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Trylon Samba Member
Joined: August 16, 2019 Posts: 4853 Location: Connecticut
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2021 9:59 am Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Looks like I’m late for the party!
Won’t be leaving early for sure! _________________ 1973 Porsche 914 2.0
1959 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
1979 Volkswagen Rabbit
1973 Volkswagen Bus
1970 MGB-GT
1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire
More tomfoolery on
The Karmann Ghia Fever YouTube Channel! |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Wed May 26, 2021 7:44 am Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Trylon wrote: |
Looks like I’m late for the party!
Won’t be leaving early for sure! |
Thank you sir.
Instead of waiting for parts to repair the buzz box, I went down to the Chinese tool emporium & picked up a new Vulcan unit & finished up the wheels.
Just for shits & giggles, I mounted the first one up on the stock Thing drum.
The outer lip barely protrudes past the fender.
But upon installing the Beetle drum, it tucks back in under the fender.
And the high humidity is already bringing back the weathered look. _________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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kgj Samba Member
Joined: February 25, 2013 Posts: 418 Location: Uk, Cornwall
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Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 1:59 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2021 4:59 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY
Looks like I’m late for the party!
Won’t be leaving early for sure!
I’m even later but _________________ 1958 coupe |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 7:16 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Thank you sir.
Today, with a few minutes to piss away, I just had to start the trailing arm swap, so I jacked up the rear & removed the wheel & brake drum & then removed the upper shock bolt.
With those out of the way, I chiseled 45+ years of crap out of the CV bolts.
And then hammered a twelve point socket into the bolt heads.
And zipped them out with the impact gun.
I then removed the bolt holding the parking brake cable to the backing plate.
With the bolt removed, I then slipped a pair of side cutters into the spring on the cable.
And compressed the spring & lightly clamped onto the cable to keep the spring out of the way while I fought with the retaining clamp.
And removed the cable.
After cutting the brake hose, I then inserted a Snap-On17mm Allen drain plug socket into the trailing arm pivot bolt...
& pried on the ratchet with a pry bar. This not only increases leverage, but it also keeps my appendages clear of most of the rusty bits.
After removing the pivot bolt, I dropped the arm out of the way.
Setting the arms near each other, you can see the difference in the lower shock mount between the Beetle & Thing trailing arms, the Beetle ones are longer allowing the arm to be moved up while retaining full range of motion.
You can also see the difference in the bolt pattern for the mounting point of the spring plate.
I then bolted the Beetle arm in place & installed a new air shock to see where the arm would be at full droop.
This is where you can see the difference the lower mount makes.
Wanting to get a feel for where the car will sit, I lowered it down.
_________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:42 am Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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After thoroughly inspecting the welds, I was fairly confident that there weren’t any porosity issues but... I scored a tube of silicone sealant & schmeared a bead over the seams.
And, well... I lied. I decided to paint some shit after all.
Then I swiped a pair of 195/65/15 tires off a Jetta & had them wrapped around the steelies. Believe it or not, these steelies were a good 3-4 lbs lighter than the alloys off the Jetta.
And then just had to bolt one up.
Yeah!!! THAT’S the look I was shooting for. _________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:39 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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I was presented with an opportunity to recoup my investment in this beast by someone local that wanted all the goodies that I was removing to slam the beast.
So I had to stop what I was doing & yank the last remaining trailing arm.
WELL! It’s a good damned thing that I didn’t drag this bitch any further than I did. I found that the castle nut was loose.
And I spun it the rest of the way off by hand.
After jacking it up & removing the wheel & drum, I chiseled the concretions out of the CV bolts & zipped the bolts out.
Huh, who knows how long ago that fuel line broke.
Worse yet, what appears to be wet & oozy is more like cured epoxy.
Oh well, off with its last trailing arm.
Like every heavily altered project, there comes a moment when you realize that it’s never going back, with all the Thing suspension gone, this moment came early for this project. _________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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Waybackburris Samba Member
Joined: December 01, 2019 Posts: 4 Location: Concord NC
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Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 10:02 am Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Awesome thread.....I'm just curious.....where in NC are you? I'm in NC too.
Thanks!
WBB |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:57 am Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Waybackburris wrote: |
Awesome thread.....I'm just curious.....where in NC are you? I'm in NC too.
Thanks!
WBB |
Thank you sir! I’m in Raleigh.
Today I set my sights on installing the Beetle spring plate & torsion bar. The typical means of lowering is to reindex the torsion bars about two outer notches. Since I plan on swapping in the Beetle parts, I needed to get an idea of where that would be with the existing bits still in place so I removed the retainer & adjusted the Thing spring plate up two notches..
And then scribed a line where the bottom of the spring plate would now be.
I then rotated the trailing arm up to see where it would need to be clearanced.
Since earlier & later models do not utilize the fourth bolt hole, I decided to lop off the end where the fourth bolt hole was.
I already had a pair of double spring plates that had been notched for a lifted application, I had notched these before I realized it was not necessary to notch the outer plate so removed these from that vehicle & using the one from the opposite side, I flipped it & began to map out where to notch it for this application.
After removing the torsion bar, I raised the trailing arm as high as it would go to determine where the stop needed to be, I scribed a line on the spring plate & ground away until the new notch was to my satisfaction. If you look closely at where the bump stop should be, you can see that this is the lowest that the car can go before you would need to start cutting the stops off or cutting on the chassis.
I then removed the bolts attaching the leading edge of the fender to allow me to flex it out enough to install the new torsion bar & spring plate. After that was done, I lubed up a new set of urethane bushings & after several adjustments to the torsion bar, I got the spring plate bolted up & dropped the beast back down.
Here it is bearing its own weight again (on this side anyway.)
_________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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TDCTDI Samba Advocatus Diaboli
Joined: August 31, 2013 Posts: 12846 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:54 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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I continued plodding along & lopped off the tip of the other trailing arm.
And then tucked it into place…
But again, I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like so I tossed the other drum & wheel on & dropped it down.
_________________ Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.
GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!
An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.
Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it. |
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kent70ghia Samba Member
Joined: June 15, 2020 Posts: 176 Location: Tacoma, WA
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Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:30 pm Post subject: Re: SKULLDUGGERY |
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Need my fix, how are your rides coming along? |
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