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.

Tear Down

This week finishes most of the tear down on the exterior. On the rear I removed the bumper, lights, license plate and license plate light:


Well, except for I need to mark all the cables so I can put it back together properly. Volkswagen emblem is off too. On the sides I've removed the running boards, all the trim, and all the door hardware. You can see too that the door glass is out:


The trim really is off. That's just accumulated dirt you see where the trim used to be. In the trunk, the wiper motor and other assorted hardware is coming out:


I'll be cleaning up that rats nest of cables at some point. On the front, I've removed the bumper and headlights, and loosened the turn signal light on top of the fender. These will come off as soon as I mark the cables:


And that about does it. Time to haul the trash away.

Tear Down

Time to tear the car down. Two weeks ago we took out the front and rear seats and the gas tank (no apparent leaks - we'll have to keep looking for the source of the smell). Last week we went snowboarding. This week, in no particular order, we've removed

• Seatbelts
• The headliner (just tore it out)
• The dash
  
• All the windows except the ones in the doors - cut the rubber since we'll be installing new window rubber
  
• The steering column to be able to remove the body. It will also make it easier to paint. It was a bit tricky, but that's what service manuals are for

It's mostly interior stuff. Here you see the rear of the car: windows, seat, seatbelts, and headliner out. I tried to save as much of the existing headliner padding as possible.

And here's a view of the front of the car. The dash is out (you can see the original color of the car where the dash used to be). The steering wheel and column are out (the hole just to the right of the switch is where the steering column goes underneath the gas tank and into the steering box). Headliner, visors, rear view mirror -- all out. You can see the door glass still in.



Next time... more teardown

Taking Stock

The project started in earnest in March '08. I rented a one-car garage in National City. It has an outlet at the neighbor's house, some room out front to work and not much more. Here's the car:

It's photogenic. It's more beat up than it looks on camera (I'll get some pictures of the bad stuff up later). It has some leaks that I think are coming from the chassis-to-body seal. There are other leaks coming in through the rusted out driver's side footwell. They're bad leaks; I can't drive the car in the rain or it turns into a mini swimming pool. I also fear the gas tank may be compromised because there's always a smell of gas when I go around a bend. As for the interior, the headliner is dirty and torn,

there's no carpet, and while the seat upholstery is fine the seats are uncomfortably squishy. The floorpans are rusted. We'll have to see how bad. Hope the heater channels are OK. We won't know 'till we take off the body. You can see some of the rust in this photo:


In all fairness, the interior isn't that bad. You can see I've already started taking apart the drivers side door.

I'm armed with a couple of great instructional DVDs from California Pacific/J Bugs, and a few good instructional sites:

• http://www.vw-resource.com/
• http://www.midsouthvw.com/TechTips/TechMain.html
• http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/

It should be a fun project. We'll see how it goes.