DeVerde - Hoodrat Project

[vwuberalles]

Those seats look pretty cool just with the headrests and plastic bits off! If you squint they kinda look like old Mustang seats.
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1973 Superbeetle: 1st car, owned since age 12. Update thread --> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9919140#9919140
1967 Kombi: Owned since age 17, Dad's retirement project.
1966 Beetle: My new project. (SOLD) Build thread--> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=678040

[DeVerde]

[finefettle]

280 not great but not horrible either.

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1979 Bug project

[Busstom]

Maybe it's a geographic thing; I was browsing seats on CL a few weeks ago here in the San Francisco Bay Area, ane was shocked by the redonkulous prices these fools are asking...WTF are these fools thinking??? A pair like what you got there would've been in the 6 to 800 ask range, maybe more. Personally, I think you got a great deal, they look nearly flawless.

I ended up finding a Mini seat, about 10 minutes from me, and got it for 30 bucks. Perfect, I'm just mocking up, and I cut out all the working guts from up under the frame anyway. Score.

[DeVerde]

[DeVerde]

So a bit of a hiatus from the bug for a multitude of reasons but we’re slowly back at it. Been doing some thinking and planning and I’ve decided to ditch the auto trans in favor of a manual. I have a Mopar 318 up front and that came with a plethora of options for transmissions; one of them happened to be the NV3500. I found one cheap and plan to pick it up this weekend. It saves me a TON of headaches to include wiring, cooling, packaging to name a few. More to follow on that.

I have been looking hard at the seats and made a few changes. I swapped the orientation of the seats due to the seat brackets that I want to keep. In the VW CC, the brackets kick outboard and it causes me issues. So some quick thinking, if I swap where the seats are, I can inboard the brackets and make space for the driveshaft. The drivers seat is now the passenger and the passenger now the driver. So that’s an easy win. I also plan on running a harness so the seatbelt buckle got removed and I’ll reuse the headrest mount to fab up a harness guide because these seats were never intended for a harness. The mounts got shaved flush and the airbag wiring I shunted so I don’t have issues down the road. Taking the foam off the seats to remove the side airbags seems silly to me when I can just shunt the wires and never have an issue.

Stay tuned!

You can see how the bracket kicks to the side here. I put the kicked out side toward the center instead of the outside and it gave me a lot more clearance.

I swapped the controls for the seats and I’ll mount those probably where the driveshaft tunnel is. They would normally mount on the outside of the seats but because they’re swapped now, they’re inside and up against the driveshaft tunnel. Just running the cables out, the orientation of the controls would have been upside down so I just swapped sides and it worked out perfect.

Removed the side brackets. They held the plastics on and I don’t need them.

Shunted wires for the airbag. By cutting and twisting the wires together, it prevents the airbag from inadvertently going off from static or stray power. Short of God himself saying that squib should go off, it’s pretty safe.

7” now for the driveshaft and tunnel.

Headrest will eventually turn into shoulder width harness guides.

The NV3500 vs the 44RE (or 46RE....does it matter? No, not really....). This saves me a TON of room. So much so that where the engine currently sits, the transfercase will sit in front of the seats and I could still move it to the rear a bit. The NV3500 is about 24.75” long and the RE is about 31”ish. Either way, an awesome addition. I totally get the NV3500 isn’t that strong, but its easy and cheap to rebuild, parts are plentiful, it bolts up to my current engine, and if I end up with a random $2k burning a hole in my pocket later, I can up grade to the NV4500.

[DeVerde]

Got the transmission today. Looks like it’ll cut the mustard just fine. The Dana 300 will adapt no problem and splines into the transmission without issue. It doesn’t seat all the way but that is not an issue. I need a clocking ring anyhow so I can mount it flat with the floorboards and the clocking ring will space out the transfer case just fine. I plan on cable shifters for the transfer case and I’ll mount them in front of the shifter to make a bit of room. Pretty excited about the over all length as well! Looks like I could bring the engine back another 3” and still have space for the seats to move forward and back. More to follow.

Assembled unit.

You can see it doesn’t fully mate with the transmission but the clocking ring will solve this issue.

The clocking ring will also rotate the transfer case up flat with the floorboards.

Overall length of the transmission and transfer case (minus the rear output) is less length than the 44RE. Much better packaging.

[joey1320]

Cool project
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**1971 Super Project
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0

[DeVerde]

So no money and spare time makes for a transmission tear down; and good thing I did too. Waiting on a bearing splitter to take off the rest of the gears but it looks like a full rebuild with bearings and syncros, and countershaft. Exciting times!

