Scrivyscriv's 1967 java green sunroof sedan (stock)

[scrivyscriv]

[quote="sportin-wood"]

[aquifer]

[scrivyscriv]

The plastic catch on mine is pretty warped and brittle. If you have an opportunity to 3d print replacements it might be worthwhile, even if only to have an accurate replacement on hand for the future. I don’t think the clips are available in the aftermarket
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[scrivyscriv]

Last little bit of work for the weekend! I know I said I wouldn’t be cutting and welding at this point, but I’ve had a chance to look deeper into the repair area and may have changed my mind.
If I recall, I’ve read in the past that VW stopped using body bolts under the rear seat due to cracking. It never occurred to me that I may have that cracking on my vehicle; lo and behold, the cracks are there!

The body bolts in question thread directly into the frame horn castings left and right, on the top directly over the torsion bar housing:

Here’s a good example of body cracks:

The orange paint pen mark is highlighting the edges of the luggage tray. The black sharpie lines are the cracks. The package tray has physically pulled away from the wheel well tub. It’s doing it on both sides, but the passenger side cracks manifested a little differently:

It cracked at the flange bend. Both sides have separated from the wheel tub, causing a great corrosion opportunity. The sheet metal pieces to repair here aren’t terribly pricey at the moment. I think it may be worth the time to knock these area out while I’m here!
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[scrivyscriv]

I'm still wavering on my metal repair strategy here.. A good look under the car reminded me I do have lower heater channel plate rust perforation in the back in the same crossmember/wheel well area. I also finally noticed a good half-dollar sized rust bubble under the paint on one of the rear quarter panels, same general area. So, I do have quite a bit of rust repair to do; it's all relatively minute at the present, but ripe for malignant spread in our humid Southern weather.

Although I did not buy this car with the intent to make it 100% rust free, that is slowly becoming a realistic goal! It looks like it will cost about $1,000 in good panels to totally eliminate all the rust, and there will be only a very small amount of visible exterior painting when it's all done. Just tossing my options around at present. But even if I do take the body back off, I think it would be great to at least spend this summer enjoying the car on dry days.

- new stuff on the way! -
The stock lobster claw seatbelts are entirely insufficient for a daily driver safety margin. Wolfsburg West has the lift-latch style belts, and I don't like that style. ebay is full of generic, if not of dubious quality, belts that all seem to be made in China. And to top it off, almost all replacement aftermarket seat belts only come in black!
I found seatbeltplanet.com and decided to buy a full set from them. They answered a couple questions I had and the ordering was really easy; I got a ship notification today, so maybe I'll be back on the road next week, with retractable three points in the front, and regular lap belts in the back.

- - but wait, there's more! - -

I finally decided to look for my water leak!! The vent wing window rubber on the vertical fixed guide is brittle and mostly missing. In fact there's not even enough material left to guess what the profile looked like or how it was oriented. The samba to the rescue!https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=781724&highlight=vent+window+seal

Dry and crusty, just like the door seals.

Seal removed with a dull-ish nylon scraper and a hook pick, it came out much easier than the door seals did.

These seals came from CIP1 as an add-on when I ordered the collapsible steering shaft clip thingy. It hits the top of the door wing seal, leaving a gap in the very corner. This angled cut with a bit of lip sticking out fills almost the entire corner and fits great!

There's nothing to the install. A quick spritz of silicone spray lubed the channel up, the seal slid right in with just the right amount of pressure, and finished it off clipping the excess length at the bottom.

Pulls nice and tight with the latch - again, just the right amount of snug, not too tight and not loose at all!

I'll be roasting coffee all afternoon Wednesday. The passenger side seal will be a great little project to knock out while I'm in between roasting!
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[aquifer]

Enjoying the car for the summer makes sense to me. You got it going after a lot of time and work, so you might as well enjoy it for now. Then tackle the rust next winter. I like what you’re doing with the car! I need to replace the door window rubber on mine too.

When I restored my first 67 back in the 90’s, I robbed all four seatbelts from a 74 beetle, with the front being 3 point belts. At the time I was surprised that the 67 had mounting points for the 3 point belts. They’re still in there. Not original to the 67, but definitely safer. For the 67 I’m working on now, I’m going to leave the lobster claws. Not very safe, but I’ll live. Probably. Haha.
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Parts needed:
Front & rear NOS or used OEM door panels for a '67 in the original Gazelle color (dark tan/light brown).

