56 Old Speed Euro DeVille Influenced Build

[TomVaughan64]

My New Year's resolution was to start this build thread. I finished early.

In April of this year, I purchased someone else’s project car and I am working on finishing what was started. This is a June 1956 Oval. It is from Arizona and according to the PO it sat in a field for 26 years. It is in pretty good shape considering. The body was already separated from the pan, sandblasted and coated in a self-etching primer. I decided to name the car Floyd after my German grandfather.

Here are some of the other parts that were stored for the past 7 years in the POs garage. Most of the numbers match on this car, with the body chassis, transmission, and front axle all matching. However, the engine does not match. The car came with a 36-horsepower engine in a 1960s case that is frozen solid. The fenders, doors, back seat, dash gauges, headlights, tail lights, and decklid all look original or correct for the car. The hood and front seats appear to be for a younger car. I am by no means an expert on correct parts. If you see anything that looks like it is not correct for a June 56, please let me know.

Here is the chassis. It was acid dipped, and new Wolfsberg West pans were installed by the PO

This is my first full restoration. I grew up buying Hot VW magazines at the grocery store and reading about all of the great build projects and technical articles. I dreamed about doing my own full build some day. When I was 15, my first engine rebuild was on the family 1970 VW Bug. I loved the simplicity of that motor. In the 80s, I flipped a few Karman Ghias with some Cal Look conversions, to help pay for college.

Then life got in the way and now all of a sudden I am 59 years old, and I have decided to return to my dream of doing multiple full restorations.

This restoration with Floyd started in April. I will continue to post to catch up to where I am now.

I love reading the build threads on this site. I have learned so much from all the work everyone does to contribute to this hobby. Although this is my first build, I want to contribute to this great resource. I am planning on presenting what I learn each step along the way. I hope someone learns something that helps them with their journey like I have from so many others. Also, I am hoping to get some help on my build. I have been impressed with the more knowledgeable members of this site’s willingness to contribute to other build threads. This is why I am posting this thread on The Samba and not Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube.

I especially enjoy Jimmy V’s Oval Project thread. He is open to all new ideas. Please fire away with your ideas and suggestions. All ideas will be considered. Like Jimbo, I really look at life as a lifelong learning journey.

I have been heavily influenced on this build by the Old Speed concept, as described in The Unbelievable Genesis of Volkswagen Performance from 1937 to 1968: The Old Speed Book. This book was originally published in French and recently published in English. I enjoy reading this book and highly recommend it if you are interested in the Old Speed/Vintage Speed concept.

Overall, with a few exceptions, I plan on pretending that I am in 1956 and I am going to fix up my car by making it more powerful, lighter, and better at braking.

In the book, they present guidelines to follow for an “Old Speed” build. The book also presents several paths that can be taken: Euro versus American influence and Race Car (with number etc.) versus Deville. My interpretation of the Deville concept is that it looks like a nice stock street car with Porsche 356A wheels, more power, faster braking (356A brakes), better handling, and possibly lighter than stock. I plan on doing some blending of several concepts, but I am favoring a Old Speed Euro DeVille Influnced build.

I am sorry in advance to disappoint those readers who are looking for a clean Old speed guideline following build. In the 7 months I have been working on this car, I have been impressed with how much time and money these full restorations take. To keep my motivation high, I need to love every piece of this car. For this reason, I will possibly be deviating from some of the guidelines. For example, I may change the car from its birth certificate color, as well as other safety and longevity features that I think are necessary to keep this car in top shape for the next 50 years for my son to enjoy.

In April, the car arrived from Arizona in a POD.

My son has been a great helper with this project.

Here are some pictures of the rusted and twisted areas:

Three of the four bumper mount areas are damaged and/or rusted.

The heater channels and front firewall have rust damage.

The car was previously sandblasted and they blew a hole in the driver's side rear quarter panel.

Some rust damage to the drivers side A-pillar

The front and rear aprons are missing and there are multiple rust holes in the spare tire.

