Low down Hillbilly

[OCD Garage]

One last upgrade to the cage before painting was to box in the seat belt mount. It was cleaned up a little before I shot the paint on the cage. There wasn't enough primer for a second coat or any clearcoat, so back to the paint store early next week for me. This has to be finished soon before the weather shifts into fall colours.

[OCD Garage]

Shot the second coat of primer after work today, everything is very black now...
The next debate is whether or not to spend hours wet sanding the endless miles of tubing before shooting the base colour or leave it somewhat textured from the high build primer?

[OCD Garage]

A couple of recent pics when the car was outside in the daylight. I've got two coats of base colour on the roll cage now, but went over the recoat window and had to scuff the base prior to recoat/clear coat. Small delay but weather looks good this week...

[NJ John]

It’s coming out fantastic. Is the body going to be painted or patina?
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1973 standard, yellow, lowered, 3” narrowed front, 1600 blo-thru turbo w/single dell 15.4@86, so far
11.41 et buggy. Long gone
Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s!
https://www.youtube.com/@AirSpooledGarage

[OCD Garage]

[OCD Garage]

The roll cage is finally finished. I dropped it on today to have a look. Slowly but surely, it's all coming together.

[oprn]

I have been watching this build take shape and as it is not really my cup of tea, have kept my thoughts to myself. However as you have said the cage is complete there is a glaring structural weakness that concerns me and I hope you are not offended if I point it out.

The cage itself is a but overbuilt from a roll over standpoint. No harm in that. Statistically though the vast majority of collisions are front enders. This is where I see the weakness. There is a structural void between the base of the windshield and the structure that holds front suspension and fuel tank.

What will happen in the event of a front end collision is that the first place to fold up will be the pan at that junction. The front structure will rotate at that point and drive the steering column right into your chest! What you have created in effect is a crush zone right at your knees.

My suggestion would be to add a horizontal pipe just where the top of the fire extinguisher is and another from the base of the windshield forward to the same tank support loop. Does that make sense?

Again I only point this out for safety's sake as it seems that is your goal with the whole roll cage theme.
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Our cars get old, we get old but driving an old VW never gets old!

[OCD Garage]

Thanks for your observations oprn:

It's a street car ultimately and should fare far better in rough traffic than most buggies I see, which only have a single hoop at best. Is it the ultimate 'cage of protection'? No it's not. Most buggies are not the place to be in an accident of any severity. The fire extinguisher mounts are made from 1/4" material with grade 12 hardware and will help tie the two sections together. The gas tank support is also .120 wall tubing and fairly beefy if you want to look back through the pages. It's a beach buggy for cruising on a summer day, not a 10 second drag car or an auto crosser. No offence taken guy...

[OCD Garage]

This is the section mentioned by oprn which is somewhat of a safety compromise I agree:

There are no connectors between the square tube section which holds the fuel tank and the rest of the cage, which allows the body to be removable. If hit head-on the car could fold the 2x3 .120 wall tubing and VW centre section until it closes the 2" gap. It does have a bolt-on front bumper and an additional bolt-on round tube section over the beam to give 6 points. I could have connected the two sections together with tubes, but then I couldn't have removed the body. Alternately, I could have cut the front bulk head out of the tub and compromised the integrity of the shell.

[oprn]

[OCD Garage]

[quote="oprn"]

[oprn]

[OCD Garage]

Small update as I've been busy with other projects for the last couple of weeks. I decided the wooden steering wheel, 'popped' a bit too much and didn't fit the build. A brown stitched genuine leather cover was ordered online. I used 1/8" sticky backed foam to pad the wheel and stitched on the new cover in about 2 hours. The cover's shade of brown was lighter than the seats, so dark brown leather dye/balm was applied to reduce the differences. I've also been working on putting the engine back together between doing other things. I changed the rear seal and installed the flywheel today but need to adjust the endplay before bolting on the clutch and installing the motor.

[OCD Garage]

This week I've been working on assembling the external engine components after changing the rear seal, along with a new flyweel/clutch. I also found out this week that aftermarket tin sure doesn't fit like the factory parts! Grinding, clearancing, trimming... what a wrestling match. Currently I'm waiting for AN fittings and braided hose to arrive by mail to finish the breather box install. I built the mount to bolt to the back of the fan shroud hoping to reduce the oveall height of the motor as it's tucked up inside the body fairly tight due to the 3" trans raise. I've ordered a litre of Cerakote to do the exhaust, a first time for me, it looks like good stuff but is $$$.

[OCD Garage]

The Cerakote is done and drying finally (although no after pic yet). This is a product that requires a lot of prep, but really looks great so far, and with 85% solids it covered way better than I expected. Starting with a new baja header, I stripped the paint with a wire wheel, 60 grit sandpaper strips, followed by sandblasting. After the cleaning prep, everything was washed down with brake cleaner before spraying the Glacier Black Cerakote C. Hopefully there'll be no more ugly, rusty header the week after I get it running!

[OCD Garage]

The steering box on this project makes a 'clunk' when changing directions due to play in the input shaft bearings even after adjusting all I can out of it, so decided I'll likely need a new box to pass the safety inspection. After reading about how crappy most of the available choices are, I saw an article about a Samaba member rebuilding new boxes and how that evolved into a coop effort with Empi to build an 'equal to new' box. Cip1 has discounted them for Black Friday, I couldn't resist.

[Rome]

[OCD Garage]

I used waterproof foam insulating tape from Home Hardware. It is 2" wide which I centered on the outside perimeter of the wheel and stuck it down. To finish, I had to trim a second strip to apply from the inside of the wheei, cuts being made where the spokes join the rim. https://www.homehardware.ca/en/2w-x-30l-x-18-thick...AWgBegJqdg

[OCD Garage]

The Cerakote was finished curing so I assembled the exhaust, breather box and other accessories for the last time. I drilled out the oil filler block off plate to add an oil temperature gauge and swapped out the dummy light sender for an oil pressure sender. I'm building a set of industrial tins to control the flow of cooling air as I have no heater boxes. The motor is basically ready to install, if all goes well it should be running soon.

[OCD Garage]

Before putting the engine back into the buggy where it would be less accessible, I decided it needed a set of industrial tins to fill in the open sides above the sled tins. I saw nothing readily available online, so a bit more fab work was in order. As you can see, the old bales will be repurposed to secure the upper section of the new tins once tabs have been added. I'll sandblast and follow the proceedure for the Cerakote so they match the exhaust.