Field find 1954 Canadian custom

[sunroof]

The whole car is so peculiar. It says 53,000 miles but the engine has been apart once so 153? But then I look at the front end and it really doesn't need any work and shows no signs of being apart, so 53? But the body is covered in stress fractures so 153? Everything in the brakes looks completely original so 53? Then I take the transmission apart and the bearings are loud and 3rd and 4th synchros measure too tight so 153? But then I look at first gear and it is pretty much perfect. Both sides of 1st and the reverse idler gear show no significant wear so 53? I really have no idea what to think. I wish I had taken a picture of it but the top of each tooth on the cluster side of 1st had a tiny point on it. I spent a few minutes with a file and took them all off. I could not see enough damage anywhere to explain the shrapnel on the drain plug. Oh well, it went together beautifully and I hope it works. I am a little worried about 4th, the gear had a couple of thou of movement like it was missing a shim but I made sure it went back together exactly how it came apart.

Don
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[VW_Jimbo]

It would be nice if cars came with a log. Would take some, not all, of the guessing out.

Just from my own experience. I bet that speedo turned over once, if not twice, through the years, so maybe more like 253,000. Betting something got replaced or rebuilt. It would be VERY RARE to get a car at this age, and find it was a garage queen. Just my own experiences.
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Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[sunroof]

Slowly working my way through the issues identified last summer. I hope the transmission problems are solved with a new synchro for third and some new bearings.

Next on the list were 3 problems with the drivers door:

(1) The lower hinge was bent and twisted from the door being opened and closed with a seized hinge.

(2) The lower mount for the window stabilizer had partially broken away at the bottom.

(3) The quarter window latch broke off (kinda as expected)

I started with the hinge:

It took a lot of force to install the pin due to the distorted hinge. This put stress on the hinge mount on the door causing it to flex every time the door was opened or closed which would eventually result in a broken hinge mount. I bought a new hinge:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2421147

The quality was superb and I was super pleased my purchase.

I spent a couple of months occasionally going out to the garage and looking at the door trying to figure out how I was going to mount it and not coming up with anything. The problem was squashing down the rivets, there wasn't a way to do that that I could see without cutting the door open.The problem with cutting the door open was something called shipwrights disease. Once I started down that road, with rust and stress fractures etc, there was no way to know where it would end. And yes I tried my impact driver to squash the rivets and it just made a mess of things.

In order to give me some options I bought these repair panels from Virtanen:

As well I bought a 2 sets of rivets in case of mistakes.

If I installed Virtanen's parts, it was going to require a lot of welding and modification to do the job (shipwrights disease). The big problem with the piece was that the hinge mount is slightly too high resulting in the door bottom scraping on the heater channel. I was stumped as to how to correct that.

I spent many days and hours struggling to figure out how I was going to make it all work together. Then one day, out of the blue, an idea popped into my head.

I went to my local bolt supply house with a rivet and asked them if they could sell me a bolt that looked just like the rivet except with threads.

They could!

Better yet they were 1/4- fine thread, which I happened to have nylock nuts for from my other car project.

I drilled out the old pins:

And mounted the new hinge with the flat head bolts. I was massively pleased. Everything fit together like they were meant to.

Door gap perfect:

Opens and closes no problem. A real win.

Nylock nuts doing their job:

It hurt a little to put SAE bolts on my car but just a little. Also there was a stress fracture so I got out the welder and stitched it up real good.

I also managed to weld up the stress fractures for the window stabilizer mount:

Sweet as anything:

Next up: vent window latch repair:

Don
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[sunroof]

BTW this is a thing that I noticed with all the repair panels I used. With the A-pillar from Virtanen for instance, you can see where new meets old, there is a slight step in the gap. This is caused by the shape of the repair panel being slightly different from original. Every repair panel I used had issues like this. The Wolfparts were the best, the overall shape was correct and the problems were easily hidden.

Don
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[VW_Jimbo]

[sunroof]

What my dash could look like with a bit of elbow grease:

Pre elbow grease:

Don
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[sunroof]

Tonight I took the car for its first run this season. Wonderful! Phew!

Last winter I took the transmission apart as described above. It still makes noise idling in neutral but it is a completely different sound now, instead of a bad bearing it now makes a whirring sound. I think I can live with that. The best thing about it is how it shifts; no crunching whatever. Saweet. As I said I was a little nervous about 4th due to the play in the cluster but no worries, it shifts with no crunches and does not pop out of gear. I replaced the 3rd gear synchro, because it was a little crunchy, with a used one I got out of a '59 trans I scrapped. Beautiful. Transmission done.

