1957 Coral Red - Bringing her back to life - a "barn" find

[garagebandking41]

Hey all! This is going to be my thread for a recently acquired '57 that was listed here on the samba back in December 2016. It has a funky history like almost every VW I have owned, so I look forward to getting it back on the road in as "original" condition as I can.

First things first:

It was found in Boulder City, NV in the backyard of an old house, along with many other old cars and trinkets. As it was told to me by the seller, it was owned by an older hippie who was sleeping in it at one time but from the evidence lying around looks like it was parked in 1975 and hadn't moved since. Here are some photos as it looked when I picked it up!

It had some front end damage and these funky wood bumpers for unknown reasons as the original bumpers were stored nearby and had only minor damage.

The back seat was full of clothes and disintegrated feathers and mattress pads. Here's what it looked like packed up:

Engine was good and number matching:

And the best part was the odometer at 56,000 miles and this to verify (check out the dates!)

Thats it for now, I will update soon with more pics if these are okay.
My plan is to clean her up, get the original color back (coral red) and drive her as found as possible. These pictures were taken back in Decemeber, so I have quite a few more since I have worked on her in the past couple months. Its good to be back wrenching on VW's though!

[garagebandking41]

The first step after getting from Nevada, was to get to Arizona, and then after a bit of thinking and job hunting back to Florida where it sits now. First thing to do was to don a mask and clean out the interior since I was very worried mice had gotten in there and 40+ year old linens and feathers smell almost unbearable. Luckily, I never found mice and instead pristine floors:

It still had most of the original mats as well as some extra insulation:

Here is the dash: with the seats out sitting in the back seat:

and the luggage area:

I was really interested in seeing if the paint was salvageable as I was motivated by many posts here of people lifting off old paint and finding beautiful OG paint: my journey was not as lucky:
This is a very close up shot of the hood. It was resprayed a a black primer, then a close red but not exact, and then the yellow it has now. Unlucky for me the original paint was sanded quite aggressively before that black primer went on and is just not salvageable...

however, the interior was never redone and is just yellow over the original coral red. It will be salvageable and I plan to bring it back. I took all the hardware out. Check out the cool visors/shade!

For some reason the tail lights were not sanded down and repainted so they were salvageable too:

More on the way! Hope you guys enjoy this...

[Jak3-719]

Beautiful! Cant wait to see more progress!

[*Darren]

sweet beehive. those pans look to be in great condition and hopefully the rest of the car cleans up as nice as the tail light.

[garagebandking41]

Some other things that needed to be resolved were that at one time paint had fallen over on the passenger side so I while I was investigating the OG paint thing I scraped off the window:

I also was able to find original replacement parts when I picked the car up. My assumption is that the car was being driven, somehow had a front impact and was going to be fixed up, but never was. Here she is with new glasses:

I also cleaned the bonnet area and she cleaned up well. It's all 6 volt and I plan on keeping her that way. This picture was taken after I took the radio out and instruments. That horsehair/tar insulation is sticky stuff and I could not get it all off...

This picture shows what I have been working on lately:

I'm not sure how glaring this image is: but after i took a BFH to the hood to pound out the bigger dents, the front still looks pushed in to me. The hood still fits really well but it just didn't look perfect. And here you can see it all:

The front clip is definitely crumpled in. The impact was just enough to do this damage, And I think it was all through the bumper directly to this front clip. I can't tell what kind of accident would cause this but NOT damage the original metal bumpers. My only thought is that somehow the PO put wooden bumpers on before the accident, possible was using the beetle to push something heavy around?? and this is slow impact. No idea. I can't weld very well (only have a gas-less MIG welder) so I wasn't looking forward to trying to find a front clip and ruin the originality of this car for what was seemingly a small accident 40 years ago.

Here is a closer shot of the crumpled side on the drivers side. Both sides are similar, but the drivers side is much worse:
Driver side:

Passenger side + 40 year old mud/grease:

I had to remove the sway bar, but the rubber was all perished anyways and needs replacing (like every other bit of rubber on here). But here's the before pick:

As i said: I didn't want to throw in the towel so I concocted this hastily made idea:

That's a jack post wedged between the beam and the bumper mount, If you see the shitty welds there to make sure the bumper bracket doesn't move under compression. The jack post supports 18,000lbs so I figured it could straighten out VW metal. The above image was taken with it under compression: about an inch of linear movement.

