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Sat Aug 31, 2013 5:22 am

Here we go I guess. I have wanted a SC or DC for close to 20 years, but never was able to pony up for one. I had a dove blue Sundial in the 90's, sold it too cheap as a dumb 20 something who didn't know better and have wanted another split something since.

In the past year, I have managed to get into the position to do VW stuff full time, I sling EMPI stuff (yeah I know, don't bother telling me EMPI is cheap crap, I've heard it all already), buy and sell cars (I'm not a flipper, I actually invest time into making them road worthy and am reasonable on my prices) and rebuild salvage water cooled cars. I really wanted a DC to haul parts and my kid to swaps, and this summer after checking one out at a show, my wife agreed that they were cool.

The search was on and after a few false starts and a bunch of junk, this dude popped up in the classifieds. The price was less than the rotted out ones I was looking at, and the seller was upfront about it's issues and had gobs of photos.

The problem was, it was 660 miles away, and we had my son's first birthday party to plan and get ready for (we just added onto our house and I was trying to button it up). Once again, Jeff (bikesnbusses) stepped up as an awesome guy and was cool with me waiting over a week to grab it up, even though I am quite sure he could have sold it much quicker.

A week and 2 days after I sent a deposit, I hooked my trailer up, picked up my buddy Tom, and we hit the road at 5:30 am. After some Waffle House, a slight incident at a toll booth crossing the Hudson, and a whole lot of driving, we arrived in Rhode Island.

We made quick work of loading the truck, checked out Jeff's SC, and hit the road for home.

All I really remember about the trip home is chatting with people about VW's at fuel stops and stopping for a couple of 20-30 min naps, otherwise, it was one of those experiences where you just count the mile markers and everything just turns into on big blur of white lines, up hill down hill, pass a semi, construction zone, pass a truck, be passed, fuel up, white lines....

Eventually, we made it home at 7am the following day. I fell asleep for a few hours, then went out to admire my treasure.

More about the truck, and the plans for it coming up....

Sat Aug 31, 2013 7:34 am

Ok, I had a customer dropping off an engine for rebuild....

Mowing on, it looks as if the truck was kissed hard on the pass side at some point. the nose was replaced (semi) correctly with O.E. steel, and the rockers/rear wheels look to have had some work. Also, someone sand blasted the inside metal and then just left it, so it is rusty, but doesn't look too pitted, I believe I can reblast it and paint it.

For now, I am going to get the interior panels fixed up, clean up the repairs, and paint everything dove blue and toss my logos on it (my dad is an old school sign painter). I want to keep stock height, commercial caps, just make it work truck.

More coming soon, I have some customer work and a 66 beetle to get out of my shop, then it is on.....

Sat Aug 31, 2013 8:28 am

Very nice Score !!!!!!!
Doublecabs are the best, I miss having a Split Dc, sold my '63 in '05, but I'm pretty stoked to be driving my '66 Sc.
Did you get all the seats ect. ? Looking foward to seeing your progress.

Sat Aug 31, 2013 8:34 am

Congrats on the great score!

Sounds like the perfect shop truck for sure.

Sat Aug 31, 2013 12:59 pm

Awesome...DC. Congrats and looking forward to the progress.

Sat Aug 31, 2013 2:00 pm

Cool truck.

Ohio_Style wrote:
For now, I am going to get the interior panels fixed up, clean up the repairs, and paint everything dove blue and toss my logos on it (my dad is an old school sign painter). I want to keep stock height, commercial caps, just make it work truck.

Even cooler! Same here. Post his design for your truck.

Sat Aug 31, 2013 4:43 pm

crukab wrote: Very nice Score !!!!!!!
Doublecabs are the best, I miss having a Split Dc, sold my '63 in '05, but I'm pretty stoked to be driving my '66 Sc.
Did you get all the seats ect. ? Looking foward to seeing your progress.

I would have gone SC, but hauling kids to the shows is a necessity. I got everything with it but the windshield and side glass. Seats, pedestal, rear window, door glass it all there. I am going to probably go the safari route for windshields. THe only real mechanical issue is it has a roached driver side spindle, I am most likely going to get a rebuilt set from campingbox. I may go to a bay beam and disc though, still doing my homework before I commit to either.

As for the logo, here's what we have, just going to do it with one shot enamel so it looks right

Sat Aug 31, 2013 5:11 pm

That is right on the money- kudos to your Pop.

Can't wait to see it rendered in Langnickel or Mack and One-Shot [or Ronan, or even Rustoleum which letters well] for real. It'll look nice.

Thu Jun 12, 2014 7:34 pm

Updates...finally....

After a long winter and a busy spring, I finally decided I need to get cracking on this thing and get it on the road. A few plans changed, I love dove blue, but decided that it's overdone (I know lots of commercials came in it), and decided that I prefer turkis. Further pondering made me decide to use Krylon. This thing is a work truck, I'm going to use it to haul all kinds of stuff, bomb down gravel roads, and possibly drive through the woods. Bottom line is, I don't want an expensive paint job that I am afraid to scuff.