Bearing retainer off

Cases split

Third gear looks messed up but Scott at Midwest Trans says they’re just ID marks.

5th gear/counter shaft. Scott says the 5th gear looks ok but the countershaft needs to be replaced for sure.

So, to disassemble/reassemble the gearbox, you need a special tool....or make your own fixture to hold the input shaft, output shaft, countershaft, and reverse idler. This will do.

[DeVerde]

[DeVerde]

Spent some time over the past few days tinkering with the gearbox. I found flaws in basically every gear, every shift collar, shift fork, and shift rail not including the broken and missing components. I think I can salvage most of it but I’m opting for a new input shaft and counter shaft. So much for a cheap rebuild. 🤦🏿‍♂️

Either way, it will be good because the transmission should outlive the bug after its rebuilt and I’ll know for sure the history of the gears that are in it. I decided that instead of struggling with the shift rail detent plug again and finding it seized again in the future, I’d drill and tap the plug for a set screw. It worked out flawless and a plus is now it’s adjustable shift tension! I’ll take small victories when I can!

Found the two piece thrust washer in four pieces. Geeze, what did they do to this transmission?! 🤦🏿‍♂️

My pile of broken parts to repair or replace...missing a few randoms but that’s about all of them.

Here’s the work on the detent plunger hole.

Old plug.

New set screw that I’m going to use.

The plunger and spring go here.

Tap this hole. I used a 5/8” set screw so it’s fairly chunky.

The set screw is sooo much better than the plug. The detent is crisp and the shifter bounces back to neutral so much nicer.

I had to leave it long because of the allen key depth but if I get bored enough, I might turn the threads down some so I know the depth it should be at. I’ll likely seal it and safety wire it when I rebuild it but it’s hardly a necessity. I will clean up the scars from trying to get the plunger plug out when I clean the case though. It looks pretty ugly at the moment but when she’s all cleaned up you’ll never know the difference.

[DeVerde]

Working on the front hub caps today. I ran into some issues with the studs in that I couldn’t find studs that would fit the dana 60 rotors and had extra stud length without sacrificing in some sort of way...specifically the knurls that hold the studs into the rotors. This hub cap thing is just for fun so I don’t see the need to buy studs that don’t fit and tack weld them onto the rotors. So, back to the drawing board we went. I found some lug nuts that were 9/16”-18 and designed for mag wheels. These let me utilize the remaining threads on the studs where in the rear I use a nut instead. As always, it has to be modified in some way. I ended up cutting all but about 1/4” of the threads off and cutting the top of the lug nut to fit under the hub cap. They hold tight enough but they’re not unlock and I can’t put any C-clips on them to keep them from backing off so I drilled them for safety wire and that will work just fine.

The mag studs I got.

How they fit wasn’t quite right, so it became necessary to trim them.

A bit off the top and bottom.

They’ll work just fine!

[DeVerde]

Safety wired and working awesome.

The front is done! Time to pull them off and paint them and they’ll be ready to roll.

[DeVerde]

Been slowly but surely working on the bug lately. It’s been a mess at work so finding the time to do anything in depth has been difficult while at the same time, I feel a bit stuck on it and demotivated to use the time I have to work on the body and frame. Either way, here’s the update:

First thing is first....the engine is not a 5.2L Magnum. I had some questions about it and was struggling to turn the motor over with a jumper battery so did some digging to see what the issue was. Well, pulled the valve covers to see if the top end was an issue....sure the hell it is an issue. They’re trashed. Kept digging and found the entire engine covered in sludge and rust. What a trash heap. So the story on the engine is that I got it for free with the understanding that it was a 5.2L that did not run well and they thought it was electrical. No biggie, I’ll rewire it and it’ll be good. Well, come to find out, they put a 5.9L Magnum in a 5.2L controlled space. Not sure if that messed it up any but I’m sure it didn’t help. Either way, they ran it like hell, oiling issues, spun bearings, bent rods, the whole shooting match. So that’s getting rebuilt.

[DeVerde]

Got the engine off to the machine shop to be hot tanked and magna-fluxed. Came back with straight decks, needing to be bored over from 4.000” to 4.030”, and cleaned REALLY well. 🙄

Took a look at the water jacket and they did a crap job cleaning and removing all the oil galley plugs so I need to get back in there with some CLR and remove the rest of the rust. I need to hot tank it real good in some dish soap but haven’t sprung for a barrel and a propane turkey fryer yet. I did a bit of wire brushing and scraping but I’ve been dragging ass cleaning it up but it’s here.