[scrivyscriv]

[scrivyscriv]

passenger side vent window seal

Hooray! The passenger side fixed seal was in MUCH better condition than the drivers side, so I am able to compare it to the CIP1 seal!

It’s hard to get a good shot of how the old seal sits in the groove to mate with the main seal.

This is how VW had the end of the seal, at an angle.

And comparing stock to CIP1, I would say the aftermarket seal is very close. It fits well in the window and does a really good job fully sealing up the window edge. Overall a 10/10 from me, with the one caveat we all know about rubber seals: no telling how long it will last!
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[aquifer]

Did you replace the rubber scrapers on the inside and outside of the door window glass during your project? I've read through the pages, but I don't remember seeing it and I'm too lazy to go back through and check!

I ask because I need to replace mine and I don't remember if you can do it with the window rolled down, or if you have to gut the door. I think the outside piece is built into the chrome that goes around the frame, so gutting may be the only option.

Here's why I care: I recently replaced my door panels, and I noticed that the original thin plastic liner was still in place behind the door panels on both doors. I don't really want to remove it if I don't have to. I'm sure it would disintegrate if I started to pull on it to access the guts of the door.
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Parts needed:
Front & rear NOS or used OEM door panels for a '67 in the original Gazelle color (dark tan/light brown).

[scrivyscriv]

The scrapers are on my to-do list! I doubt there’s enough room to replace em with the window installed. They have pretty long clips to snap in the door frame. It may be possible but I’m planning to take the windows out regardless, to replace all the worn seals and sliding parts!

Murphy’s Law sent me a taillight housing and FedEx dropped it off this morning!

The lens will replace my tired left-side original.

The Wolfsburg west order also showed up

A nice pair of grommets for the rear engine tin preheat tubes. They have been out of stock for a bit, and I’ve been worried about the tin chafing a hole through the tubes!

I also got their stock pillar mount antenna. Small issue with it. The nut doesn’t tighten up enough and leaves some slight movement of the antenna. It’s an easy fix to swap in the original angled pillar piece and nut; the base is firm now with no play. It needs to be secure for two reasons… one, it will waggle while driving and wear the base or mount hole. Two, the base pinches hard against the backside of the a-pillar for an antenna ground plane. Not the best ground plane in the world but apparently it’s acceptable enough.

My dash filler radios haven’t been powered up yet and I’m expecting nothing or maybe static at best. A buddy at work just installed a retrosound in his old truck and got me thinking about going that route… I’m not convinced yet. Might just give this current radio a try, it’s one of the four stock units I bought at Way Out Salvage in Kingston, Arkansas last year (was it last year? Year before? I’m getting old!) on my road trip with the boys!
Gratuitous, repetitious, photo for reference

*edited for autocorrect spelling error*
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[VW_Jimbo]

Always enjoy your posts! Nice update! Keep the helpers working! A strong work ethic starts at a young age!
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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!

[scrivyscriv]

seatbelt planet

Seatbelts!

The auto retractors don't fit on the A-pillar in the stock bolt hole! It hits the back seat brace at a weird angle.

Late model beetles have this special little bracket. This new seat belt mounts up the same way as a late model seat belt retractor

Y'all, I really like these. The color matched plastics look a little weird next to my wrong black front seats and really nasty headliner but I can picture it all coming together with a color matched, super stock looking interior. I hope the new belts will "hide!"

The laps were a good fit too, just a minor petty grievance with the orientation of the receiver end attach bracket. When correctly bolted up (and it only bolts up one way), the receiver is upside down, so the belt has to be twisted. I say it's petty and minor because it will hide behind the seat and only I (and now the samba!) will ever really know.

I love scavenging old parts and stuff. That's how I came up with the set of beetle seat belt brackets years n years ago! I used the driver's side bracket with a new hummer auto-retractor on my '71 bus. So now I just realized today I have to find a driver's side bracket!
I emailed Appalachian air and water cooled here on the samba and he's got what looks like a good bracket. Since I can't drive the vehicle until I finish the driver's side seat belts, I'll try to get the package tray and crossmembers re-painted with epoxy primer to hold over the summer.

