More Painting

Came in, put the steering box back in so I could pull the car out of the garage. The garage is so humid that the paint wasn't fully cured yet; I'll have to touch up a few spots I nicked.

Tried the manual impact wrench on the crankshaft pulley. No go.

Then, it was pretty much more painting. Cleaned the front bulkhead and top left side floor pan. Then POR-15ed these two since they were both showing signs of corrosion. And, since there will be standing water on the bulkhead after a rain, I figured the extra protection is not a bad idea. That's pretty much it. I would have done more, but I can't do any dusty work when the paint is drying... and besides, I had a 4th 0f July BBQ to go to.

It's looking pretty. Too bad nobody will ever see it.

Man! This little bit of project creep is getting out of hand. All I was gonna do was remove the body, check for rust, change the floor pan, and put the body back on. Removing and painting engine shrouding... project creep. Painting and cleaning the chassis... project creep.

Today: 3.5 hrs. Next time: grind the welds, clean all surfaces, prime what's left, then topcoat everything that needs it. Pull the car into the garage, prop it up on stands, and POR-15 the front drums. And with that, we'll (hopefully) be done with the chassis from the floor pans forward.

Chassis Painting and Cleaning

The weekend before last I couldn't make it down to the garage because my other wheels were out of commission. Very frustrating. Last weekend I made it out on Saturday. First I swung by Vee Parts, the local VW shop. Wish I had known about them earlier - they got pretty much all I'll need.

Then I got to the garage and got busy failing again to get off the crankshaft pulley bolt (looks like it's time for an impact wrench - thanks to y'all at the samba for that suggestion). After that failure, I scraped the bottom of the left side pan - an annoyingly dirty job. But I finally got most of the gunk off of that, which is good 'cause I was able to uncover a few areas of surface rust to treat properly. Anyway, I primed that sucker and went home.

Sunday I shifted from employed mode (working on the car on the weekends) to unemployed mode (having a bunch of time during the week as well), so instead of working on the car I watched Euro 2008. It was, after all, the weekend.

Tuesday was a short work day: I got in there to grind welds and prime the top of the right side floor pan. I left early to race, so that's all I got done.

Wednesday I got in there and cleaned up the front end really well. Man, is there a lot of crap on that thing! I removed the steering box to paint well around it, removed the wheels, and got a coat of primer and paint on the torsion tubes, arms, tie rods, and steering knuckles. It's amazing how awkward surfaces like that take a lot of paint. This sort of undercarriage painting, by the way, has one of the highest satisfaction-to-nobody will ever see it ratios.

The two funny stories of the day are:

1. Since the body of the car was off, I didn't have enough friction on the front wheels to keep them from spinning when I tried to take the lug nuts off the wheel. Never would have thought of that. I had to sit on the wheel and use the cross-wrench at the same time, stepping on one end and pulling on the other with two hands. I must have looked idiotic, especially on the really tough bolt, when I went flying backwards. Hey assholes who put on my wheels last time: how about some anti seize next time?!
2. So I took off the steering box, but didn't realize how much time it would take for the paint to dry. Next thing I know I'm, ready to go home, but I can't put the steering box back on. I had to push the car into the garage without it. Here I am, dragging the front wheels along the ground as they each go in whatever direction they want, and at the same time trying to keep the steering arm from hitting any of the other freshly painted surfaces. Not that funny, but I'll take any opportunity to make fun of myself for lack of foresight.

So today, I finally had time to blog since... you know it seems like the Jeep is jealous: "Spend time working on me. Please. Fine, well, I'll make my alternator go bad. How do you like that?" Not like it didn't just break down two weeks ago. Arghhh. Anyway, I got the car back, and I'm ready to go back to work. Tomorrow: more painting and an impact wrench.

Floorpan back in

Good work this weekend. Friday I managed to get in for a while just to take stock. Didn't even pull the car out, just walked around taking note on all the different things I need to start either buying or considering fixing because buying is too expensive. A bit boring, but at least I kept clean. I spent way too long on the computer back home looking up suppliers. I also discovered that the people who post on The Samba are pretty helpful at answering questions.