Here are some of the cars and picture I am drawing inspiration from:

I found this car on the @oldschoolaircolled Instagram page. It happens to also be 56. This is my favorite inspiration picture so far. It looks like Porsche wheels and possible Porsche brakes with Euro bumpers and even a few Cal Look touches with the blacked out trim parts, tires size and stance. There is a lot to absorb here.

This is Max from a build thread here on The Samba. Eric has done a great job on this 58 Outlaw build. I like the Euro bumpers, fog lights, 356 wheels and brakes, and it has great tires, interior, and stance.

This picture is also from The Samba. My car did not come with bumpers, and I have not completely decided on Overriders, Euro, or Blade bumpers. My car was made with overriders, but I am leaning towards the Euro bumpers, however this car looks great.

This is from a video on the VW website. It shows a Beetle that competed in the 1955 Mille Miglia race. This is a great video to see an actual vintage speed car.

Vert hood on this 55

This is the interior of the above 1955 race car. I do not have the correct front seats on this project, and I am considering using these aluminum Speedster seats and the upholstery. These seats would contribute to a lighter car. Interestingly, the steering wheel looks like my June 56 steering wheel, with the lower off-center bat wing, which I believe did not come out until August of 1955. However, this car raced in the 1000 mile Mille Miglia from April 30th to May 1st 1955, which was before the public got this steering wheel. Maybe the factory installed this wheel on their race car prior to public release. These idiosyncrasies and clues are what I love about these VW project cars. I would love to know what is behind the front seats.

Diamond Green is the birth certificate color of my car.

But I also really like this color. This is from a Chris Vallone video of his 1954 Convertible. This color was a one year only convertible color. In theory, this color would have been available in 1956. In reality, I would probably not repaint a brand new car that I just purchased in 1956, but reality is overrated.

Sorry for the long post but I have a 7 month lead on this build, and I am looking forward to catching this build up to the current timeline. Thank you for reading so far. More to come.

[markendee]

Looking forward to following along.

Regards,

Mark.
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Member # 145244

[aa390392]

Good luck with the build, just finished my 55, do shop around for best replacement parts….makes huge difference, read FAQ’s as far as color make what you like.
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getting grumpy & less tolerant!


55 ragtop
56 delux sedan
56 Kabriolet

[GreeneHoosier]

Stellar first post!
Can't wait to see the fruits of your labor!
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1974 Super Beetle
40 Years VW enthusiast!

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

I wanted to continue this thread with some of the pieces I have accumulated to finish this restoration.

Luckily, the car came with many of the repair panels that I will need. The rest I have accumulated over the past 7 months. Here are the Klassic Fab parts:

Here are the Wolfsparts parts: ( the dirty/rusty parts came with the car and I am going try out both rear aprons to see which one I like best)

I had Joe Ruiz (aka Mr. Okrasa) build my long block. I really liked working with Joe on this build. I would highly recommend him for an Old/Vintage Speed Build. Some of the parts for this build do not fully fit under my “pretend it is 1956” concept but I went for it anyway.

Here are the build specs that I got from Joe:

Incredibly, Joe had a June 56 case, in his inventory, to match my car’s birth month. He sent me this picture on Father’s Day, which made a great day even better.

This is a picture of my completed long block.

Here is, more or less, what I hope the engine looks like by the time I finish the rebuild. I will be trying to stay as period correct as possible (56 or older) with the other pieces of this engine build.

I also purchased these date matching 356 rims. They are all dated 7/56. Really close to my car’s birth month (6/56). These are made by SÜDRAD.

