Neil's 52 Zwitter

[nshaddox]

Thanks. Woke up with a pinched nerve today, probably from moving the ‘blue wrench.’ Still managed to get some progress done on fitting the rear cross member. Needs a bit more finessing. New piece needed some mods for the heater tube to fit and also had to be trimmed to slide into the wheel arch far enough. Got to try out the new consumables in the plasma cutter, worked great. Probably a decade since I last used it.

[nshaddox]

Back is still tweaked but managed to pull front beam and remove some broken bolts from the pan after work today.

Anything to look for on the beam to give me an idea of originality? Passenger side still has cable brake backing plate. Steering box looks weird to me but I’m used to 60s stuff. Planning to do a mild cut and turn up front but not wanting to mess up anything super early.

[66brm]

Rh bump stop Mount on the beam should have a no stamped into it, I'm pretty sure it's listed in the vin listing's per month/year on here
_________________
Aust. RHD 66 Type 1
Aust. RHD 57 Type 1 Oval

[nshaddox]

Checked date code on beam. 0436xxx (nov 52) so I’m pretty sure it’s original to the car. I’ll probably strip down a different one for the lifting project and store this one as is somewhere.

[Two Glove Boxes]

[nshaddox]

Yea, been rolling stuff around versus lifting for the most part. Got trans pulled. Pan nearly fully stripped at this point. Just a few broken bolts left to extract.

[nshaddox]

Got trans and beam moved out to my other place for long term storage. Been traveling for work but got some time this afternoon to flip the pan and see the nasty. I knew there was some rot under the napoleons hat but was hoping it wasn’t as bad as it is.

So, question to the experts is how similar is the bottom plate of the tunnel in this area on a zwitter versus a later T1? I know the frame head itself is different, but think I can use a later donor section to fix this spot? The bottom plate of the nap hat I have the virtanen section for.

At least this makes the decision to open up the tunnel easier. Going to try to get the center portion of the tunnel removed this week if I can differentiate spot welds from rust pits well enough.

[nshaddox]

Removed what remained of the bottom plate of the napoleon hat last night.

Questions for the field:
What gauge steel is the napoleon hat, same as bottom plate?
Does any one have a chunk of donor material for the rust hole in the bottom of the tunnel? Dollars waiting.

[nshaddox]

Started opening up the tunnel. Still undecided if I should separate both halves completely all the way to the top of the frame head and frame horns or if I should just cut the middle out.

Bought a bit of 16ga at the hardware store, seems too thin for the top half of the napoleon hat. Thinking maybe 14ga is more like it?

Also got the remaining broken bolts out with the blue wrench. Tried working the spring plates loose but they are stuck pretty well. One started bending a bit but I don’t think either one moved out at all. Probably have to weld up some sort of puller.

[nshaddox]

Got the can opened up. Probably about 9hrs worth of drilling, grinding, hammer/chiseling over a 3 day span. Got the rat nest and chicken bones out of there and power washed everything before putting the hose and washer away for the season. Didn’t bother with an after picture.

Gas line for sure needs replaced. Probably choke line for sure too, not that I plan to use it ever. Anyone have a good source for correct dimension tubing? I thought autocraft sells it for buses but not sure how similar sizes are or if anyone imports that to the states?

[pastellgreen]

you have put so much work on it. Once opened, I would do it correctly and also replace the choke tube. Even if you think you would never use it, you never now if there will be one time in future you or someone else will use the choke. For starting an original engine, the choke is very helpful.

[Rome]

My gosh, that's diligent work! Will you have the tunnel sandblasted now that it's so exposed, or just neutralize the rust using chemicals?

[nshaddox]

I’m still deciding between having the bits dipped or blasted. Kind of leaning towards dipping though. It’s more of a question of order of operations.

If I dip it, I can have it e-coated at the same time. It’s also way less messy and both those things are appealing. But I’m not sure of that coating would remain if I powder coated the outside after getting everything reassembled with new pans? I’ll have to call around and ask the people that do this stuff for a living.

Seems like order should be:
1) replace rotten conduit tubes as required
2) repair hack jobs and rot on both halves of frame and trial fit/dress for final weld
3) attempt recovery of illegible VIN by etching?
4) dip or blast and protect internals with coating of some sort?
5) final weld halves
6) install pan halves
7) blast/powdercoat full pan


Also need to find some metric tube sources, hopefully locally.

Can anyone confirm tubing dimensions are as follows:
Clutch and brake cable tubes 12mm OD x 1mm wall thickness?
Accelerator, heater, choke tubes 8mm OD x 1 mm wall thickness?
Gas line 6mm OD x 1mm wall thickness?

Not sure if any of my example pieces are in nice enough condition to measure for confirmation. Guessing on dimensions above based on split window bus replacement tubes as listed on autocraft’s website and a visual comparison for the gas line.

[nshaddox]

Had a chance to do some measuring on a spare pan in my other back yard.
E brake on T1 pan is 12mm OD x 1mm wall tubing. I am assuming this will be the same for the cable brake tubes on this earlier pan.
Accelerator cable tube (and hood pull release tube) are 8mm OD x 1mm wall tubing. I am assuming choke tube is the same.
Gas line is 6mm OD x 0.8mm wall.

