Jill's Type 34 Ghia.....

[Bobnotch]

[Muthashabubu]

[Notched]

Such a beautiful Type 34...
_________________
Phillip Bradfield

Current stock: '57 Panel Bus, '63 Rat Notch, '64 Baja, '66 Variant, '67 Convertible Ghia, '68 Squareback, '69 Squareback, '69 Fastback

Southern Oregon VW Club -- http://www.sovw.org

Oregon VW Forum -- http://www.oregonvw.org

[jaransonT3]

Got the new fog light bulbs installed in Jill's Ghia tonight.

Last week while sorting out the headlights and getting her stereo installed, I had rewired the fog lights to be directly switched (with the factory switch under the dash) and coming off of the un-used electric sunroof fuse in the panel. I was already using a regular Type 3 flasher relay instead of the Type 34 only one that turns the fog lights off when you switch from low to high beam. Jill's was cooked when we got the car.
_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/

[jaransonT3]

Spent some time this past weekend doing a few things to Jill's Type 34 Ghia to get it ready for the season.

It has always needed to be lowered one more spline in the front so that was the first order of business....

Before:

After:

and a couple of more After shots....

I also pulled the rear quarter interior panels and reupholstered and painted them to match the door panels and seats. I also redid the package tray to match...

Still a few more things to do like fix the speedometer, remove and color match the upper and lower dash pads, modify the road wheels as I have always planned. (I did buy a 5th Cosmic wheel for the spare and it will be the guinea pig for the mods).

For now it is back on the road and looking much better with the nose down a bit more....
_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/

[t3kg]

Looks good John. Cosmics really suit the Type 34.
_________________
5/62 343
I WAS THERE! The 2017 Type 3 Rally / September 29–October 1 / Cayucos, CA
2014: The 2014 Type 3 Rally / October 3–5 / Cayucos, CA
2011: 50 Years of the VW Type 3 / September 29–October 1 / California Central Coast

[Bobnotch]

Looks good John. I bet Jill is enjoying driving it again after such a long winter's sleep.
I was wondering if you had gotten a chance to modify those rims yet. Guess the spare will be a nice "donor" to the project.
_________________
Bob 65 Notch S with Sunroof
71 Notch ...aka Krunchy; build pics here;
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=249390 -been busy working
64 T-34 Ghia...aka Wolfie, under construction... http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=412120

[jaransonT3]

Time for a little update on Jill's 67 Type 34 Ghia...

I have a few minor things to do to get the car ready for the drive to California for the 2020 Invasion and a couple of more major ones. First the small stuff...

Rebuild the sunvisors
Add a better cup holder
Fix the passenger side window regulator
Fix the window channel trim on the driver's side
and give it a general once over and tune-up

First major thing to do is replace the windshield after it took some major damage from road debris a year and a half ago. I have the windshield thanks to the group buy several years ago and I have the new seal thanks to ISP West. Will do this one once the weather warms up a bit.

The second major task is to add A/C! I told Jill I would do this for her before the next long hot drive to an Invasion. <G> So to that end, I have sourced all the parts and most of them are here...

Mostly Vintage Air components sourced through Summit Racing. This is not going to be update of a dealer-installed vintage system. This is going to be a full modern system including an electric compressor that will be mounted up front in the spare tire well along with the condenser. Will make the hose routing much shorter and simpler, plus far less modifications to the engine and cooling systems. It will require an upgrade to a 155 Amp alternator, but I was likely to need to make the upgrade to alternator either way I went.

I will be sure to post pictures as I go through the install. If it all goes well, I may do the same to Sophy in the future.
_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/

[eyetzr]

Awfuully nice of you to treat your missus to some AC. Nice looking kit..
I am currently doing the same here. Gail thought since the motor is out, I need more work to do, let's install AC. I am using the Gilmore Enterprises kit. Compressor mount on motor, long hoses to the front..
Looking forward to the updates.
_________________
I think he meant "rare", as in "not well-done"

[Intrinsic]

How do you plan to manage the heat produced by the alternator when its under the heavy load of operating the 2 fans and the compressor?

I ask, because if you use the original belt routing and mounting location, that heat will be discharged above the tin, where there is little air flow and it is out of the path of the engine's cooling system.

Thanks

[notchboy]

[jaransonT3]

The alternator that I have has an internal cooling fan which should help quite a bit. I am also not planning on blocking off the stock generator cooling outlet on the magnesium fan shroud which should provide a source of cool air for the alternator. Will have to see what happens when it is all hooked up and running properly.