Here is quote from the Porsche 356 registry about SÜDRAD:

“Sudrad was one of three wheel makers that supplied Porsche up until the late 50s. Starting in 1960 only KPZ and Lemmerz supplied the wheels, but I am not sure why. While Sudrad did supply a fair amount of 16" wheels they did not supply that many 15" wheels that were on the cars starting in late 1955. I say this because I build sets of wheels and see far fewer Sudard's than I do Lemmerz or KPZ, in fact I generally avoid buying Sudrad because it is so hard to build sets, they are that rare. So for whatever reason they slowed than eventually stopped supplying wheels to Porsche, whether it was Porsche's decision or Sudrad's I don't know.”
– Adam Wright

I am really happy and lucky to find these wheels. With my wife’s permission, I purchased these on the same Father’s Day that Joe sent me a picture of the June 56 case he found. Kind of a Hall of Fame Father’s Day.

The gentleman that I purchased these from told me that he had been assembling SÜDRAD sets for 40 years and this was the oldest matching set he had ever collected. I also purchased a 12/56 SÜDRAD rim to use as the spare. Still looking for a 7/56 for the spare.

I just recently purchased a set of 356A brakes. These are in relatively good shape but they will need to be rebuilt prior to use. If you look closely you can see that all, but one, of the drums have 5 small holes on the outer rim. The last one in the picture only has 1 hole. I do not know enough about 356 brakes to know what this means. Anyone know?

Lastly, I also hired Joe to rebuild my original transmission. I am not sure how this will hold up with the new extra horsepower from the motor but after a lot of reading I decided to have it rebuilt and give it a try and see what happens. I have a tunnel trans from a 64 that I could use if I need to. Joe is still building my transmission but this is the picture from the Mr. Okrasa Instagram page.

That is it for this post. I will start working through what I have done to my car and my shop in subsequent posts. Thank you for reading this far.
_________________
Tom

"Begin with the end in mind"
Stephen Covey

"Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointed, only small hiccups!"
Jimbo

56 Old Speed Euro Deville Influenced Build

[VW_Jimbo]

Nice find and direction! Love looking forward to all of the updates!

Glad I was able to lend some support through my own travels! Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointment, only small hiccups!

That front end shot, without the apron shows some front end accident damage. Be sure to pull that all out before welding that front apron on.

Good luck! 🤙🏻
_________________
Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[Loren]

I just went through restoring a set of 356b brakes for my 58 Ghia cabriolet project and I sent the drums and shoes to Martin at The Machine Shop in Colorado Springs. I though I needed the drums relined and he called back and said they were all in spec, so he just machined them a bit. I also had him install new VW bearings on the front drums, reline the shoes and arc them to the drums and check the splines on the rear drums to make sure they were tight. He was fantastic to deal with and I got them back in less than two weeks. He did great work and was a pleasure to deal with.

I also used these to replace the spindle nuts. Not a period correct upgrade, but they make it easier to adjust the front drums.

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

After the car was delivered, we started to strip the hood and a few fenders to start the metal working process.

We ran into trouble right away. My son and I were using several paint stripping tools, including the Eastwood Surface Conditioning tool, which works great. However, these tools are very loud. My garage is detached at the back of my property but I live in a fairly dense area. My neighbor on the right has a master bedroom that is only 15 feet from my garage. There are 3 other houses within 50 feet of my garage. At the time, I was reading Jimmy V's Oval Project thread. I was right at the part where Jimbo was getting noise complaints and meeting with the HOA board.

I was not sure what to do. I did not receive any noise complaints but I was hoping to avoid them, if possible. Moving to another home was not an option because of the large capital gain we have on our current home. I looked into setting up a shop nearby but space is expensive here and I love having this project just a few steps out my backdoor. So I started looking into sound insulation options. I ended up using an acoustic curtain made by AmCraft.

The curtain is made up of 58 vinyl covered parts that are connected with velcro. The curtain is 3 inches thick. It runs on a continuous track, which allows me to move it around as needed. The main part of my garage is 19'x19' feet. The curtain is a 15.5' long x 13' wide, which just fits a fully assembled VW Bug. When I need to make noise I close the curtain and go for it. It works pretty well. With my wife standing outside the garage with the sound meter app and me inside the curtain making noise, the meter did not go above 48 db. Other sounds outside the garage like planes and cars were reading above 50.