Don't hold me to it... but I really think I may make a tip-over rotisserie this fall/winter and fix all the rust and nasty looking interior metal/paint. I don't mind the external paint and weathering. It's just the interior looks really dirty and gross, and none of it is really very clean-able.
_________________
Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[Bobs67vwagen]

Nice work all around, I have enjoyed following your progress. A while back you posted a picture of your master cylinder with the reservoir mounted on top of it type 2 style. Can you tell me what brand master you used and what brand reservoir you used to mount on top. I would like to do this so I can fully bleed the brake system on my pan build without the body being on. Thanks bob

[scrivyscriv]

[scrivyscriv]

Since I'll be mixing up some epoxy primer for the crossmembers and package tray, I picked a few other epoxy-deficient parts to glass bead blast.
Starting with the spare wheel.. it looked okay from the outside minus a heavy kink on the outboard lip. The kink knocked out okay. It doesn't run very straight on the brake lathe though, and glass beading revealed some dirty secrets under the bead flangies!

Even the valve stem was Made in Germany!
Now on the restored(ish) Drum Doktor brake lathe, bolted to the OG rear brake drum from my car.. if you recall from page 2, this is the drum that had several stripped lug bolt holes...it's now a nice museum piece to look at, and help work on my wheels

My old Horrible Fright dial indicator became trash a while back.. a cheap bezos replacement is on the way. Got to check runout on the bead seating surfaces, from my quick-n-dirty assesment it looks out of round and/or lumpy.

Close up of the valve stem sealing area pressing. Just a cool detail. And now... drumroll... NUMBERS MATCHING BRUH

The date stamp reveals this to be a 12/66 wheel, narrowing down my car's production date range from Nov-Dec to a mid-late-December. It's awesome to find these little numbers matching nuggets, I really nerd out on this stuff!

The inboard side bead looks much worse than the outboard, no idear why it is like that. Hey it held air before, so it'll hold air again. It did have a lot of bead sealer rubber goop - I'll hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Also blasted a decklid script that was in better condition than mine.. this one has all three pegs

Stock Bilstein jack that I picked up from Way Out Salvage

Hopefully I can figure reassembly out!

Might try cold blueing on a few of the pieces, the main shaft for sure needs a good hard surface coating besides paint. I'm planning to get all of the above in epoxy by the end of this week
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Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[aquifer]

Great work! I’ll send you my jack to restore too while you’re at it. Love the date stamp detail on the rim - very cool.
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Parts needed:
Front & rear NOS or used OEM door panels for a '67 in the original Gazelle color (dark tan/light brown).

[scrivyscriv]

Finally broke out the warning sheet that came with my seatbelt planet order. AFTER bolting in all of the seatbelts.
I specifically asked them via email before ordering: can I bolt the end of the lap belt on the same bolt as the retractor bracket.
“Yes that’s no problem” he says in the email.

The paperwork disagrees

So now I have to drill a hole in my freshly powdercoated pan to put a bolt and fender washers in for the lap belt.
Would have ordered non-retracting 3-point belts if I had known that. That’s why I asked before I ordered.
_________________
Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[scrivyscriv]

Putting things all back together for driving again.

I don’t want to tear the car back apart for rust right now, so I’ll plan my rust repairs for later this year or next. That will give me time to collect all the panels I need.. like the package tray, which I started to clean up with a wire wheel and had to stop when some holes began to grow!

The rust areas get scotchbrite rolocs and a wire wheel on the die grinder, then a phosphoric acid wash. Surface prep wash, then epoxy brushed on, then 3M 2k seam sealer. Not my favorite way of doing things but I’m really limited in what I can do without tearing the car down or masking literally everything else off

And the seat belt floor brackets.

If I’d thought far enough ahead, I could have spot welded a nice seat belt anchor plate onto the pan halves before powdercoat.
_________________
Robert in Memphis
Dünkelgrügen 1967 Java Green bug thread
Engine rebuild thread
If you're ever in the Memphis area, you are welcome to stop by for advice and help.

[VW_Jimbo]