Because I already had things apart I figured it was time to assemble the engine pieces and they’re flowing in slowly. Got the oil pan in from Canton Racing that will allow me to run the x-pipe in front of the transmission and behind the oil sump to save a lot of space in the exhaust having the cross over right up front. Here’s the old vs new.

Got the intake manifold in as well. Went with an RPM AirGap manifold designed for 5.9L Magnum heads. The magnum heads have a different bolt pattern for the intake than the LA 360 that it closely resembles but I prefer the straight down bolts that the magnum heads have to the angled bolts. It makes it easier to assemble in my eyes. Either way, the intake matches the heads that I’ve ordered.

The heads are completely trashed so I ordered some EQ Magnum heads for the engine and that’ll put a huge smile on my face when they get in. They’re currently being built at Performance Injection Equipment and should be done being worked sometime towards the end of January. Beyond that, the engine is on a stand still.

[DeVerde]

When I got the engine back from the machinist, they really didn’t do that great of a job cleaning. Besides oil galley plugs left in, drain plugs left in, and freeze plugs still in place, I found that the cam bearings were still installed. So the oil passageways weren’t cleaned and that really is going to necessitate me doing a deep clean before I start to reassemble the engine. I also found when I removed the cam bearings that they were installed poorly and not aligned with the oil passages so not only was the top end not lubricated properly, I never drained properly either which explains a lot of the oil crud.....although, it could just never have had an oil change. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Misaligned cam bearings you can see were here...

This is SOME of what I scraped out of the engine after I got it back.

Pretty poor showing. Guess I should probably inspect ALL the work the machine shop did if this is what cleaned looks like.

I also got the clocking ring in and it’s pretty awesome if I do say so myself. It replaces the bolts in the transfer case with studs and nuts and provides multiple mounting positions so I can clock the transfer case wherever I want it. Right now the plan is to get the engine and mounted level with the frame and see where everything sits. When that’s accomplished and I can lay the frame flat on the ground without the engine hitting, I’ll clock the transfer case wherever I need to in order to facilitate the best front driveshaft angles. Anyhow, here it is.

Where it mounts.

Clocked nearly flat, mocked up on the bench.

[DeVerde]

I tossed the idea around of cleaning the transmission and transfer case and then painting them myself but after looking into paints I decided I wanted something tougher than regular spray paint. I want to leave the pair exposed in the bug to give it a different look than everyone else who has completely clean and clothed interiors and if I’m doing that, I want the transmission and transfer case to look nice. I found a guy local that media blasts and then powder coats for pretty cheap and got both halves of the transmission, the flex plate cover, and the whole transfer case media blasted and powder coated satin black for less than $300. Pretty excited about that and they look SOO good.

I also chose to leave the tail housing and front bearing retainer in raw aluminum. I cleaned them up and did a few mods to them to make the install the way I want it.

I got around to rebuilding the transmission and transfer case as well. They’re all finalized and ready for an engine to mount to, so that’s exciting. They shift super smooth and spin awesome.

I managed to also get the shifters in and replace the tiny, plastic shift lever balls with solid black cue balls. If you’ve ever picked up a pool ball you know how awesome it feel, how solid and nearly perfect it feels in your hand. So I destroyed the plastic balls and took the press inserts and used them with the pool balls. I chose to epoxy them into the pool balls because I didn’t want to mess up the finish trying to heat and press the inserts in like they’re designed to be. They turned out PERFECT.

[DeVerde]

This miracle kinda thing happens when I drink and I somehow get stronger....well, I started drinking and decided that the whole shooting match needed to be in the bug. So, lifting with my back and only my back, the transmission and transfer case got from the work bench to set up in the bug. I’m actually pretty happy with the set up. I need to finish the transmission shifter but the seats are also all the way forward and I’m not sure the lever is long enough.

Like I mentioned, the seats are as far forward as they’re going to go so it looks rather tight but it’s still comfortable enough for me at nearly 6’ tall. Ideally, I’ll be able to slide the seats back about 4” or so and make a bit more room but I want it mocked up in worst case positions.

And that’s where we sit for now. I have some 4”x1/8” stock so I can start welding the body up in the final positions and then working on the doors. Once everything is tacked up where I want, I’ll finish weld the body and make sure the frame fits. I need to work on the suspension at the same time so I need to order the material for the front and rear 4 links as well as get the engine and transfer case mounts built. It’s a bit of chicken or egg right now but I’m sure it’ll come together soon enough. I feel like body is first and then make everything else fit in that package so I can keep the bug look without going TOO overboard. Until next time folks. 🤘🏿

[BanDiabhal]

This thing is super intense. Looking forward to the rest of the build.

[DeVerde]