It has worked well so far. However, this was a big project that took over 3 months. I even had to change the garage doors to swing-out carriage style doors because the original door could not work with the curtain. Lots of work but it allows me to keep going.
_________________
Tom

"Begin with the end in mind"
Stephen Covey

"Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointed, only small hiccups!"
Jimbo

56 Old Speed Euro Deville Influenced Build

[Loren]

I think I bought the spindle nuts and on eBay, but I believe some vw vendors and Amazon carry them too.

As long as you aren’t using lowered spindles the front 356 brakes will bolt right on with VW wheel bearings installed. The rear brakes bolted right on too. You will need to use the 356 castle nut for the rear drums. I also had to use longer e-brake cables. The Wolfsburg West website lists all the lengths of the e-brake cables and is a good resource for finding the ones that will fit.

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

Now that I had some of the noise reduced with the acoustic curtain, I wanted to start the metal work. I was really looking forward to this part. There is something about taking a less than perfect 60+ year old sheetmetal part and trying to return it close to (or better than) its original condition.

I have not done metal work before but I was very interested in learning how to do it. I took an auto body class from Travis Sylvestor with Sylvestor’s Customs that was very helpful. I also hit YouTube to see what else I could learn. Lots of good information but lots of it is contradictory information. To reduce my confusion, I decided to try and follow one other person outside of Travis. I landed on Wray Schelin of Pro Shaper Sheet Metal. Wray is a great teacher and he makes the Pro Shaper Shrinking disk that I really like using.

I decided to start the metal working on my hood. It is not correct for my 56, which would make for a good starting spot if I struggled with the metal working.

The hood is missing the 3rd bolt hole on the drivers side for the hood prop. If I cannot find a real 56 hood, I might be able to add a 3rd bolt hole and imitate a 56 hood. I have not been able to find the correct June 56 hood so far. If you know where I can find one, I would be interested.

I do not have a before picture for this part of the hood repair, but the top of the hood handle had been pushed into the hood about a ¼ inch.

Here are a couple of pictures I took of my work on this area:

Wray Schelin has a lot of great videos but my favorite is “How To Use A Shrinking Disk On A Volkswagen” Here is the video:
Link


If you do not want watch the video here are the steps he followed:
1. Strip the paint and bondo off. He uses chemical strippers. He does not live in California.
2. Use Naval Jelly on any rust.
3. Apply Magic Marker to work area
4. Use a stiff board to lightly sand with 180 grit to find highs and lows
5. Circle low spots with Magic Marker
6. Hit bigger low spots from back with high crown dolly
7. Run the shrinking disk over the work area
8. Cool metal with soapy water and dry with towel
9. Re-apply Magic Marker
10. Use shrinking disk
11. Circle low spots
12. Use high crown dolly under low spots and hit with a slapper to raise the metal
13. Repeat the last 4 steps until low spots are satisfactorily removed. (Wray did not use the soapy water after every pass of the shrinking disk in this video but Travis advised doing it each time after letting it sit for 15-20 seconds)

This hood needs a lot of work:

As I was working on the hood, I kept getting a wave that would move from one area to the next. I would fix it in one area and it would move back to where it started. I worked on this for about a week chasing this ripple. I finally figured out what was causing the problem. The hood had a rip on the drivers side that had been poorly repaired. The repair was accomplished by overlapping the metal and brazing a rod under the lip. I removed the rod and cut a new slot in the side of the hood. The wave disappeared. The overlapped metal was pulling the hood out of shape. Seems pretty obvious now.

Using the Magic Marker, slapper, dolly, and shrinking disk, I started working on the nose and around the passenger side outside edge.

Then I started working my way up the main panel on the passenger side.

I realized that I needed to verify that I was shaping the hood in the right direction. I temporarily installed the hood, apron, passenger fender, and passenger running board to see how it all lined up. Still plenty of work to do but better than I expected.

Trying to shape the fender so that it lines up with the running board:

I decided to start working on the fender. Block sanding the primer to identify the highs and lows.