Saturday I did prep work for welding. Drilled out the 1/8" holes to the correct 1/4". Took the grinder and wire brush to all the seams of the weld. Once the angle grinder was out, I went to town on the underside of the car with the twist knot brush. It's amazing how resilient 37 years of gunk can be, getting flung at my face by a brush spinning at 11,000 rpm; I was just a wee bit dirty [a lot of what was getting flung at my face was the undercoating, not gunk - ed. 9/1/2008]. I went at that until my arm was just too tired. The prognosis is great: zero rust on the center channel and only very minor touches of rust on the part of the floor pan I've uncovered.

After my arm got tired, I went over to the engine to finish removing the last few cover plates. The air deflector plates and cylinder covers were easy, but then I got to removing the crankshaft pulley to get to the last piece of shroud, and that bolt is stuck on there like you wouldn't believe. I tried some tapping and liquid wrench. No go. It was getting late and I was getting frustrated, so I decided that before I broke something, I should go home... had a pub crawl to make.

... a pub crawl that left me less than 100% wanting to work on Sunday. Still, I had enlisted the help of my friends, so I wasn't about to flake. Here it is in the middle of the process. Chris and Matt are at Home Despot buying more MIG wire. Even though we have the car on jacks, you can see there ain't too much room to work underneath.

Here's the basic strategy. While I press down on the pan from above, Matt welds the seam at about 2" intervals. Once it's held in place like that, we pound the seam down well with hammers and chisel, and he goes back and fills in all the previously drilled holes. This photo shows it pretty well. We pretty much have a weld every place there was a factory spot weld. That floor pan ain't going anywhere.

The trickiest part was the jack bracket because the one that came attached to the new floor pan had a few extra parts as compared to the factory bracket. We decided to keep the new setup since it seemed to make the whole assembly stronger... which it needs since, disappointingly, the new pan is thinner than the existing pan. They don't make 'em like they used to I guess.

Back when we prepped the new floor pan, we cut away the vertical part (the one that isn't really part of the floor pan, but that attaches to the back of the floor pan). The existing piece seemed of better quality, and it made no sense removing it. But what this meant is that now we left ourselves a tricky job because, well, look at the picture and you may see why. With the jack bracket wrapping around below the floor pan, the geometry, bending things out of the way, and the order of welding all require some planning ahead.

Not that big of a deal. Next we welded in the heater cable tube (I made it out of a piece of ordinary brake line and bent it around the tire), welded in the bolt for the battery bracket (it's connected to a bracket that spot welds underneath), and that was that, about 3 hours later or so. We sprayed the whole seam with a cold galvanizer; capillary action should suck it in between the pieces of metal.

Here's the finished job. Perhaps the oddest thing is that the solvents in the cold galvanizer dissolved whatever super duper wimpy coating they put on the floor pan to ship. You may be able to see little puddles of black along the floor pan. Yeah, that's dissolved black paint... or wax... or whatever it is. Not terrible, except if it's such a bad coating, I don't want to paint on top of it. I'll have to go down to bare metal before I paint. And I'm lazy to do that.

Next week: tackle that crankshaft pulley, get the engine parts ready for sand or bead blasting, finish cleaning that darn underside, and start painting this thing.

More Dismantling

I was pretty frustrated this weekend, with a stupid race in LA taking away my Saturday. Despite visitors in town I still managed to make it in for a few hours on Sunday. The tasks were assorted.

• Spray the entire chassis with degreaser, hitch up the bug to the Jeep, drive it over to the car wash and high-pressure wash the whole thing. It's pretty clean now, though there's some stubborn gunk that really won't come off.
• Lift up the front end of the car and lube the front torsion bars
• Drill away. When we cut out the spot welds, we left little craters in the base metal below the floor pan. That's what we get for not having a proper spot weld cutter. So that they don't hold water and rust, I drilled through them with a 1/8" bit. We'll weld through those holes on the bottom and fill in the craters with weld material.

