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Mon Sep 18, 2023 12:35 pm

Well I have been meaning to share my project for a while, but some delays at the paint stage mean I have run out of anything to do on it, other than post some photos.

I am no stranger to aircooled VWs and have restored Beetles and Buses, and built an 11 second drag buggy, but a Ghia was always "top of the tree" for me and a convertible the very top - I'm never going to own a Hebmuller or D&S!

2019 saw me admit that I just wasn't getting enough use out of my racecar to justify it taking up the garage, so after some attempts to sell it whole, I ended up dismantling it, selling the shell and chassis and then all the expensive bits separately, leaving me with the engine and box left. So I went Ghia shopping.

I looked at a few ready to drive cars, but sadly they had all been imported to the UK around 20 years ago when values were not so high and, despite being very good solid cars to start with, had been subject to filler and cheap paintjobs. I knew I would end up tearing them down anyway, so why not start with something that really needs some love:

Mon Sep 18, 2023 12:46 pm

Early convertibles are very thin on the ground in the UK, so when this one turned up I had to take a look. On the plus side it was a black '61 with a red interior and new floorpans. On the negative side was pretty much everything else!

All the trim parts were either missing, replaced with later parts or so damaged as to be unusable. The hood had been replaced with a cheap outer which had a couple of holes in and no rear window. It was running a cheap narrowed beam, had some poor repairs to the heater channels and lower wings, didn't have its original engine or box and had plenty of rust as well as dents on EVERY panel.

A friend who is an amazing metal worker looked it over with me and said it didn't scare him, so I did a deal where I would drive it home but then bring the 1600 engine back, as I didn't want it. The car made it home, but shed various bits of trim along the way. The driver's door also fitted so badly you couldn't close it from inside, even using the shed door handle someone had fitted for the job:

The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that the door panel is wrong, being from an early lowlight, with a corduroy top section. The rear seat was probably from the same car, as it was a cut down saloon seat, cut entirely on one side so the cut out for the chassis spine wasn't even in the middle!

Mon Sep 18, 2023 12:48 pm

Once home I started probing the body to see how bad it really was:

Holed inner wing

Nose damage

Horrible spare wheel well repair

Grot in the corners

Mon Sep 18, 2023 12:49 pm

Oh and a classy speaker hole to ruin the parcel shelf:

Mon Sep 18, 2023 12:56 pm

Time to start dismantling. One pleasant surprise was that things came apart pretty easily after a little soaking with penetrating fluid. I'm used to UK cars where even M10 bolts will sheer from corrosion. Here even M5 nuts were coming off no problem!

Not that the car was exactly rust free ....

Oh well, one bit out of three being reusable isn't too bad!

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:08 pm

The engine lid was very rusty and dented. I made a bit of a controversial decision here. A supplier in the UK had a NOS late model decklid. Wrong for the car, yes, but you would only know when the engine lid was open and the engine is not going to be stock, so that hardly matters.

Looking at the gaps for airflow around the early metal rain trays and the later plastic ones, I also feel the later ones are likely to flow more air. That would be in line with all the other models, like bay windows where the air vents got bigger. So as I am going to be running a 2110cc engine, better airflow is a positive. The old engine lid got sold on and the NOS one arrived.

Another item that came with the car that I wouldn't need was the petrol tank: a nasty repro one with a cut away section for a fuel flap filler pipe and a horrible little cap.

The doors were both rotted out and dented. One was repairable, the other a bit far gone:

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:12 pm

Very little from the dash was useable:

Under dash dome light was toast

Speaker was toast

Rear view mirror was pretty crusty:

Speaker grill was cracked:

The dash top was also cracked and crumbling, while all the gauges had rust inside and on the rims.

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:20 pm

Other than the engine lid, all parts were labelled, bagged, boxed and kept, however far gone. I have found that very often a repro part doesn't fit and if you haven't got the original, it can be hard to know why.

Where original parts were restoreable, I did them as they came off. That way when the car is ready to be re-assembled, everything comes out of the box ready to go back on.

I dismantled the heater controls, cleaned them up and repainted them. New levers were needed, but all the hardware came up fine:

The outer casing halves were blasted and epoxy primed, then put aside to be painted L41 in due course. The guide tubes for the cables were cleaned up and painted bronze, rather than actually copper plating them.

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:24 pm

The wiper assembly came apart and was blasted. The main frame was powder coated, the control arms I painted at home. It had already been fitted with a 12v armature which worked well, so I just cleaned it all and polished up the original SWF aluminium cover.

Before:

After:

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:45 pm

Wow, you are a brave man taking on that project. Best of luck to you, look forward to seeing it when it's done!

Not sure what you meant about that fuel tank. That is a 61-67 tank, though it looks aftermarket for sure. The cutaway in the center is for the float assembly, not a fuel filler pipe.

Mon Sep 18, 2023 1:50 pm

Wow, more of a project than I would have been brave enough to do, so good for you for taking it on! I can't wait to see how it progresses, please keep us posted. It's nice to see people willing to save the old ladies.

Mon Sep 18, 2023 2:09 pm

Era Vulgaris wrote: Wow, you are a brave man taking on that project. Best of luck to you, look forward to seeing it when it's done!

Not sure what you meant about that fuel tank. That is a 61-67 tank, though it looks aftermarket for sure. The cutaway in the center is for the float assembly, not a fuel filler pipe.

