Till next time, stay safe...

July 12th, 2008.

With the way things are going one might tempted to think that I was accident prone. Allow me to fill you in on the latest incident. On tuesday evening I was in the garage performing some mods on the subframe. This involved using the cutting wheel on the angle grinder. Now cutting with a grinder is always a bit dangerous. I've had the odd situation where the wheel has grabbed and then disintergrated. This has been the case lately after I bought some cheap cutting wheels not realising how bad they'd be. However, what happened on tuesday was completely unprecedented.
The metal I was cutting wasn't clampled down, but being heavy, I didn't think was an issue. So there I was, donned in goggles, ear muffs, long weldign gloves and being extra careful. Mid cut, the grinder grabbed again, but this time the wheel stayed in one piece. Unfortunately what it did was leap out of my grasp and attach itself to my leg. It took me a moment to realise what was going on because it happened so fast. Lucky for me, the trackpants I was wearing took most of the hit. The grinder cut them and wheel wrapped itself up in them, the wheel colapsing as it did so. This jammed the grinder and allowed me to turn it off and free myself.

Here is what it did to my trackpants.

I know all I seem to be posting is pics of the subframe, but it has taken hours and hours to build and I think really very effective. I've cut off as much metal as possible and have modified the middle so that is clears the gearbox properly.

The new engine mounts for the car are also almost finished. Just a bit of grinding to do here and there and then a lick of paint. I'll post some pics of them soon. Whilest test fitting everything, I've noticed that the engine has dropped about 10mm relative to where it used to be. It's also about 10mm further back than before. So I loose a little weight distribution adavantage on the one hand, but on the other, the centre of gravity is lower, as are the CVs (giving me more ground clearance) and the tranny mounts are soooo much better than before. At the same time, the barwork in the back end should be lighter too, so it should be a winner overall.

Till next time...

July 15th, 2008.

The progress is slow, but I am getting there. However, in some ways D-day has come. Today, Zak’s rego is up. I now have two months to get him pinkslipped and re-registered. The complication is that the new baby is due in two and a half weeks. So I’m kinda caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The good news is that today saw me finish off a whole bunch of things. The subframe and the new engine mounts are ready to be sand blasted and then painted. The rear engine cage is almost finished too. I’d like to cut some more metal off that cage, but I’m still thinking about how much before I go crazy with the grinder again.

Check the pics below for more details.

Here you can see the new engine mounts in situ along with the new subframe.

For those that saw it before, you can also see how much I've trimmed off the backing plate on the engine cage. It's 6mm plate, who knows why I chose anything that heavy in the first place, but anyway. Now half of it is drilled out or cut off.

The great news however came when I weighed the old subframe/engine mounts and the new subframe/engine mounts. I was hoping that the new system would beequal or only slightly heaver than the old subframe and engine mounts. I assumed this might be the case as the bracing system for the chassis forks and shock mounts has a lot of metal in it. So inside to get the bathroom scales and stack the old against the new. Check the pics below, and see what I found!

The old is roughly 16kg barring any extra metal it lost when I cut it up a bit.

The new setup is just 12kg!

The new setup is FOUR kilograms LIGHTER than the old setup. To say that I was happy was an understatement. I justifies all the time I have put into designing the parts and fabbing up things from scratch out of light plate rather than just using heavy tube in obvious sorts of ways. It also justifies all the holes I have drill, which took AGES to drill. If I don't see a hole saw for a while, I won't miss it. But the proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating. So it's off to get these cleaned up now. However, I can’t wait to see how much difference it makes to drivability and things like axle tramp.

At the same time, I have fixed the gusset between the pan and the rear torsion tube on the passenger’s side. The gusset was broken, and the torsion tube had sagged about 3mm. So between a jack and some extra gusseting, the stock gusset has been re-welded and moved back where it should be. This of course involved welding upside down, a pain at the best of times. I’m actually very happy with the outcome and the welds. I may yet add some extra gusseting to avoid stress points though.

Till next time...

July 17th, 2008.

Well, today's new is more of a diary of pain than anything else. I don't like to whinge and whine so I'll keep it as short as possible. However, the appearance of the box pictured below has been expected for some time and has caused me quite some greif.

The rims are 15x6" steel rims. As you can see, I have also got some Chrome hub caps to go with the rims. This seemed like a no brainer really. At US$7 each they were an obvious purchase to keep the car looking decent. The rims themselves are rudimentary. Not as light as a centreline, nor as flashy as a BTR. However, I was told recently by an industry expert that they are the strongest most durable wheel available. If bent they can be straightened, if they get roughed up, I can repaint them. And at US$70 a rim, they cost less than quarter of the both the afore-mentioned rims. Landed in Australia they have cost me about $165 each, which is cheaper than anything I could get made up here (from second hand rims) and they are brand new and freshly powdercoated.

Anyway, this tale of woe is over and I'm off to clean some chassis horns ready for paint. Hopefully the other bits are sandblasted now too.

Till next time...

August 1st, 2008.