Then it was time to continue dismantling things, in part to inspect, in part to repaint the engine cover, and in part because it' s kind of fun. First were the heat exchangers, which are commonly rusted and damaged in these cars. Mine kind of rattle around, so I'm guessing they need replacing. Problem is that I really don't actually know what they're supposed to look like, so I need to take them out to compare with a new piece. Here they are out of the car:

They're not really supposed to come out like that, with the parts of engine cover attached, but the screws connecting the heat exchangers to them were rusted on nice and good, so depending on what pieces I decide to replace, I'll need to do some cutting. Here's a view up close:

Now, I just don't think there's supposed to be a gap, or at least that big of a gap between the exhaust manifold and the actual heat exchanger. Seems like a good amount of the hot air would escape through there. We'll have to see.

Next step was to continue removing the engine cover. The front and rear covers are off already as are some venty things on the front of the fan housing. To get to the screws holding in the fan housing, the intake manifold has to come out... which is OK, really, because the heat risers on the intake manifold are all rusty and ugly and I was thinking of changing it just for aesthetics. Here are the fan housing with the generator and coil still attached and the intake manifold in its three parts (the central section with the carb still attached and the two outer sections that actually connect to the intake port):

You can see the rusty heat risers tubes. One issue that I'm not quite sure about is the air control thermostat. It's supposed to be there according to the manual I was using to take this all apart. But I looked pretty carefully and couldn't find it. Is it missing? Kind of makes me wonder if the fan has been operating to spec this whole time. Yet another matter to figure out.

So anyway, right about now is when I start to have that "I hope I can put this all back together" feeling. This engine is starting to look kind of bare.

Next time... welding (hopefully)

Cleaning

I have a confession to make. Every entry before this one was reconstructed from memory and photographs, since I just recently got the idea to do this blog. From now on, things will get more detailed (read boring), but it should be a good way for me to keep notes on the process.

So, now that the body's off it's the perfect opportunity to inspect all the parts that are otherwise hard to get to. This involves cleaning off 37 years of grime, which is time consuming, but satisfying. I started at the front end, cleaning off the old gunk and inspecting for any damage or corrosion. All looks good, with only minor surface corrosion in some spots. A bit of paint and we'll be good as new.

Next, I removed the pedal assembly to get access to that area of the floor pan and to lube and inspect the pedal assembly itself. It turned out that it's easier if the master cylinder is out, so I removed that too. Turned out not to be a bad idea because it makes it easier to clean up the area around the master cylinder. I did a little bit of scrubbing on the top of the floor pan - it needs more, but I'll need to get the right tool for the job - the cup-shaped wire brush drill adapter I'm using just ain't getting the job done. I think I may use this as an excuse to buy an angle grinder. It also looks like I'll have to reapply seam sealer to the existing floor pan. The old seam sealer is missing in parts. Maybe this is part of the water leakage problem?

Underneath the floor pan there is so much grime that I'm waiting to see if I can get some of it off with a high pressure wash first. I was not too excited about scraping it all off by hand. Skipping this part brought me to the back of the car. Again, some cleaning and inspection. Same issue, mostly surface rust that a bit of scraping and paint ought to take care of. The cable for the reverse light coming from the transmission is in bad shape, so that one will have to get changed, but everything else looks good.

This brings me to the engine. I started removing the shroud pieces. I'll either get them powdercoated or buy new ones, depending on price and amount of wear (all in the interest of aesthetics). A few of them will have to get replaced...

... and then I realized it was getting late, and I got a call to meet a friend for dinner, so the rest of this will have to wait till next time.

Lifting the Body

This is the big day. It took me a little while to coordinate all the hands I needed for this project, so the last several weeks were a bit slow. I finished disconnecting all the items connecting the body and the chassis, and I progressed on cleanup and prep. The body is pretty much ready to go to the body shop. I've wire brushed all the rust spots to expose the extent of the damage. I brushed the floor pans to see in what state they are (passenger side needs replacing), and I removed pretty much every piece imaginable from the body. All that's left is the gas overflow container, covering some wires, and doing some POR-15 rust treatment on non-exposed parts.