I got this section of the fender moving in the right direction

The shrinking disk did not like working with this primer so I stripped most of the fender and marked the problem areas.

I left on vacation for a few days and I came back to this. I have an abnormal fear of rust.

I used the Eastwood Fast Etch to dissolve the rust and protect it somewhat from future rust. I used this Fast Etch on part of another car and it has been rust free for 8 months so I thought I would give it a try here.

In the end, this rust episode caused me to pivot the project from metal working to stripping down and sealing the whole car.
_________________
Tom

"Begin with the end in mind"
Stephen Covey

"Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointed, only small hiccups!"
Jimbo

56 Old Speed Euro Deville Influenced Build

[djfordmanjack]

Great project and ideas !
Surface rust like this starts from touching and working on steel with bare hands and hand sweat, it acts like acid. I only do metal work with thin, rubber coated mechanics gloves, and I have bare steel parts in the shop for years, without further rusting.
I see you may have a few hickups with the spelling of your Porsche wheels.
They are neither Subrad or Sudrad.
they are actually SÜDRAD.
SÜD- RAD translates to South-Wheel. So hopefully that makes more sense now.

the approximate pronounciation would be zoot-raw'd.

Floyd would probably appreciate the correct spelling in his native language... good luck with your sweet Oval project.
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Hotrods, Fords, Veedubs and Triumph Twins !

52 Barndoor DLX Coachbuild project
55 Wolfsburg panel project, og paint Taubenblau L31
62 Dickholmer, custom color Seeblau L360
63 1500 Notch, og paint Rubin Rot L456
67 1500 Käfer, og paint Lotus weiß L282 w/red interior

[TomVaughan64]

[TomVaughan64]

I am a 59 year old out of shape desk jockey. Crawling under cars in an attempt to strip off the self etching primer did not seem possible. So I decided to make a rotisserie.

I only have one usable bumper mount. At the time, I thought I could not do a fully revolving rotisserie until I get the mounts repaired (more on that later). I decided to follow the plans that were available here on The Samba. Here is the link to the plans: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...highlight=

These plans were made for the owners Ghia but he mentions that it will work for a Type 1. This was my first welding project and I had a lot of fun making it.

Here are some pictures of the results:

Here is the car fully rotated on the rotisserie.

I have learned a few things about using this rotisserie.

First, although it will work for a Type 1 it is a little unstable when fully rotated. I now put two 40-pound sand bags on the opposing legs as a counter balance when I have it fully rotated. It is very stable with this counter weight.

Second, I wanted better security with the straps. I ended up using both chains and heavy duty lash straps as you can see on this picture:

Overall, the rotisserie has worked well for me. I am happy that I made it. I plan on converting it to a full rotisserie once I get the bumper mounts repaired. The height of the vertical posts are almost identical to Jimbo’s rotisserie on his build thread. He was kind enough to post the dimensions that I will be using to create the parts that attach to the bumper mounts.

The main reason that I want to eventually be able to fully rotate the car is because it makes for a smaller footprint. When the car is fully rotated on this rotisserie it is almost 8 feet wide. If I could fully rotate the car upside down it would only take about 5.5 feet.

After I built my rotisserie, I ran across a great video with an ingenious rotisserie. If I could do it again I would seriously consider making the one shown below.

If you want to see this rotisserie in action here is the really well done video.


Link


Now that I have the rotisserie done, I am going to make a booth to strip and sand blast the primer off the car.
_________________
Tom

"Begin with the end in mind"
Stephen Covey

"Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointed, only small hiccups!"
Jimbo

56 Old Speed Euro Deville Influenced Build

[TomVaughan64]

Once the rotisserie was built, I decided to build a booth inside my acoustic curtain. I wanted to contain the dust from the stripping and media blasting and stop it from destroying the rest of my garage. Most sane people would send the car and parts out for media blasting and or an acid dip. One of my joys in this build will be to experience and learn from anything I find interesting. I enjoyed designing and using this booth.

