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Sun Jan 15, 2012 4:57 am

Sun Jan 15, 2012 6:21 am

Its been awhile and the holidays are over. Here are some pics with explanations and videos of the progress so far.

Shows evil rust pits in area under front hood seal

Rust that needs to be cleaned up from under the lead in front hood seal area.

Brazed in left headlight bucket from prior old repair. Its a mystery trying to figure out what happened to this car before. Shows no sign of impact damage to the front end yet someone has replaced this bucket. There is some damage in side the left front inner fender area where the hood release tube runs. But no damage to the out side of the fender. What we here think is early in its life back when blow outs on tires happened more that it must have lost a tire and wiped out the headlight bucket and damaged the inner fresh air vent tube and wrinkled the inner fender area.

Some rust pits in the windshield channel.

Rust around the right headlight bucket.

Cleaning up the rear fender wells and under the floor.

Patch that has been cut and rolled to fit one of the few rust areas.

Measuring where the patch will fit.

Patch location on lower left rocker.

Tools and both panels. The one that was cut out and the one going on.

More tools including a bulls eye pick.

Doing the the small parts sandblasting. Lots of grunt work for the wife to do. She loves her Ghia!

Inside of rocker areas showing minimal rust.

Sandblasted parts.

Into the spray booth for some sealer.

Final wipe before masking.

All masked and ready for sealer.

Mixing the etching primer.

Spraying on the first coat of etching primer.

The wife wanted to be able to say that she sprayed her car.

The sealer that was used. Mix the two together to get the shade of grey you want or use them individually.

First coat of sealer.

Very happy day. The mail came and she received her new Nardi steering wheel.

Sun Jan 15, 2012 6:25 am

That is bizarre have no idea how that happened but those videos in hpw post are mine.

Sun Jan 15, 2012 6:50 am

eyemyeye wrote: That is bizarre have no idea how that happened but those videos in hpw post are mine.

didn't know if you where going to post them......so I took the liberty

Sun Jan 15, 2012 7:57 am

Ok so I 'm not going crazy. I went to bed last night and they where still uploading. I guess I still need to figure out to embed them correctly. Still learning how to do some of this posting stuff.

Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:28 pm

Quote: Patch location on lower left rocker.
Interesting about that patch. Even though it lived in New mexico all its life, I found the need to put a similarly sized patch in almost exactly the same spot on my '66 cabrio. I wonder if it is peculiar to this model year? :-k

Nicholas

Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:23 pm

Here are few more pictures after the sealer and paint has dried.

This photo shows the spray polyester on front of hood.

The spies hecker spraypoly.

Spraypoly all sanded and blocked and ready for final sealer coat.

Hood all ready for final wet sand prior to paint.

Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:01 pm

Great car, great engine, great combo! This will be a very nice driver.
You're starting with a car that's nicer than many people finish with. When I saw German paint I thought 'I like where this is going', and then you had me at "Nardi steering wheel".
Please tell your wife that there's nothing sexier than a lady in the shop in coveralls...

Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:14 pm

^^^Ditto. Very very nice. Im building a 2017 too, just different details. Love that Nardi wheel, damn.

Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:19 am

Wonderful outcome for this particular '66. I'm sure Butch is well pleased it landed here in competent hands. Car looks great!!

Nicholas

Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:28 pm

Here is what my wife has been working on. Not much but every little bit helps . She is very proud of the job she accomplished on her jack.

Mon Jan 30, 2012 12:08 pm

Looks nice, makes me want to work on my jacks! Did she dis-assemble it?
Our Ghia came with two jacks; one like this, and one with a large gear and worm shaft. I tried the later one, but it had a tendency to try and scrape the paint off the car with the rotating gear! It's probably for a Beetle. The first one looked like the original that came with the car, but had no bar to use it with.

Paul

Tue Jan 31, 2012 6:17 am

Quote: Looks nice, makes me want to work on my jacks! Did she dis-assemble it?
Our Ghia came with two jacks; one like this, and one with a large gear and worm shaft. I tried the later one, but it had a tendency to try and scrape the paint off the car with the rotating gear! It's probably for a Beetle. The first one looked like the original that came with the car, but had no bar to use it with.

Paul

Yes we disassembled the jack in order to paint the pieces and clean up the shaft. Its not to difficult. My wife has never worked on anything mechanical in her life. Every little thing to her is a big deal.

Henry

Sun May 13, 2012 6:30 am

It has been awhile since my last post but a lot has happened to the ghia. All the bodywork was finalized. Coated the entire car with spray poly. Then there was lots of block sanding until everything was nice and straight. Next was the primer filler which was also block sanded bringing her a little closer to perfection.And one final coat of primer before the final wet blocking for paint. A lot of work but very slow in visual progression. Have ordered most of the parts needed to finish the assembly, Interior , Wiring harness , CSP python exhaust and many more parts. Here are a few pictures bringing everything up to date.

Finished patch in lower right fender nose.

Finished patch in left rear wheel arch.

Inside of finished patch in left rear wheel arch

My best friend Ogre helping do all the body work.

Body work to the front end. Its hard doing body work with a handicap!

Engine compartment all prepped for paint.

Spray poly on the car giving a nice smooth finish to all the body work and final fitting of the parts.

Into the booth for the first of the two applications of primer.

All primed with last coat being a thin spray of base coat black for guide coat to aid in the sanding.

Parts into the booth for final primer coat.

Block sanding the car. Getting closer to final coat of primer.

Car all in the final primer coat ready for wet sanding with 800 grit paper.

Painted under the hood and engine compartment.

Painting inside of all the panels.

Painting the engine tins.

Final wet sanding of the panels.

Nice and straight!

All wet sanded and starting to mask the car for paint. Its Paint day!!!

My masking helper masking all the holes.

All the masking is almost done.

Spray booth all cleaned and ready for the ghia.

The car and all her panels nicely tucked in the booth ready for paint.

Giving her the final wipe down before the paint.

Ghia's first step the base coat.

Ghia gets her pretty red dress!!

Nice and shiny and perfectly straight. What a long day but she is painted.

Sun May 13, 2012 9:27 am

Very nice work. Looks great! :D

Sun May 13, 2012 11:07 am

Roadcow wrote: Very nice work. Looks great! :D

Thanks, Yesterday was a very long day 8am to 6pm but shes done.

Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:29 pm

Its been awhile but have been working on the ghia here and there when I can for awhile. Starting the long assembly process and here are a few pictures showing some of the progress so far.

Starting the wiring.

Picture showing wiring and the fatmat sound deadening.

Have all the lights installed including tail lights.

Picture shows gauge install,speaker kick panels and starting to install carpet with the tunnel.

Picture shows speaker kick panel including the the fasteners to left of the panel that I fabricated from a nut welded to a washer. I then used 3M panel adhesive to glue this to the car. this way nothing was welded to the car. That way I didn't burn any of the paint inside of the wheel well.

Picture showing fastener that I made and glued to car.

Gauge wiring

New horn rubber

Taught the wife how to cover the convertible hinge covers with vinyl. She did very well and they turned out spectacular.

I believe I now have all the vinyl down that needs to be before I can finish the carpet.

Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:39 pm

=D> =D> =D> =D>
BEAUTIFUL

I WANT IT BACK :lol:

Sun Sep 30, 2012 2:07 pm

Here are a few more pics showing the progress so far.

Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:47 pm

Saweeeeeeeet! lady in red :D