On to the fun part. Here's the bug in place for the body removal:

photo by Skory

The plan is to clean out the garage to have good standing room, then with one guy at each corner, lift the car a bit and have a fifth guy tighten the straps. We'll then have a look to make sure there's nothing connecting the body and the chassis. My landlord was pretty cool and cut a few wood pieces to help support the car at the rear side windows, because there's a thin piece of metal that will get bent if we bear directly on it. Turns out that they weren't that useful because they split apart under load. We went for cardboard and duct tape in the end. Still, before we changed strategies, we made a few more pieces to replace the split ones. Here's a photo of Matt working on that. Why? 'Cause he looks damn cool, that's why.

Photo by Skory

Well, there are no photos of the actual lifting because the photographer was lifting too. It turns out it wasn't as light as I wanted it to be, though with four people it was manageable. I want a few more on the way back down so we have a bit more control.

When we started lifting we had to work the engine seal a bit to let it loose, but the rest of it went easily. Here it is at one of the intermediate steps:

Photos by Skory

There's already good news: the heater channels are in great shape. And it doesn't seem like I forgot to disconnect anything. We have a small delay as I go to Home Depot for a few more hooks for the rafters. A couple more straps are going to help us out, not only with stability but with more efficient lifting because the two that are installed now are at too much of an angle. While I'm gone the guys find out that we still haven't disconnected the hoses to the charcoal vapor recovery unit. Whoops.

The rest of the lifting went perfectly. Here's the car at the end of this process:

Photos by Skory

Then, after a brief moment of "well, NOW what do we do?"

Photo by Skory

we got down to business getting the floor pan out. Heat gun and scraper to remove all the existing seam sealer:

Photo by Skory

Some grinding to find the spot welds (that are about 4 mm apart or so) then taking out the spot welds with a 3/8" cobalt bit (couldn't find a spot weld cutter), and out comes the floor pan:

That perfectly polished edge is product of Nekarda's Midwestern work ethic.

A successful day, my friends. A successful day. Thanks to Matt, Matt, Kid Nebraska, and Skory.

Disconnecting the Body from the Chassis

The weekend of the fifth and sixth I was out of town, and Saturday was the Rosarito to Ensenada bike ride, so little progress has been made. The present task is to prepare the car so the body can come off the chassis. This involves mainly two things: unbolting the two pieces and making sure nothing is connecting them.

There are nine bolts running down each side just inside of the running boards. At the front of the floor pan there is a pair of bolts on each side. Underneath the back seat there are four more bolts. In the luggage compartment there are two more, underneath the gas tank, and bolting onto the top torsion bar. On the back (and it took me a while to find these) are two more. These are behind the rear wheels. I was fortunate that not one the bolts broke or bound. They're rusty, though, so I'm thinking of replacing them with stainless bolts.

As to other things connecting the body and the chassis - at the front end is the (previously removed steering column), hoses and electrical connections to the brake master cylinder, and the gas vapor line running down the right side of the car. This disconnects at the front and back at either side of the running board. Moving towards the rear, the cables connecting to the starter need to be removed. I elected to disconnect them at the regulator, but they can be disconnected at the starter. Also in this area, disconnect the heater control cables.

Underneath the car, the heater hoses need to be removed, best at the front where they connect to the body. At the front of the transmission the reverse light cable should get disconnected. (I did it the wrong way and disconnected the cable in the engine compartment. This leaves the cable still connected to both the transmission and to the hole in the body to the engine compartment. Now I'll have to thread the cable back through. I probably damaged the cable doing it this way.) Inside the engine compartment, everything coming from the wiring loom at the upper left get disconnected. If memory serves me right, this means disconnecting wires at the distributor, coil, oil pressure switch, and generator. These are the wires to be removed:

Ahh, and look at that lovely rust spot. That's one of the worse ones, but not the worst.

Also to be removed (and this one I forgot) are the hoses from the air filter to the vapor carbon unit underneath the right rear fender. Sound like a lot, but mostly you just need to visualize the body coming off and make sure there's nothing connecting the body and the chassis.