Project car T34 Karmann Ghia a.k.a Rustbucket

Started by 80 Vert, January 28, 2012, 08:29:00 PM

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BB

Whats that? We had some good weather!
Not for long.......................... :P
The end is nigh, but the end of what is the question?

80 Vert

Was just thinking I was glad to do that blasting yesterday.............yup damnING rain again today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

ritmo


RS ZWEI

1980 VW Golf GTI Track Car
1995 Audi RS2
2003 Mini Cooper S (Written off - rear ended)
2005 Mini Cooper S
2006 Skoda Octavia vRS Combi
2009 Renault Megane 230 R26 (Written off - rear ended)
2013 Renault Megane RS265 Redbull RB8

coons

Link us to your thread on the Ghia forum vert? I'd be interested to see some of the feedback you're getting.
I'm sure they would be pretty impressed? Like your Jetta surely it would have to be classed as world class

BB

A perfect job is a perfect job 8) John ticks all the boxes, skill, the right workshop, enough money to see stuff to the end and most of all he just works so damn hard.
Yea the weather is just awful I'm so sick of it now.
The end is nigh, but the end of what is the question?

80 Vert

I had a few other things to do yesterday so not much progress on the old girl i'm afraid, did manage to nearly finish off the lower guard panel for the left side which I've been working on making during the week but have mis placed my big chassis punch to enlarge the torsion cover hole to its correct size.
Thats the last thing to be done to that piece, have one small rust hole to take care of on the inner structure before blasting that area and welding it all back together.


Rather than dwell on my missing tools I carried on cutting the lower rear guard off and what a surprise (not really but sounds better that way  ::)) more rust!!!
Man these things hide rust well, don't think I'll have to make the inner parts like on the other side but then I haven't blasted it yet so may eat those words............
Next step will be waiting for better days for sandblasting, if the weather isn't condusive for it next weekend I'll drag the floor pan out and start on that instead.

2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

BB

Must have been just bare steel welded together and then painted where they could, no submerge paint baths or anything?
The end is nigh, but the end of what is the question?

80 Vert

Nup no dip priming so thats one reason why they pox out like this.....
Quick update from this week, thought I only had 2 pieces left to make which turned into 5!!
But more nasty swiss cheese areas replaced ready for the final outer skin to be made which hopefully I'll start on this weekend.
Also repaired the wheel arch and the big crease from another fender bender at some stage in its life.
Can't wait to get this part of the body work completed and on to the next thing, would like to get a rolling chassis done and drop the body on to make sure everything is A OK.
2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

80 Vert

Well the end is near  ;) finally got on to making the last lower corner of the body and remembered all the trouble I had making the last one so tried a different method this time round using just the shrinker and english wheel, actually a little tip I picked up watching a youtube video of Lazze metalshaping (please look that up, just an awesomely talented guy!!)
Anyway doing it this way turned out to be a lot quicker and gave a better result, test fitting along the way checking fit as I went.
Just needs a final trim before it gets welded in place, with the panel pretty much done I'd hoped to sandblast the inside of the rear 1/4 so that these last panels could be finished but as usual the weather had other ideas   >:(


What to do now................go home or...............  ;D
Decided that going home is for quitters so I dragged the chassis out of hiding and began looking at that, quite a sight to behold really...........some in genius solutions for holding the battery in too in the form of an old rotten piece of timber   ;D under which was a huge rust hole!

This is probably the worst condition floors I've come across but a nice set of funky green Gerson specials will make it all better, just soo awesome somebody has taken the time to reproduce these floors.

First order of business was to make a drawing of the floor to record measurements from the tunnel to the pan holes and also where the seat tracks sit in relation to the tunnel, I also recorded measurements for the rear seat support etc.
With that out of the way I started salvaging that parts which would be required later such as seat tracks, rear seat support, jack supports, pedal stop, gas pedal bracket etc etc.

My seat tracks may just be salvageable so on the one side I cut them out of the floor and then ground through each spot weld to remove the excess metal which turned out to be painfully slow, on the other seat track I went back to drilling out each spot weld which to be honest isn't really any faster and you really can't be too brutal removing them as you'll just end up distroying them.
They are pretty rusty as well but with some repairs I'll re use them.
Quite surprising just how many spot welds hold them in place, obviously didn't want them coming off!!

Next thing I cut off all the other parts to be saved which I clean up later before they go back on, just roughly cut them out with an air saw.
With those out of the way I simply cut off all remaining remnants of the rusty pans which makes things look better right away.
All thats left to come off now is just the excess metal at the front and rear plus the tunnel which will be trimmed to suit later.
My chassis had reinforcing plates on the front so i drilled the spot welds out and removed them giving access for the front metal to be removed, same story at the rear (will post pics of these areas next time)
That was about it for this weekend but next will be trimming the new floors to suit.

2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

Filx

FAIL - First Attempt In Learning

80 Vert

Funky green will make it all better  ;D
Once I cut off the remaining bits of the floors the cleanup of the edges can begin, drilled out the spot welds front and back peeling the excess metal away and cutting the floor flush with the tunnel edge.
Since the T34 floor is constructed differently to a Beetle its not quite as simple to weld new pans in and on mine I wanted it to look quite factory so I decided to butt weld the new floors on instead of doing an overlap joint.
There are many ways you could install these but I thought I'd share the way I did it.
Its more work and more tricky but should end up with a nicer factory looking result as well as the factory spot welds still in place.
Below pics show the front and rear of the frame with old floors removed.