I attacked the interior first. As I previously mentioned, it had been blasted, then left to rust. I experimented with a few ways to remove the rust and finally settled on a combination of rolock sanding disc and wire wheel to get the big chunks off, then used phosphoric acid. The combo has worked quite well to clean it up. Unfortunately, I destroyed my cell phone and all the photos of this process are kaput.

Like I said earlier, the nose, doors, left pillar and rocker have been replaced in the past. It must have been a ways back, most of the panels are OG Velvet Green on the inside. The job was done ok, it's not perfect, but at this point I'm not going to strip it all of the way down and redo it. Down the road I may, but my life does not have the time budget to redo work that will function now.

I also decided that I was tired of pushing it around my shop on dollies and spent an hour getting it running. It has a bus tank it in now, but I also have another tank which I assume is correct for the trucks, I left the bus tank until I can get the other one cleaned out and POR 15 the tank area.

I pulled the filter screen, cleaned out the pick up, tossed a battery in it and gave it hell. It fired after I poured fuel down the carb, and after some quick diagnosis, I replaced the gummed up fuel pump and carb with ones I had on the shelf, and it settled down into a nice idle and responded quick when I hit the throttle. I dropped it in gear and drove it out of the garage on it's own power....what a great feeling.

Here she is with krylon satin jade on the nose, and ready to do the damn thing.

My goal is to have it on the road in July. I need to do all the brake everything, new lines, wheel cylinders, 67 master cylinder conversion, etc, pull the engine to clean it up and install new trans mounts, rattle can the rest of it, send my spindles to Aaron for a rebuild, find some AT tires I can afford, and put in windows....I think it's an aggressive, but achievable goal.

Thu Jun 12, 2014 7:59 pm

nice looking cab. it's hard to beat General Grabber II's for an affordable A/T tire.

Thu Jun 12, 2014 8:03 pm

OG67westy wrote: nice looking cab. it's hard to beat General Grabber II's for an affordable A/T tire.

Thank you.

I agree, I am most likely going to go that route. I have hankooks on my bay and occasionally find myself in situations where I am wanting for more tire. If I break open the piggy bank, I may buy some BFG all terrains.

Thu Jun 12, 2014 8:10 pm

same tread, half the price...if I were going to spring for BFG's, I'd get the KM2's

Thu Jun 12, 2014 8:12 pm

Word. BFG's wear like iron though. It seems like they last forever and take little weight to balance. Most likely go with grabbers because I am a cheap bastard.

Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:52 pm

Some big logo caps commercial'd out would look saweet on some grabbers!

Sun Jun 15, 2014 9:42 am

More progress made...yesterday I finished prepping the interior for paint, sorted most of the wiring and rattle canned and installed the front bumper.

This morning I got up early so I could get some work done before we spend the day doing fathers day stuff. Painted the dash and windshield frames in preparation for windshield installation. Cleaned up the speedo and fuel gauge, and found all the switches and such. Also installed one of the new mirrors.

Front with bumper installed

Dash

Mon Jun 16, 2014 8:09 am

Looking good Matt!

Sat Jul 19, 2014 2:39 pm

Any more updates on your DC Ohio_Style?

Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:32 am

Man, it's been ages since I updated this. Life in general is busy with two little boys and everything else.

Since we last left off, I sent my spindles off to WideFive for Aaron to work his magic on.

Bought a set of General grabbers

Pulled the engine to clean it up, put on the correct distributor and crank pulley, and tossed it back in.

and...finished kryloning most of the body

After that, it basically sat for a year while I built a barn, we had a second son, and all the other stuff we do.

Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:47 am

I decided this spring I would take some time off from work ( I work for myself ), and finish all my half done cars. Started with my Thing since it was in the way, and needed the least.

Then onto the double cab. The new, real goal is to drive it to CTS next month. I've been dinking it with it during the day, coming in for time with the kids from 5 to 9 ish, then going back out after they are in bed and working on it til about 2 am.

Onto the lift....this makes life a lot easier.

I finished running all of the brake lines, and looked for a few mystery oil leaks.

Then it was onto the wiring. Luckily a previous owner panted the inside of the truck, and didn't really mask anything off, so about 60% of the wires were white.

The hazard relay and flasher were both junk, rather than mess with old stuff, and in the interest of using stuff I could buy at any parts store in the country, I used two regular off the shelf relays to replace the hazard relay, and used an electronic flasher. Also had to strip down and clean the crud out of the turn signal switch, and it works like a charm now.

Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:02 am

Ok, now I'm going to back up a little bit. Just before Christmas, my wife told me to make sure I would be home one day, and to make sure I had the tractor there. Huh?

Oh, there is a semi in my driveway.

I drag the pallet down to the shop and find this wrapped up on it

Yeah, my wife is pretty awesome.

With that backstory laid out, my next project this week was to get it on the truck. As a quick setup and to try to figure out how I wanted it setup, I dug into my bedframe angle iron stash and built a quick rack. I didn't really want to put it on the roof for a few reasons. One, I wanted to keep the profile lower to make it easier to push down the road, two, I wanted to not have to crawl up as high. I set it up so I can just walk under it, and when folded, it only is above the roof line by about 2"

I'm building a tube bender and accumulating dies right now, so I am planning a sorta custom full length HWE style rack. But for the time being, this will work.