As well, it was running like shit, just awful. It was so rich at idle the smell of raw fuel would make me dizzy. Once on the road it had a significant sag off idle and was noticeably slower that it should have been. As well it was backfiring through the carb which means a lean mixture. But! I was getting less than 20 MPG. I measured the fuel pressure to try to solve the running problems and it was very low, less than 1 PSi. A change of spring solved that and it did run quite a bit better but still not like it should. I also had a hell of a time getting it to idle. Over the summer I had the carb apart 4 times trying to get it to run right with no real luck. Over the winter I found a carb here for sale that was the correct style for my car that had been rebushed. I bought it and was very happy when I saw it, it was spotlessly clean and I could shake it and hear both balls rattling around. Tonight was the test. Perfect, Oh My! It does everything right, no smell of raw gas at idle, pulls like it should and no backfires. Carburetor done.

Finally I had the semaphores rebuilt but I was warned that they might not be perfect due to the lack of NOS parts availability. The plungers got rechromed and the mechanism rebuilt but the old coils reinstalled. Well they are 70 years old and a little weak so they were intermittant. It was worth a try. I bought a set of new:

https://www.cip1.ca/vwc-113-953-021-f12v/

The quality was not quite what I was hoping but they work nicely. The screw terminals are crap, coarse thread and not peened properly and they don't tuck away like the originals but they work so I guess that's a win.

Anyways she is sweet now. But loud. A Canadian custom with the pillows missing. If anyone has the dimensions for the C-pillar pillows I need to make a pair.

Don
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[Rome]

C-pillar pillows: Here's a start- halfway down page 3 in this thread-
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5894798&highlight=#5894798

And (HelmutofBuffalo)-

[VW_Jimbo]

Good to read it runs and that you drive it! Get some miles on it and enjoy doing it!
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Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[sunroof]

Over the past 2 days I have put just over 100 miles on her. Yesterday I was driving around and noticing the she had a pretty harsh vibration coming through the floor. She was also very loud and I was having some issues with the idle not wanting to adjust properly. Today I took her for a 30 mile run up to get an ice cream and on the way back she smoothed right out, vibration stopped, quieted down a lot and finally after 2 days of fiddling she now idles the way she is supposed to. For the first time since I got her on the road she is a happy little car. What an ordeal that was.

There is one more little issue to sort out that I'm not sure I will tackle this summer. She is super hard to steer. Heavy like a 1967 Ford custom with a 289 in front. When I rebuilt the steering box I forgot to notice how things came apart and when I bolted it up to the beam and hooked the steering wheel isolator to it I realized it was 90 degrees to where it should be. I did not think this would be a problem but it is the only thing I can think of why it is so hard to steer.

Don
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[bwaz]

I had new king and link pins put in on a 62 I owned, it steered like a truck for a few hundred miles... got a bit better after that, but I think things were too tight.

[VW_Jimbo]

[sunroof]

Sorry guys, it is neither. I made sure the king pins were nice and loose and I played with the steering box adjustment. All that happened was that it developed a dead spot in the center but didn't get any easier.

Don
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[sunroof]

Here is something else to consider: All last summer the engine had 3 leaks. It was leaking from the fuel pump, oil was coming out the vent tube and the oil gallery plug to the right of the oil pump was also leaking. It made quite a mess. I eventually determined that the oil from the fuel pump was coming out the vent hole and not between the gaskets, this was a new one on me, never seen that before. As well the oil coming out the vent was a mystery as I had installed the baffle in the generator stand to prevent that. I thought there must be something wrong with the new pistons, cylinders and rings to cause high crankcase pressures. The only cause I knew about that would push oil out like that. I intended to pull the engine apart last winter to see if I could determine the cause of the high crankcase pressures. Well, for various reasons that did not happen so I put the engine back in the way it was since I wanted to drive the car. Low and behold the fuel pump and vent tube no longer leak oil! I suspect it has something to do with the different carb but have no explanation for that. OTOH it is still leaking out the oil gallery plug. I will have to make a tool to unscrew that somehow.
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[sunroof]

[sunroof]

Went to a car show today, Very successful!

Don
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[VW_Jimbo]

I love the Bug! Looks awesome! Glad you are driving it!
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Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[Riff Raff]

Always good to get them out of captivity!!
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The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge
- Daniel Boorstin

[nlorntson]

Hey Don. Congrats!

I'm hoping you will be able to come down to the Fargo show last weekend in July?

Would be awesome to see you and the car.

[sunroof]

Oot and aboot in the '54

She just gets better and better. She put up a hell of a fight and I don't blame her. Her previous owner beat the hell out of her, I have never seen so much damage. Both floor pans were pushed right up so that the lower section at the back was even with the front, that is getting hammered on! The whole car was covered in stress fractures most of which I have never seen the like of before, As well the heater boxes were both smashed flat and had to be punched out to be made to work again. Something else I have never seen before was the vertical part of the panel between the engine and rear boot was completely torn away from the body on one side. But now she is in good hands and slowly coming to terms with being a car again. The steering is slowly letting go and getting easier and easier, she runs beautifully and really seems to be a happy car at last.

Don
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