Going by my measurements I took before I started cutting I placed the new floor half on and lined it up clamping it in place where it measured right.
Ran a scriber along the tunnel marking out the metal to be cut off the new floor, trimmed the new floor to suit with tin snips.
Really impressed with these pans, thickest metal floors I've ever come across.
Once cut I clamped it back in place and began tacking the pan in place adjusting the fit as I went trying to keep both pieces of metal level with each other, just takes time and patience to get it nice.
Bonus with thick metal is that the welder can be on high producing a nice strong weld and things don't tend to warp much at all.
Grinding is a little tricky and time consuming but I'm really happy at this point with how they are looking.


Other side is just a repeat of what I already did, one thing though worth noting and my only criticism of these floors.
The holes for the body bolts tend to vary quite a lot and are punched very nicely in the middle on the right half where as they are punched on the outer edge on the left half, maybe just on my set but it meant I had to trim more off one pan than the other to make my measurements correct for the body bolts.

The center pivot for the rear subframe has a plate that attaches to the floor with 4 bolts and on the inside of the floor there are 4 reinforcement plates with captive nuts on them, now mine were completely beyond saving so here's how I made new ones.
Managed to figure out what they looked like and bent a 25x5mm piece of steel to the correct angle to use as a die if you like.
Cut some strips of 2mm steel plate to the right width (38mm from memory) and used a vise to clamp the 2 together, bent the plate to the shape of my steel die and clamped together with vise grips.
Now comes the fun part (make sure your vise is REALLY tight)
just using a hammer you beat the edge over little by little, takes quite a bit of effort but you should end up with the correctly shaped pieces and a folded edge.



2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

SZC


ritmo

Awesome work Vert..... But man the pan was rotten!

80 Vert

Quote from: ritmo on November 09, 2012, 09:11:56 PM
Awesome work Vert..... But man the pan was rotten!

It was just trying to keep up with the body  ;D
2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

ritmo


BB

Nice little bracket bits you made.
Will you weld those nuts on and drill a hole?
The end is nigh, but the end of what is the question?

80 Vert

The nuts are a press fit so they should stay there as they are.

Even though we had fabulous weather for blasting I just couldn't be bothered dragging the body outside so carried on with the chassis instead.
Mounted the rear subframe pivot plate to mark out the 4 holes to be drilled, with those done welded the 4 support plates on and also mounted the pedal cluster in order to find the right spot for welding the gas pedal bracket on.

Decided that I won't weld on the jack supports till the body is sitting on the pan as there's just too much chance for them to end up in the wrong place as the body has just a small recess for it to sit into.
Seat tracks require rust repairs as well so can't do them just yet either  ;D ::).
Looking at the pan holes along the edge something caught my eye which didn't look light so started doing some measuring, took measurements from one of the frame head bolts on the body (the 2 side by side at the front of the body) and measured back to each bolt hole in the heater channel and recorded those on paper.
Compared to the holes in the floorpans I found that the holes on one side are as much as 15mm out.
When you eye up the stamped hole in relation to the pressing on the pan half its plain to see that they differ left to right and clear that its not placement of the pan half on the chassis at fault.
(i'd be interested to know if they are still like this as my pans were one of the first sets Gerson made so this may have been corrected by now)

Obviously the body would never fit with the holes where they are so I set about moving them forward, ranging from only 5mm to the worst one being 15mm.
Easy enough to do by clamping a copper block underneath and welding up most of the hole then using a die grinder to create a round hole further forward.

Happy and confident that everything will now fit the rusted rear seat support is next, best way really is to re make both lower portions of it so by days end I've nearly got one side made.
Made it bigger than needed so that there's plenty of choice on where to cut and join it to the main panel.


2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration

BB

I don't understand how those nuts press onto the little brackets you made?
Can you show a photo of the other side........I'm interested, really I am!
Man you have done so much amazing panel making and just perfect welding.
The end is nigh, but the end of what is the question?

80 Vert

Continued with the rear seat support this week, not happy with the panel I made last weekend I binned it and started again, always easier the 2nd time around and came out how I wanted.
With a matching one for the other side also complete I could look at the best place to cut the rotten bits off the existing panel, figured the best place was just above the diagonal pressing.

Cut both lower parts off and mounted the remaining back on the chassis to be able to accurately mark out where to cut the new panels.
With those trimmed to fit I ended up doing a lap joint, I wasn't going to put the rectangular pressing in but not knowing what it was there for I thought I might need it so a little more effort has made it like it was originally.
The whole deal didn't really come out as good as what I had planned but I'm not making another so this will have to do.


So I thought that's it! I'm DONE with the chassis...........WRONG, seat frames to repair........  :'(
Picking up those rusty seat frames I thought does everything on this car need repairing?? I guess the answer to that is YES   ;D
Anyway, a quick sandblast to reveal the true condition of the frames I quickly realized that all the base plates would need to be replaced as well as all of the strengthening pieces on the ends of the seat runners.
Took some 1.5mm plate and cut it into strips, marked out the notches to be cut.
With the base plates cut and trimmed to fit I welded those on as well as the new end pieces I'd made.

Pre drilled all the plug weld holes, finally ready to weld that sucker on.
Finished one side tonight and the other will be done tomorrow.

2010 T5 Transporter TDI  Tuned by Superior Tuning NZ
2003 Jetta Coupe soon to be R36TT
1991 Golf GTI 2.0 TSI swapped
1963 Type 34 Karmann Ghia, turbo 2.0
1990 Porsche 964 911 Carrera 4
1980 1303 Beetle vert, under restoration