I do work in the Research Lab at Ford and I have been consulting with a couple of the HVAC engineers that work for me, so I am not going into this blind. I will post what I find out as a go through the install and testing/use.
_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/

[jaransonT3]

I got Jill's Ghia moved into the OR tonight. First step is to pull her motor and get the upgraded alternator installed. This is going to be fun...

_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/

[BSQUARE]

[eyetzr]

The sequential tail lights are a Mercury Cougar idea.
John, the OR is looking like a waiting room. I see patient's waiting to be looked at.
_________________
I think he meant "rare", as in "not well-done"

[KTPhil]

[Volktales]

T-bird in 1966, Cougar in '67. Owned a '67 Cougar for 19 years. Great car, but eventually traded it for a '62 Beetle. Still have that! The Cougar sequential turn signal system was electro-mechanical with a small motor turning a cam that tripped various electrical contacts to make it work. Was complex, and a separate manual was produced by Ford, just to explain and troubleshoot the workings of this system. Was always an attention getter...
_________________
1974 "Restfalia" Camper 2000 cc EFI 2001-
1970 Beetle first car, rotten, yard art 1985-
1966 Sunroof Beetle, restored 1998-
1964 Ghia, ongoing project 2007-
1962 Beetle Beryl,original paint survivor 2012-
1970 Savannah Beige Beetle 2012-
1992 16v GTI, 100% stock 2006-
1991 "Terseo", wife's old daily 1995-
1969 Chevrolet CST/10 (family owned since new)
1965 Gold Corvair Monza 2021-
1966 and 1965 Monza 2022-

[Bobnotch]

[vwfye]

[jaransonT3]

It has been a long time since I posted an update on Jill's Ghia, but I finally completed the A/C install late this summer and I have been getting a lot of questions and interest in the A/C ever since.

First a little background on the motivation for the install. Jill has driven her Ghia to a number of the Type 3 Invasions, including 2018 in Scottsboro, AL and 2016 in Prescott Valley, AZ. Both of these were long, 1328 and 3938 miles round trip respectively, in the middle of June and the weather can be a bit warm with temps over a 100F on each of those trips. On top of that, the Ghia is like driving in a fishbowl with all the glass, small roof panel, and narrow pillars. It can get a little warm in there. <G>

After the Alabama trip, she asked what it would take to add A/C to her Ghia before making the next long drive for an Invasion or other event. I started to do some research on it. Gilmore Enterprises makes a Type 3 specific kit

https://www.gilmore-enterprises.net/inc/sdetail/ai...it/138/551

but I didn’t like the idea of running the extra belt off of the fan pulley with a bolt on pulley that looks like it might compromise the cooling air intake a little and that requires you to cut into and slightly compromise the sheetmetal housing around the pulley/fan. I also didn’t like the idea of running the hoses all the way from the rear at the engine to the front along the underside of the vehicle. The under-dash unit is also a little plastic/modern looking for the styling of the Type 34. I have little doubt that the Gilmore system would work fine, but it was really not what I was looking for.

A little more research led me to look at electrically driven compressors. There is no “kit” available for the Type 3s or VWs in general for an electrically driven A/C system, so I had to piece one together. The best option I found for the compressor is a unit from RenCool, the MD-18 compressor. I found mine on ebay for about $800 back in March of 2020. Looks like they are about double that now. Also looks like there are cheaper options for electrically driven compressors these days due top the growth of Electric Vehicles and their need for electrically driven A/C. Anyway, this is the unit I used….

RenCool MD-18 Electric A/C Compressor: https://www.streetfx.com.au/md18-dc-compressor

The rest of the bits I got from Summit Racing and other suppliers and are a combination of Vintage Air parts and Powermaster parts. Here are link to the various parts…

Vintage Air Mark IV Underdash Unit. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vta-672001vhy
Powermaster 150 Amp Alternator https://www.summitracing.com/parts/pwm-477491
Remote Condenser/Fan https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vta-03500-ova
Drier w/Trinary Switch https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vta-07323-vuc
Battery Cable https://www.summitracing.com/parts/pwm-1-567
Fittings and Hoses https://coldhose.com/

I really liked the look of the Vintage Air Mark IV Underdash Unit as it fit the looks of the 60s era of Jill’s Ghia. The 150 Amp alternator was probably a little bit of overkill, but the Rencool Unit can draw unto 60 amps so upgrading the generator was a necessity. Probably didn’t need to go quite that big, but figured, go big or go home. The modification to the fan housing were going to be similar for a 90 Amp alternator as the 150 Amp, anyway.