Sorry, I struggled to describe what I mean about the tank, but if you look at the rear corner of it there is a diagonal cut across the corner, like the later tanks where the fuel filler goes in there. It is to save money on pressing the repros I guess. I thought finding an original 61-67 tank wouldn't be too bad, but it proved tougher than I had thought.

As for challenging projects, I think the starting points are getting rougher as the better cars have mostly been done. And we have far fewer starting points to choose from than in the US! The UK didn't buy many Ghias when they were new.

Mon Sep 18, 2023 10:15 pm

Really cool project, I am in to follow it!

Bests

Antoine

Tue Sep 19, 2023 2:57 am

DaveB9 wrote:
As for challenging projects, I think the starting points are getting rougher as the better cars have mostly been done. And we have far fewer starting points to choose from than in the US! The UK didn't buy many Ghias when they were new.

Yep especially Lowlights, most of them brought back by "squaddies" or personal imports. In a few years of British weather they were perforated. 15 years ago you could still buy a cheap virtually rust free early Ghia from Ca for about £5k.

Looking forward to watching the resto. :)

Tue Sep 19, 2023 5:39 am

Thanks for all the encouraging comments. Antoine, I have been following your resto thread and you'll see some familiar metalwork in due course, though unlike you I can't claim the credit for it.

Another part of the dashboard that was saveable was the glovebox. It was crumpled and had small tears, but it's only papier mache!

To get it back to shape, I wet it to soften it, then straightened out the creases with an iron:

It then sat on the radiator with heavy books in it to stop it sagging while it dried:

To solve the tears, I made up some paier mache out of chopped toilet rolls and PVA glue:

Then I painted the outside and inside in acrylic paints in colours I mixed to try to match the originals:

Finally, with help from my younger son (it takes two as the glue dries really quickly, so one to brush the glue, the other manning the puffer) I flocked the inside with the closest colour i could find to what was left of the original:

It's not perfect, but it beats a plastic repro glovebox.

Tue Sep 19, 2023 5:49 am

Meanwhile back on the car, I dismantled the wiring. It hadn't been messed around with too much at the front, other than a bodge horn switch being wired onto the steering column, but a lot of the connectors were in bad shape and some insulation was cracked. The fusebox had been replaced with a pattern one.

At the rear there were various dodgy splices and modern pre-insulated connectors. In the end I made my own loom, using each wire I removed as a pattern. I scored a NOS fusebox complete with cover, so sold the repro one on. I don't seem to have taken many photos - I must have been a bit carried away by the progress!

Tue Sep 19, 2023 6:18 am

Before bodywork could begin, I wanted to do a full mechanical fit up to ensure everything worked and fitted round each other.

The car had a replacement fuel pipe run through the cabin by the brake line, so I needed to run a new pipe through the tunnel. That would have to wait until the body was off.

As I will be running a high performance engine and had a lot of quality plumbing left over from the race car I decided to use AN fittings throughout, with an electric Facet pump underneath the tank by the framehead, along with a filter:

I won't use such bright hoses in the engine bay, but they make sense underneath because they are easier to see on a black car if I need to disconnect any and the braided hosing offer protection underneath that isn't needed in the engine bay.

As for the tank itself, I bought a reasonable looking original tank, but after blasting it didn't look good enough. This is a bit out of time order now, but someone later found me this oddity - quite a solid tank but with the neck cut off for a buggy project.

So the neck from the bad tank was sliced off and welded to the better tank, which meant I could position it so the VW logo on the cap faces exactly forwards. Oh well, it makes me happy! A 4AN breather outlet was also welded to the neck - I am sure I had a photo of that, but can't find it at the moment. The tank was then blasted and epoxy primed. I sealed the inside with a POR kit for good measure. I did it 15 years ago on my Beetle and it hasn't caused any issues since.

This was later on:

Tue Sep 19, 2023 7:18 am

Wow, this is going to be epic if you get this done! You seem like the right man for this job. Certainly restoring other VWs will help but as you probably already know Ghia's are a completely different animal. Their coach built bodies are challenging to restore properly. I agree with your approach to make sure the mechanical bits are going to fit and to make any modifications now before you tear into the rest of the body work. I'm stuck at the bodywork stage in my build because it is very hard to make them look just right. Prepare to push through that and if you hire that stage out I think it would be money well spent. Good luck!

Tue Sep 19, 2023 7:57 am

Thanks toddb_67 - I couldn't agree more on Ghia bodywork. I am blown away by what some people on here have achieved, but I know my limitations. I enjoy welding, but there was no way I was going to risk messing up such a rare and lovely piece of coachwork!

Tue Sep 19, 2023 8:16 am

The next step was to get the rear end mechanicals fitted, starting with this:

This was the box from my drag buggy, which had plenty of good parts in it, including SAW short axles, a modified super beetle mainshaft, steel shift forks, a superdiff and heavy duty sideplate. The close ration 3rd and 4th would need to be changes, but then it was always going to need a check over after so much action:

It didn't go in easily though. On my first trial fit it sat too far towards the back of the car. I checked all the geometry and measured everything, but there was on sign of damage or twisting to the chassis. In the end I cut the nose mount off and trimmed it a little before welding it back on, which cured the problem.

I am using Rhino mounts from CB, which I hope will reduce movement without transferring too much engine noise into the car. I wanted to fit a mid mount with rubber mounts, but this fought me too, the one I bought sitting too high so the metal touched the forks.

In the end I cut it across the middle and added a section to get it to sit at the right height before welding it back together again.