I have a few places to check out for sourcing this tubing locally. Going to get an idea of length this Saturday. Been traveling way too much for work and limited daylight this time of year, so outside progress is starting to slow.

Anyone know a source for ‘fry’s reagent’ that will ship to a residential address?

[nshaddox]

For the record, I have measured all the conduits inside the tunnel and am recording them here. All measurements are probably ~+10mm for final trimming.

Rear cable brake lines: 12mm OD X 1mm wall X 2345mm (x2)
Front cable brake lines: 12mm OD X 1mm wall X 190mm (x2)
Clutch cable line: 12mm OD X 1mm wall X 1690mm
Accelerator cable line: 8mm OD X 1mm wall X 1630mm
Passenger side heater line: 8mm OD X 1mm wall X 1220mm
Driver side heater line: 8mm OD X 1mm wall X 1250mm
Gas line: 6mm OD X 0.8mm wall X 2570mm

[nshaddox]

With the bottom of the tunnel removed, I was able to address the ugly chiseled out hole in the tunnel for the clutch cable. Best before shot I have is from prior to body and pan separation.

Now it looks like this

Much better. It’s not perfect, but it’s about as good as I could get it due to the clutch tube/pedal support brace being in the way on the back side. Might try massaging it a bit more when the tubes are out of the way.

I’ve flattened out most of the tunnel and bottom plate flanges now too.

Also finally got the rear spring plates and torsion arms pulled. Probably took 3 or 4 hours to just do that. Spring plates are prettty corroded and one bent while I was prying in it. Broke the tip off one harbor freight tire iron too. Would not have been remotely possible without the torch, tire iron, and BFH.

[nshaddox]

Called 3 or 4 different tubing supply places today and came up with nothing. No one has the desire or ability to sell to individuals and most places also didn’t have the 12x1 or 6x.8 sizes. Also called Wolfsburg west and they just stock precut lengths sourced from autocraft. Bus lengths on the 12x1 aren’t long enough for early bug rear brake cable conduits. So my options right now are to see if I can get some custom length cuts direct from autocraft or get an llc set up to place a local order. More on that later.

Wasn’t willing to accept defeat for the day so after the bike ride home from work I stripped the donor beam down in preparation for a mild cut and turn procedure. Might be able to get that done tomorrow.

[nshaddox]

so a week or two ago I started stripping down a donor beam from a 60 that I happened to have in my personal basement junkyard with plans to do a cut and turn mild lift on it.

It was all stripped down by last weekend.

I used 2" painters tape to mark out the center sections for the cut and turn, and used a hacksaw to cut them out so I could control the gap pretty well. I did about a 4mm, maybe 5mm turn on the center sections for a little bit of a lift. used a flap wheel on the angle grinder to put some mild bevel on the center section to make sure I'd get decent penetration on the welds. and clamped everything back up for welding using a small section of angle iron and some swing axle boot clamps.

did one tube at a time and ended up with this

which then cleaned up to this.

Just for good measure, I also decided to weld the seam up on the shock towers. I figure it will probably add a bit of strength and more importantly keep nasty salt stuff out of the seam since I plan to drive this thing in the snow some day. also trimmed the snubber protrusions off.

I'm also in process of setting up an llc to be able to get some of the other materials I need. Taking the next week off of work to work on house and car projects, will probably be finishing up the LSD install this week, or that is the plan.

[nshaddox]

Friend of mine did some powder coating of the small bits that came of the chassis too.

Pretty sure I’ve got an early frame head locked down and some spring plates/covers as well.

[nshaddox]

LSD is in the trans now. A bit behind on my personal schedule due to rental property stuff I had to prioritize.

Looks the same outside.

LSD inside.

Contact pattern not as centered as I usually go for but errs on side of extra backlash and indicates that pinion depth is perfect. Makes sense since I only changed side covers and dif. Differential measured exactly as wide as the stock one I pulled out back from the original 2015 build. Had to change both dif shims. 3.88:1 gear set is used and coast flank is pretty close to center so I think it will be quiet enough. Probably won’t be able to hear anything over the RGBs anyways.

Drive side

Coast side

I made this tool to help measure backlash without removing side gears since it’s more involved on an LSD to do that. Can’t use the VW297 tool per the Bentley.

Had to mod part of my VW297 set to be able to get it in the HD sidecover with the wider side gear housing of the GT Tech LSD. This is one of the ones with 930 style side gears that push the axles out 3mm each side.

Also had to go through a few sets of new fulcrum plates to finds ones I liked. Some had ridges and some had flat spots. Lower right is what I am cool with, others in this photo all have issues IMO.

Paul Guard also ported my side covers for me.

Also installed a waterboxer style joining stud between the mainshaft halves while I was in there. This trans will probably be revved and then lugged a bit more than usual because the ratios are pretty spread out to try to make up for the ridiculously low 1.4:1 barndoor RGBs. Waterboxer stud supposedly prevents inertial self-threading which I feel like is a bigger concern with larger rpm drops between gears.

One less thing to do.