I then slowly turned the screw of the jack post and when a self determined "qualitative" assessment of force was being applied to the panel, I went around with a BFH and pounded out some of the dents with reckless abandon. This would relieve some of the compression and I would do the process over again. Here are the results before I ran out of daylight:

It worked! It's not perfect but I effectively lengthened the beetle by about 1 - 2 inches after this and the panel looks much more stock. I will need to get some professional hammers and dollies to do much more work, but this will allow me the peace of mind that this is fixable and I can get the original shape back. An interesting note is those shock absorbers have original VW stamps on them, backing up the idea that this car only has 50-something-thousand miles on it and not 150k...

Until next time where I plan to drop the engine and get a good look at what I will need to do. Thanks for watching!

[All_talk]

Really nice car, congrats.

I feel your pain on the front end damage, I have a similar issue with my car, though not a bad as yours. I suggest you check the channels on the back side of the damaged area, I suspect they are buckled. Depending on your goals you might just get it pulled out enough so that the hood and fenders fit and things look right from the outside (there is a document here on the Samba that will give you the dimensions). If you are hoping to get things factory smooth you will likely need to look for a new front clip. Another option would be to drill out all of the spot welds and separate all the parts, straighten out each piece and weld it all back together. I’m considering this on the right side of my car because I haven’t had any luck finding a good quarter panel.

Gary

[garagebandking41]

[Kjell Roar]

A friend found his coral red car near like yours some years ago, just more rust.
Looks like this now:

Keep up the good work!
_________________
I got a historic car, every scratch got a history...

My car, Aug. 4th, 1955 / an early 56: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=610438

[All_talk]

That "de" measurement is the one to check, its from the center of the first bolt hole to the last. If you can get it close and re-curve your hood for a nice fit then that should be good enough for a driver. As your pushing things out keep an eye on the bumper brackets and where they spot weld to the quarter panels, they can get stretched or torn during the process.

The picture below show the results of my efforts to date, it pushed out to the required dimension but despite the hammers, dollies, torch and stud puller I not happy with the result, so I'm looking for a replacement panel. But note the crease and pulled spotwelds where the bumper bracket mounts, and what you cant see is that the bumper bracket itself is deformed a bit too. Go slow and good luck.

Gary

[slalombuggy]

My Coral Red 57. Yours is the 4th Coral Red car I've seen painted yellow

brad

[garagebandking41]

Work has been slow but I made some "progress". To follow up with the last couple comments I measured the distances of the front quarter panel using a plumb bob:

Left side was at 1105 mm and the right was 1110mm. The car is at an 8 degree angle to the ground so that make 1110mm/cos( 8 ) = 1116mm and 1120mm respectively. I'd say that good enough regardless of all the stretching, so I'm gonna leave it.

And the reason the car is at an 8 degree angle is because I took the engine out!

I used the VW Alley engine stand yoke with the Harbor Freight four wheeled stand. It works excellent. I am working outside on my concrete patio so I can wheel the engine around and cover it up pretty easily.

I wanted to start work on the intake manifold as it requires no ordering of parts, and is almost always in need of repair due to the pre-heater tube being clogged up. Not only was mine no exception to this, but I had also found a fair amount of rusting from the inside movings its way out.

Using the old wire on a drill technique i was able to clear the blockage. But not without slicing into the pipe and helping the wire the whole way down. Looking back I should have just drilled a hole in parallel with the tube and got a really long drill bit, but I didn't think of that until it was too late. Here's what it looked like before I began welding up the holes.

I mounted it back on the engine, and cut a section of appropriate sized metal pipe, leaving a small section underneath to hold it all together.

I welded up the pipe and began making sure it was air tight by pouring acetone in the pipe and seeing if it leaks, everytime I would weld up a hole a new one would form or I would find a real thin wall due to the rusting from the inside and would have to repair the whole section with new steel. I did that with the lateral cuts by inserting 16 gauge sheet steel into the slots and then cutting the excess off. I am a terrible welder and work with a flux core because I am poor (with money and intelligence). But here was the result after about a month of time wasting.

I bought some 1200 degree paint from lowes. It's designed for grills and specifically says it advises against primer which was great. This paint also has the highest heat tolerance without requiring you to cure the metal afterwards. The other kind I commonly see is rarely sold with the high heat primer and needs a 600 degree kiln, which I don't have. Here is the result:

Now that this is done I plan on moving on to rebuilding the distributor, fuel pump, and carb. Luckily in this heat, they can all be done inside which is a huge benefit. My engine currently looks like this:

So I wanna see if I can move the engine along. I did change the oil and found this:

Nothing metallic as I brushed a magnetic all over the oil, so it looks just like sediment, I will do a compression test and buy a cheap borescope soon because, if it all looks good, I plan on trying to start this engine up after sitting for 40 years without opening her up. Mostly for cool points. Interesting to see your guys opinions on that.

