel using the lines drawn on tape Id marked as a datum long; long ago. With a bit of forming at the ends and re-measuring, the panel went on with no problem. I tacked the lower part from the inside the valance and discovered the joys of welding upside down. The welding burns are a lesson learnt, and it could get hot and sweaty stuck in a garage with all that protective gear now the summers coming.

I received the new lower front panel (which I specially requested without the cut out for the nose and longer at the ends so I can fold it over like the original.) Rather than butt weld this panel I joggled a small lip on the repair panel to sit inside the original one. I ground a ton of filler off the front panel so I could ensure the repair panel was straight, although a bit tricky around the nose; using some fabricating magnets and clamps the panel fitted OK.

Eager to get the panel on I started tacking it together, then double checking the fit before I went welding crazy I noticed that the joggle at the left corner end of the panel was overlapping to much, and causing the curve of the panels not to sit flush. Access to the back of this panel is very awkward because of the front light bowl and inner kick panel, this ruled out any fabrication from the back. So I painstakingly cut the joggle off from the front with a cut down junior hacksaw clamped in a pair of pliers. This did the job of letting the pannels sit flush, and then with the magnets in place I continued to tack it all together.

Learning from my cock up with warping the dog leg panel I spaced out the weld points and spot welded the a seam between the two panels with only a second spent on each weld, but still the original part of the panel had a slight ripple along its curve. Not sure if I’m being to particular about my work or still have a lot to learn but I'm determined to get it right. So I guess Ill rely on the paint prep to get rid of any imperfections (filler).

I cleaned up the welds and with a few tacks along the lower lip and tidying up the wrap around part of the edges this job is finally finished.