So let’s get to the install. First order of business was to upgrade the electrical system. The main change here was to swap out the 30 Amp Generator for the 150 Amp Powermaster Alternator. I pulled the engine to make everything easier to work on.

After removing the stock generator and the sheetmetal belt housing, I was left with this…

My goal was to keep everything under the stock engine cover. This required me to carefully grind away the saddle on the fan housing for the generator to provide clearance for the large diameter alternator. This is what I started with…

After lots of careful grinding (remember that that the housing is magnesium and the grinding dust is flammable) with 2” diameter 36 grit on my 90 degree die grinder, I ended up with a nice flat surface as low as I could get it. I also was able to keep the two generator strap mounting studs that I will use for mounting the alternator brackets. I removed the stud on the left in these pictures to make the grinding easier.

This is how the alternator will end up sitting on the fan housing. The center of the pulley lines up nicely in the hole in the sheetmetal belt housing and everything is low enough to fit under the stock engine cover. Now I just needed to make brackets to mount the alternator and allow for some adjustment for belt tensioning. BTW, the alternator shown in these pictures is the multi-groove belt pulley. The alternator also came with a single v-belt pulley which I ultimately used so I did not have to modify the stock fan pulley.

I started out by mocking up the brackets using some heavy duty card stock. The small bracket on the left bolts to the fan housing using one of the existing strap mounting studs and one of the bolts that holds the two halves of the fan housing together. The small bracket on the far right bolts to the housing with one of the bolts that holds the fan housing halves together as shown in the second picture. The larger bracket on teh far left bolts to the small bracket on that side and to the pivot bolt on the alternator. The large bracket on the right is the alternator tension bracket that bolts to the small right hand bracket and the other generator strap stud. The 3rd picture shows them mocked up with the alternator.

Next I had to make the brackets in steel. Lots of cutting and welding and grinding later, I ended up with these steel versions. I did add a few gussets to the brackets to stiffen them up. If I were to do it again, I would probably go at least 1/8” thick steel stock for the brackets. The material I had on hand was only 2mm thick versus the 3+mm of the 1/8” stock. I would still add the gussets as well. These brackets have worked just fine though too.

Here is shot of the brackets painted up and installed...

and one with the alternator installed. I ended up buying several different v-belts of different lengths for test fitting to get the right tension and still have the alternator pulley close to being centered in teh hole of the sheetmetal belt housing which is obviously not installed yet in this photo.

Next up was one of two significant body modifications I had to make for the system. I need to provide a little more room under the dash for the Mark IV Underdash Unit. For the Ghia, I was able to simply cut out a portion of the under dash sheetmetal (as outlined in Sharpie here) and then flip it over and weld it back in. I added end plates to close it off and provide a convenient vertical surface for the bulkhead fittings for the A/C lines. I don’t have a picture of the finished sheetmetal work with the end plates, but you get the idea.

Before - Topside

Before - Underside

After cutting out the panel - Underside

After cutting out the panel and flipping it. I liked how it let me retain the factory beads, even if they were reversed.

The only modification necessary to the engine bay was routing the large single wire for the alternator around to hook up to the positive cable at the starter. Easy peasy. With the single wire alternator, you do lose your idiot light for the generator. I will eventually install a voltmeter so that we can have some indication if the belt fails. The nice thing about the Type 3 is that the belt only runs the alternator and not the cooling van like on the Beetles so loosing the belt is not as catastrophic.

The other body modifications were up in the spare tire well for the condenser, fan, compressor, and dryer. I modified the removable spare tire well to use as a mount and ducting for the condenser and fan. I also cut to opening in the front apron below the bumper to let in cooling air, as seen below. I also welded in a piece of 1/2” square tubing between the inner fenders to be used to help mount the compressor.

I welded a few studs to the inside of the apron to mount some metal mesh to protect the air inlets. With Jill’s car being as low as it is, you can’t even see these inlets unless you lay down on the ground to look for them. Very stealth. <G>

I built a couple of mounting brackets for the dryer and attached it the inner fender with sheetmetal screws.