The booth needed to be modular so I could move it to storage when not in use. I put it up for stripping and media blasting. I will take it down for the welding and grinding, and then I will then put it back up for painting the epoxy primer.

I built the booth 14’ long x 8’ tall x 7.5’ wide. I used a 20” Jenny variable speed fan, two box fans, two replaceable filters, ¾” conduit, several types of conduit connectors, 6 mil plastic sheet, Velcro, zippers, and Ram Board for the floor.

Overall, the booth worked really well.

However, there are several things that I would do differently. The Jenny fan is too big for this size booth. It inflated the booth like a balloon. Too much inflow of air for the available outflow. In the end, I did not use the Jenny fan for the stripping and media blasting part of the project. The two box exhaust fans worked fine to draw the dust into the filter. The filter has a replaceable element that I would vacuum daily and replace every 3-4 days.

When I reinstall the booth to paint primer, I will install another Jenny variable speed fan on the exhaust side. I will run the intake fan at a slightly higher RPM than the outflow fan to create positive pressure. This will push the air through a series of filters to be exhausted out of the garage side window.

If I did this again, I would use zippers with much bigger teeth. The aluminum oxide I used for the media blasting got into the zippers and made them hard to open.

To start stripping the green self-etching primer I used the Eastwood Surface Conditioning Tool and a series of smaller strip disks and wire wheels. I started with the bigger stripper and worked my way down to smaller strippers. I tried to take everything off that I could mechanically because I found the media blasting, with my equipment, was not as efficient as the mechanical strippers. However, the media blasting was very efficient and necessary for getting to the areas that could not be mechanically removed.

Here are some progress pictures:

Some of the parts that I am planning on removing, like the front firewall and heater channels, did not get stripped.

Now it was time to media blast everything that could not be mechanically removed. I got this suit from BlastOne. The air comes into the helmet from outside the booth. I could adjust the temperature of the air in the hood. The hood also has tear away shields which were really useful. This suit and hood were quite comfortable. I needed to hold a light to see well but overall the media blasting went well. The hardest part was recycling and cleaning the media for reuse. I bought five 50 pound buckets of aluminum oxide and only lost 1 bucket.

Emerging from the dust

All stripped and blasted

Then I ran into trouble. I applied the Eastwood Fast Etch Rust Remover. I ended up with this mess:

I have used this Eastwood product to seal up a part of another car that has been sitting outside for the last 8 months under a car cover with a lot of rain. No rust has started on the parts that I stripped and sealed for that car. That car did not have self-etching primer.

The green self-etching primer that is on my 56 has been sitting in the Arizona sun for the past 7 years and it really baked itself into the metal. Once the car was stripped, I could not see any primer left. However, once I applied the Eastwood fast etch product it brought the green primer up to the surface. I really wanted to get all of the green self-etch primer off so I had good clean metal to work with going forward.

One of the advantages of taking Travis Sylvester's class is his offer to help answer some questions about your project after the class is over. I sent Travis some pictures of my problem. He is what he wrote back:

“I have never used anything from Eastwoods paint products. However you need a good tooth for the primer to stick to. Just take a DA ( orbital sander) with 80 grit and be thorough getting the etch off. Then you can either seal it in epoxy if you are done or wipe on some Gibbs oil. Gibbs oil does not have silicone in it and is paint friendly. Then when you are done, wipe it down with acetone and primer it.”

Travis does awesome work. He is really talented and helpful. Thanks for the help Travis. He has a great Youtube channel that is worth following. Here is the link to his channel https://www.youtube.com/@SYLVESTERSCUSTOMS do yourself a favor and check him out.


Today I finished using 80 grit on a DA and applying Gibbs to both rear quarters. They look much better.

That catches me up to where I am now. Now I have to redo the rest of the car with the 80 grit and Gibbs.
_________________
Tom

"Begin with the end in mind"
Stephen Covey

"Keep focused and seeking knowledge, you will never find disappointed, only small hiccups!"
Jimbo

56 Old Speed Euro Deville Influenced Build