TheSamba.com :: View topic

Mon May 03, 2010 11:29 am

So I'm at home today, I live about 45 minutes west of Nashville where I work and as they say, "you can't get there from here" - we exceeded May's rainfall in two days. Wowza.

Friday I spent around an hour with the guy at the race car shop, he's been in the sport / business his whole life, , I'd guess he was about 50. He totally quit and sold all his stuff a while ago but got back into it, seems his specialty is min-mod cars, said he built & sold 27 cars one year, but now only does 3 or 4. Super nice guy. Went through the parts department with him showing me all sorts of neat stuff.

I spent 10 hours working on the buggy on Saturday with Mike. He wrapped his welder up in plastic and we parked it under an EZ up in the driveway with a tarp making a gutter to bridge the gap between the garage and the EZ up. Got tons done, the Only thing we forgot to do was weld the tab for the "dashboard" - but near the end we were in a bit of a mad rush because we were about an hour overbudget with the Mrs(s) and getting in more trouble by the minute. Also need to weld in the splicing tubes for the front bumper (front and rear bumper are to attach via 1" tubing splices welded one one end and bolted on the other, since 1.25" tubing flanges are about $2.50 each and not to be had locally. The rear frame horns are blocked off by a piece he cut out with a torch via a template I made out of cardboard worked out great. The bends worked well too. It got a little tricky for the front frame rails but it turned out in the end. My calculations for the front bumper dimensions worked out great too.

The rear bumper has a bit of an issue though.. we bent the upper chassis tube on Mike's receiver hitch to make sure it would clear the stinger / collector, which it does, but the vertical bars don't clear the rest of the extractor... not sure what I'm going to do there. I was planning on replacing it and had budgeted to do so but really didn't want to unless I had to... and I really don't want to rework the bumper.

However, overall I think if my chassis could talk it would say "how do you like me now???"

Mon May 03, 2010 6:10 pm

If you get a small bit of tube just a tad smaller then the inside dia. of your outer tubes and slide it inside your tubes where you are going to butt weld it will make the joint much stronger. It does not take much, I know weight is the enemy. Not sure if I explained that very well.

Looks like it is going very well.

Mon May 03, 2010 7:55 pm

That is how we made the splices for the front end. 1" OD tube fits inside the 1.25" OD tube with a little bit of wiggle room... Weld penetration went through both. This is also how the front and rear bumper are to be installed, except welded on one side and bolted on the other.

got engine, harness, fuel tank, battery, seats, seat belts, & shift rod installed as well as oil cooler & fuel line installed.

In other news, I suppose I'll knock on a few doors tomorrow and apologize for making a ton of noise at 9pm on a weeknight... I was so focused on getting it fired up I didn't think of how late it was, and how loud it was w/ no exhaust on it... till the neighbor from across the street came over and was like "hey, cool - you got it running! Seems a bit fat though?" and I was like "oh... that was really loud wasn't it? Could you hear it from in the house? oops..." I wouldn't feel so bad if I just fired it up for a minute... I think it was more like 5. I did find out that one of my oil line fittings is leaking oil along with where the oil pressure switch goes into the hole I tapped in the filter housing...

Sat May 08, 2010 2:50 pm

Having spent several late evenings on it and most of the day today, I got it to 90% completed... drove it around the yard for what must have been an hour giving each of my kids a turn in the passenger seat, in addition to 2 neighbors kids and the Mrs, who was terrified.

things I need to address...

foot-rest shelf thing for my right foot
heavier throttle return spring
mount dash bracket
move steering column bracket
shorten steering column by about 4"
make & mount skid plates
get a baffle for the stinger - I thought mine would work but it's too small
fix the carburetor leak, think it's the top plate.
adjust brakes
add additional bracket for master cylinder mount to eliminate some flex...
fix oil leak, inlet of oil filter bracket.
come up with a different air cleaner cover since the new exhaust limites it's removability
various other things...

Fri May 21, 2010 5:11 am

it's blue!

reassembly tonight.

Sat May 22, 2010 1:00 am

time for bed!

forgot the battery tray and one retainer for the pedal assembly at home (both had been painted..) took home the steering column and skit plate to paint. Also need to spray edges of roof and mount... forgot my proper camera so phone camera will have to do.

Sun May 23, 2010 6:05 pm

Looking good Nick! 8) Nice job!

Mon May 24, 2010 12:25 pm

AJ_Payne wrote: Hows the budget going? You haven't posted in a while. Im in a similar situation and would like to know where you went with this.

Added up reciepts today... within $1 of $1500 in reciepts for new parts, paint, and tools. (including angle grinder, bench grinder, about a dozen cut-off wheels, 2 grinding discs, and one new coarse bench grinder stone) I bought 4 pieces of 24' tubing and have a 12' section left and a 4' section left and several pieces less than a foot, so I installed about 75' of tubing which required about 15 hours of welding. (not including fabrication & B.S. time)

So.. take into account I did some stuff I didn't really have to do, like the rear tires, the IRS, the seats.. could have spray painted it for a little less than w/ 2 quarts, naptha, hardener & thinner... fuse panel & ammo box... I just bought new rear shocks today, just cheap monroe gas shocks - same as the front. A coworker had given me a pair of the empi coil over shocks he bought but didnt' use and (ya'll) are right, they're junk - no dampening to them at all. I could have used the old shocks that were already on the irs but they were questionable (already leaking some, though they did technically work...) it could have been done for less but it's pretty much just the way I want it, keeping costs as low and resonable as possible.

$400 buggy & fastback
$100 '72 super beetle for IRS & transmission
$100 rear tires
$150 seats, covers & belts
$1500 misc parts, tubing, metal, tools etc,
--------
$2250

items sold:

-100 - type 3 carbs
-100 - type 3 & type 1 swingaxle
-100 - 15x12 rear wheels
-20 - type 3 driver's door
-5 - type 3 windshield

$1925.

Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:49 pm

took a couple pictures of this yesterday - it's all cleaned up for bug-a-paluza in a couple of weeks. It was a lot of work getting it all cleaned up, not sure if I'll be doing it again. I added ribbed front tires thanks to this year's tax return... and mounted a rear view mirror yesterday to make it easier to see if everyone's keeping up on the trails. Looking on this thread I didn't really post any after pictures, so...