These are the mounting plates for the compressor bracket. One welder to the crossmember in front of the fuel tank and one welded to the crossmember I added.

These next two photos show the modifications and the sheetmetal duct/mount that I built for the condenser and electric fan. This worked out really nicely.

Next up was mocking up and fitting all of the A/C lines. I bought my fittings from ColdHose. Good stuff. This is the fitting from compressor out to the evaporator in the under dash unit. The blue cap is the fill service port. One of the challenges I had was with the compressor location I chose, I did not have enough clearance between the fill port and the sheetmetal to get the fill hose fitting on. In my case, I was able to simply mount the compressor bracket with two of the 4 bolts temporarily for filling and then move it back over and bolt it with all 4 after it was filled. Could have also chosen to use a simple elbow here and get a straight fitting with the fill port and put it inline elsewhere with clearance.

These are some of the other fittings needed. The two at the top of the photo end up under the dash panel at the under dash unit. I chose to use a bulkhead fitting do pass from the outside to the inside of the car These fittings or on the lower right of this photo. The lower center fitting is for the trinity switch that controls the fan and compressor. The fitting on the fuel tank is an extra one that I didn’t end up using.

These are the fittings at the condenser and dryer. All 90 degree elbows.

These are the fittings on the under dash unit. Even with the body modifications, these were a tight fit.

Starting to get everything installed for the final time. You can see the bracket I fabricated for mounting the compressor. It is two pieces of angle iron welded back-to-back. The compressor has rubber soft mounts to help with vibration isolation. You can also see the small vertical brace I added at the center of the 1/2” square tubing crossmember I added. It goes up to the crossbar between the fog lamp housings and really stiffens up the added crossmember. The compressor is quite heavy.

I had to crimp on some of the heavy cable lugs for the plug connecting the compressor power feed to the cables coming from the battery. I sprung for the hydraulic crimping tool from Harbor Freight and it worked great.

You can start to see some of the hose and electric routing here. The upper block in the the red cabling is a 125 Amp mega fuse and the lower block is the quick-disconnect plug that has the crimped-on ends I showed above.

Here is the Underdash Unit installed. One thing I don’t have pictures of is the mounting brackets for this unit. Basically, I fabricated a U-shaped bracket that bolts to the unit and then to the pencil braces that run from the instrument panel sheetmetal to the underwood dash panel. These are stock pencil braces on the Type 34 Ghia. There is also a mounting strap from the blower motor up to the stud for the radio mounting bracket. Pretty basic mounting. You can also see the black and red cabling that runs along the passenger side of the tunnel from the battery up through the under dash panel and to the quick-disconnect for the compressor.

The Vintage Air Mark IV Underdash Unit really fits in nicely with the styling of the Ghia. The clearance to the shifter when shifting into 1st and 3rd is sub-optimal. There is room, but if you forget it is tight and are jamming through the gears, you get a quick reminder of the clearance when you bang your knuckles agains the unit. <G> I am going to look at getting new bushings and maybe shorter throw shifter to try and tighten things up a little bit and reduce the slop in the shifter throws.

You also have to worry about provide a drain for the condensate water that is produced by the under dash unit. Vintage Air provides the tubing and fittings for this. In the Ghia, I had to modify the outlets of the unit and the elbows to get everything more compact to the unit so that we had foot clearance. It worked out just fine and there is plenty of clearance even with my 10.5 size boots on. The drinks hose simply goes down through a grommeted hole in the corner of the floorpan and exits under the vehicle. You can see any of this while sitting in the car.

One last shot with the wiring complete and everything installed. The two relays on the dash panel are for the fan power and the compressor signal power. You an also see the start of the spare tire mount that I built over the fuel tank since the spare tire well is now full of A/C bits and pieces.

I am really happy with the way this turned out and the performance of the system. The MD-18 Compressor is super quiet and I have it wired to operate at the lowest of the three speed that are available and it makes more than enough cold air to keep the relatively small interior volume of the Ghia comfortable. Of course we haven’t tried it on a 100F degree day yet either. It is a simple wiring swap to change the speed to one fo the higher settings if necessary.

Happy to talk more about this with anyone and provide more details if necessary. Happy cooled Type3ing!
_________________
Later,
John Jaranson
'66 Square
'69 Square
'70-1 Fasty
https://www.carartbyjohn.com
https://www.carartbyjohn.com/2024Invasion/