Anyways, thanks for looking and I will update as I move along!

[maskinmester]

Think you should take a closer look at these "deposits" - could be white metal from the bearings which is non magnetic.
_________________
1954 Beetle - running - Went to HO 17
1961 Beetle in the workshop
1960 Beetle waiting for repair
1956 Unimog 411
30 old farm tractors and stationary engines
1999 Golf - daily driver

[garagebandking41]

[maskinmester]

If they are shiny you should worry - no matter if hard or soft metal.
But if they are gritty or like sand I would not worry so much - maybe change oil more frequent. As there is no filter on these engines there is only the oil change to remove the deposits from the combustion.
We possible should also avoid using to high spec oil for these engines. New types and particular synthetic oils are very self cleaning and will transport the dirt with the oil - towards the filter on other engines - towards the bearings on a VW. Older oil types are less self cleaning.
So dont buy the most expensive oil you can get in the though that you will be good to your engine. By a cheap 15W/40 or if you want to spend the money buy one from the "classic range" - serveral brands make them these days.
_________________
1954 Beetle - running - Went to HO 17
1961 Beetle in the workshop
1960 Beetle waiting for repair
1956 Unimog 411
30 old farm tractors and stationary engines
1999 Golf - daily driver

[garagebandking41]

I just got some new toys in the mail and did some investigation.

Compression Test yielded these results:

Cylinder 1: 100 psi
Cylinder 2: 90 psi
Cylinder 3: 120 psi
Cylinder 4: 130 psi

This was done with the engine cold of course, all the spark plugs out, and I turned the motor over using a torque drill on the crank. Obviously this isn't ideal, and the 130psi seems high as per the workshop manual which states tolerance limits on new parts of 100-121 psi. However the wear limit is 64 psi so I think I am okay on compression.

I also did some borescoping, since they are so cheap nowadays. Here is cylinder 4:

Note the cross hatches. Pretty sweet. All the other cylinders looked like this:

It's hard to view the valves but at here is one intake valve:

I also did an endplay measurement however the pressure plate and clutch are still bolted on:

I measured approximately 0.25mm which is 0.10mm over the wear limit. I'm not sure if its advisable to try and shim it 0.10mm. I am still reading up and learning about engine rebuilds this is all new to me so pardon the crazy ideas. I can tell you the endplay on my previous daily driver was much worse.

I ordered a fuel pump and carb rebuild kit from wolfsburg west and will probably work on those next. This was just a bit of fun for now, I hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks for looking!

[garagebandking41]

Small update as I save up for some more tools.

After posting in the engine/performance section and taking all your comments into consideration I have decided to split the case and get everything within spec before risking damaging a number matching car. I've gotten some resources and readings on the way as I have never rebuilt an engine before, so I'll be learning on this 36hp. Hopefully she's kind to me. To tie me over I quickly cleaned up the fuel pump. I wouldn't call it a rebuild as the fuel pump isn't an original pierburg or anything it's a Made in USA fuel pump labeled AC. I couldn't find any more info on this aftermarket pump, and it can't be fully rebuilt. Crazy enough the fuel pump still worked when I took it out. Here are some pics of the process:

Opened up she's not that bad:

Looked like salt or sand particles. It washed right off with carb cleaner however...And after cleaning here is the fuel pump with the rebuild kit I ordered from Wolfsburg West.

I can say the WW kit is very good. The small details are all there with the parts that matched up on mine, granted mine is an aftermarket piece anyways.

Spring is almost identical and ground down.

Spring force at full compression is pretty close, considering one is 40+ years old.

My AC fuel pump had pinned in valves made of what I think is the same material the diaphragm was made out of. Rubber. And also had a built in filter which was in good shape.

And here is the finished pump. Basically just reassembled it.

And here is my engine waiting for me to get smarter!

Also my heater boxes look pretty good too, I just need to clean them up.

Till next time. Thanks for watching!

[D-train]

Good job, did u preload the fuel pump prior to tightening?
_________________
shiny paint doesnt make it worth any more

[garagebandking41]

[sunroof]

Here is a picture of me straightening the front end damage to my coral red 57. I did the same thing as you but I used the jack from the car. I made a piece of angle iron into a puller with a U-bolt. I bolted the angle iron to the bumper bracket mounts with the tongue of the jack through the U-bolt and the base of the jack against the beam. A little force on the jack, hammer and dolly, a little more force, hammer and dolly, Presto! Everything fits.

Don
_________________
Better and better mistakes!

[Blue Baron]