TheSamba.com :: View topic - Ben's '63 Ghia project (with lots of pics!)

Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:23 pm

Rome wrote:

What happened to your distributor, rotated 90 degrees to the left?

Hmm... I suppose it could be. Does it matter? The vacuum hose looks neater the way it's configured now. I know that's a silly reason to do anything on an engine really. :D

Fri Jun 21, 2013 7:04 am

Congrats on a great finish!

You did a great job saving this old girl......ready to take on that 100-4 so you don't get bored? Lol.

Mon Aug 12, 2013 6:50 pm

Hi Ben,

Great work on your car,very impressive for your first Ghia restoration!

I followed your advise on the quarter trim installation and am happy to
say it is much easier than the original install method.

Thanks,
Kevin

Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:18 pm

What a great story from start to finish. Gives me hope for my first air-cooled that I'm picking up in a few weeks 1966 fastback. Fantastic job!

Tue Apr 01, 2014 10:58 pm

What a remarkable build! I just read this thread from start to finish. Had a charley horse and couldn't sleep. Thanks Ben, fantastic documentation.

Wed Apr 02, 2014 8:17 am

Great job Ben.
The car looks amazing you have really done a fantastic job.. Thanks for the documentation it has certainly helped us through our restoration..

Wed Apr 02, 2014 8:29 am

Thanks for the kind words everyone and I'm glad to hear that this thread has helped out others.

Just as soon as this winter decides to give up, I'll be out in the garage taking care of some of the last little tweaks. Really excited to put some serious mileage on her this summer!

Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:16 pm

A little bit of an update:

As pre-63 Ghia owners might already know, the little fibrous mounting board for the contacts in the front turn signals doesn't age well. In my case, one had succumbed to its age early on in the restoration and was replaced with the then-available replacements from KGPR. The other one was in ok shape and I thought it might last. It didn't. And just my luck; KGPR has ceased producing them. Time to make a new one then!

I had asked my engineer father and brother if they could come up with a replacement piece of plastic or something from their respective high-tech workplaces, but neither were able to come up with something (mostly because they'd get wrapped up in calculating tolerances or some other nerdy thing at work and forget). After snooping around the farm and my apartment for something that would work, I found a perfect candidate: a cheesy plastic ruler.

So, here's the new with part of the old:

And in situ:

Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:21 pm

Necessity is the mother of invention 8)

Wed May 14, 2014 10:48 am

I've driven the Ghia already a bit this summer. Took it for a quick bath a month or so ago:

Replaced a really, really worn out wiper shaft:

Ever since I got the thing going, I've just not been able to get it to run correctly. I set the timing, ran through the carb synch steps numerous times, and tweaked just about everything possible.

Still, the thing hated to start cold, ran rough until it warmed up, had a noticeable stumble during acceleration, and I could never really get the idle speed pinned down. I'd set it at 900 rpms and take it for a spin. Pull into the garage, and it's 1200... or 600. Aggravating.

I called up Jeff at the Kaddy Shack, and he suggested that I might have a bad distributor. Couldn't be the case, could it? It's brand new! I bought an old beat-up SVDA from a local guy and popped it in to check, and lo and behold, I think it might have solved the problem. Hurray for fixing it, but -1000 points to me for feeding the spm (shitty parts monster). :oops:

Distributor in question:

Wed May 14, 2014 12:59 pm

You did have the vacuum hooked to the canister?

Wed May 14, 2014 1:59 pm

kingkarmann wrote: You did have the vacuum hooked to the canister?

:lol: Absolutely. Just took the picture as I was taking it out.

Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:52 am

I drove the Ghia to work recently and everything was fairly uneventful until I went to start it up to drive home. While a few coworkers watched (because people always seem to be around in hordes when the car breaks down... :D ), I turned the key to the "start" position and within seconds was surrounded by a thick cloud of acrid smoke which was pouring out of the ignition switch hole around the key.

I bailed out of the car and let it air out before hotwiring the thing to get it home. Which it turns out, is a somewhat alarmingly easy task. Here's the aftermath:

I bought and gutted a similar vintage Beetle ignition and we're back in business. I've never had that happen before and it was kind of fun to see how simple the whole system is.

I've got the thing running TONS better than before. The new distributor and a fuel pressure regulator seem to have done the trick. Various summer driving pictures:

Thu Jul 10, 2014 11:36 am

yeah it's wamzing how many people "just happen" to be standing around when something embarresing happens. One shing star though, you were able to drive away under your opwn power, and not on the back of a roll back. I've seen that several times at shows.
beautiful car.

Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:04 pm

What joy and AirCooled can bring 8)

Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:20 pm

djway3474 wrote: What joy and AirCooled can bring 8)

forgot to take the disc-lock off the rotor on my Road King at a outdoor concert. It moved about 3 inches when it stopped, my feet were on there way up. Needless to say it and me just fell over.

The worst part was the 12 year old kid "Do you need some help Mister?"

Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:48 pm

Hi Ben,

Glad to hear no damage to your car.Could you please post some pics/information as to how you changed your iginition switch with the beetle switch?

Thanks,
Kevin

Thu Jul 10, 2014 11:13 pm

Ben, What an accomplishment! I find it hard to believe that this is your
first restoration project. Beautiful work!
I learned very quickly how difficult it is to achieve results similar to yours.
Enjoy the ride!

Fri Jul 11, 2014 6:23 am

kdcaul wrote: Hi Ben,

Could you please post some pics/information as to how you changed your iginition switch with the beetle switch?

Thanks,
Kevin

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll just put a link here to the really great tutorial I used: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2...p;start=20

Scroll down to the bottom of that second page. It continues on the third page.

Sun Jul 13, 2014 10:55 pm

Ben te car looks great as always...
I know what you mean about it only happens when people are staring at te car.. had a wire come off the starter and athough it took less than 2 mins to fix it sure was embarrassing.. :oops: