1963 Rebuild/Resto

[TryToBeOriginal]

[TryToBeOriginal]

So last night I managed to finally get through all that Bronze. Pain in the ass...
I still have a lot of work to do for the entire panel to come off but my biggest fear right now is getting the doors to align again. I was looking last night and my drivers side has 1 cm gap between door and B pillar while passenger has .5 cm. Guessing I can probably adjust these a little when I do heater channel repairs on the driver side.

Just gonna keep chugging along removing this panel until I can get a welder and some sheet metal hammers to straighten the panel a little.

[mukluk]

The passenger door gaps look good; the driver's door is shifted too far forward, most likely due to bent hinge mount points on the door and/or A pillar. You don't have any decent shots of the front of the driver's door in your gallery, but I'd pretty much guarantee there is almost no gap present between the door and A pillar from the bottom hinge all the way up to near the top of the vent window.
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1960 Ragtop w/Semaphores "Inga"

[TryToBeOriginal]

[57BLITZ]

What's the condition of the door "check-rod" on the left side?
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Jesucristo es mi Señor y Salvador!

[TryToBeOriginal]

[TryToBeOriginal]

welp... managed to get my middle finger with the cutoff wheel Monday night. 5 stitches later can;t really feel the tip yet. Think I'm gonna take a break until the new year and come back fresh.

[Eric&Barb]

Good thing you did not cut the tendon for that finger, or they would have had to open up your arm up to near the shoulder to pull the tendon back down.

Got to hold grinders with both hands, and IOHO best grinders have the type of switch that turns off the tool off when you lose hold of it.

Other way you can go is a less powerful cutting tool like Harbor Freight sells or the smaller Dremil. The latter is required to do fine clean up work, that a big grinder/cut off would just make a bigger mess of. Course those will take more time to do the same job with weaker and/or smaller tools, but might save you a lot more time at the Emergency room and healing up.....

Hope you are feeling better soon!
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[TryToBeOriginal]

[TryToBeOriginal]

I've been lazy about updating this thread but pulled the front apron off the car and still working on removing the front quarter now that the finger is healed.

also dropped the engine and stripped it down to long block up on the stand. This weekend's plans are to build a new workbench and split the case open and start the engine rebuild. This engine was SUPER nice. everything was there from the original thermostat to the original VW coil and VW distributor. Pretty sure this is a 100% original engine. I did find some brass bar on the oil cooler so guessing it may have had issues at one time unless VW used brass bar on those.

Also noticed some metal shavings in the bell housing and the flywheel teeth edges were worn. may need to look into what would cause that. Planning on picking up a Bentley manual here this weekend as well so I can get some better information for engine specs.

Any tips and tricks for engine checks I should do is always appreciated. Pics to come of the progress.

[Eric&Barb]

Pre-DH Oil coolers were brazed closed when built at the factory.
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[TryToBeOriginal]

I just realized how lazy I have been about updating this thread...

Life has been crazy busy since the new year so not as much as I would like to get done so far but still decent progress. managed to pull the front 2 drums off and get a look in there. also pulled off the front apron to straighten that out.

Managed to get it up on stands and drop the engine.
Split the engine open and am checking all the tolerances.

Up next is fixing the quarter panel and rebuilding the engine. Once those are done onto fuel and brakes. Then I should have a driving car. Plan on getting it running before I start all the body work. Need some milestones to keep the morale up.

Quick question on the head. Looks like there is a half moon piece of casting missing next to the exhaust port. Can't tell if it was chipped off or if it was made like that. I guess ultimately is this going to make me buy a new head ot is this one going to be fine?

[Eric&Barb]

That chip in the head is fine. The intake & metal seal seals against the lower surface of that hole. The chipped edge is just a centering ridge for the metal "O-ring" seal there so it is not offset to the hole into the head.
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[TryToBeOriginal]

One of these days I will get better at updating this thread.

Recently just been working on cleaning every thing up now that the quarter is off. my main fear is how out of shape the spare tire tray is and the support behind it. The driver side is clean but passenger is all out of whack. Trying to decide do I sit here and spend lots of hours trying to beat it back into shape which will probably require me taking them off and putting them back on or do I just order replacement panels and put on fresh metal.

you can see that the support should have a wedge shape but is not a straight panel up and down.

Also the flange is missing or not aligned anymore to how it should be.

Anyone havae any experience playing with front ends and want to weigh in?

[Eric&Barb]

Pound it out and use a shrinking disc. Been pulling out dents, bends, and warps out of our SO-34 westie.
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