It's been a big week really, but not so much in buggy terms. Healthy, young Simeon Wood was born on tuesday (it's now friday) and we've all been getting used to his prescence. For the most part it's been good but Liz is recovering and we all know how baby struggle to sleep sometimes. However, a few things have been happening between nappies being changed and two other small children needing extra attention. There are also some thing that have happened since I last updated.

Both the subframe and the engine mounts have been sand blasted and painted in the last few weeks yielding acceptable results in my opinion. It was my first go with thinners based paint and it's not perfect, but it's ready to go back together.

Next up was the installation of the turning brake. After literally agonizing about the location, I put it under the dash. This was for a few reasons. First up there wasn't any room for it anywhere else that didn't compromise the safety of the lines (in terms of passengers/drivers feet) or my driving space. I will need to make up a different handle or mod the current one, but I'm happy with where it is. Can't wait to get the lines in and put the car back together for testing! The lines themselves are another story. Turns out that it is just as cheap to have new hard lines made up as it is to buy second handies from the wreckers. This sadly (and the excuse for overcharging) means I won't be going back to the wrecker that was once my favorite. It really sticks in my craw when business people I don't know from Adam expect to me listen to their sob stories. If you don't like the business or it's too hard, then get out. No such thing as customer service these days, like I owe him MY custom! [breathe] anyhoo...rant over.

What you see above is an attempt to speed up the whole "bleeding the cooling system" drama. At the moment it takes a few hours and various start up and cool down proceedures. The system should and does bleed (eventually), but not quick enough for me. So my solution is to add this tap and male hose connector to the lower heater hose. The process should work as follows. I will put it all back together and fill the system with the heater tap shut. Then I will hook the garden hose onto the fitting and apply full pressure (which in my suburb is very good). I'll open the tap above and then the heater tap. I'm hoping the combination of the this is that the air bubbles will be pushed to the filler tank where I can bleed them off by cracking the cap on the tank. The whole thing should be much quicker only needing a few top ups. I've seen a few people with this setup and it seems to be quite useful. It only cost me about $30 in brass fittings. I'll let you know how well it works. The main drama at the moment is fitting it to the car in such a way that it looks neat and isn't in danger of being knocked off by flying rocks and such.

Till next time...

August 19th, 2008.

For some reason, three children seem to cause more hectic-ness (if that's a word) so working on zak has been coming a distant last. However, last week I managed to make a big leap forward and now the new transmission is in place and the CV and axles all hooked up again. As it turned out, being anal about cover the open CVs was a good thing as they just need a wipe and an extra gob of grease. I toyed with the idea of pulling them out and regreasing them, but the car has done less than 10,000km since it went on the road, so I just didn't think it was worth the effort or the expense.

My other recent quest has been to try and get some wheel studs to go with the new wheels. It's been difficult to say the least, the combination of radiused lug faces in the wheel and shallow metal that the lugs go into in the drum/disc has made it very difficult to find a solution. In the end I got some of these washers from pitstop autos in the US. These allow me to use holden commodore spec nuts and studs sourced from my local parts/hardware store (thanx Jeff). I should buy shares in this shop. The process has taken a few turns including buying some porsche wheel nuts. These were the only nuts I could find that has a ball taper. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any reasonably priced studs that would do the job. I have to say this local porsche specialist were very helpful and bought the wheel nuts back when they didn't do the trick. There were a number of very tasty rides there as well.
I guess the next trick is to sort the flywheel out. It needs some refacing and cleaning. The gear shift also needs some mods and the sump needs a bit of brazing. Turns out the leak I was suffering in the sump was actually the drain plug. Any, I'm a bit sick, so it won't happen tonight.

Till next time...

September 19th, 2008.

If it seems like a while since you've heard anything, it's coz it's a while since I written anything. Sorry. Things have been very busy round here in the last month or so with a new baby and an album 2 weeks from release date. You'll be encouraged to know that after my wife (rightly) hammered me the other night, things are moving along on Zak again. I have about 4 weeks till I have to get him regoed and I'm beavering away at things between being sick and very busy.

As you can see the trans now has the thrust bearing in place AND some relevant sleaves installed in the urethane mounts (gee I'm happy I discovered that before I put the motor in). The other thing I discovered was, I'd lost two engine mounting bolts. So the engine did not go in on friday night, despite it's readiness to do so...

The flywheel has been resurfaced and all friction surfaces cleaned with brake cleaner as there was some oil on the clutch plate. Hopefully all is well with the clutch now. You may also notice from the picture that the sump is a lovely shade of blue. This was done in aid of seeing oil leaks in future. It now doesn't leak anymore. Thank goodness for plumbers.

Whilest not being able to do anything about the engine still being on the garage floor, I was able to make up the coupling adaptor for the gearbox. After a lot of welding and fitting it seems to work well enough. I think the throw could be a little bigger, but I'll need to make a new one for that so it can wait till the car is regoed. One thing I have notice is, the gate springs on the 091 are MUCH stronger than on a 002. I guess the old ones might have been stuffed but the difference is palpable. I severely doubt I will be have the same issues with 1st to 2nd and 3rd to 2nd gear changes now. Can't wait for that. The other thing is, the box is much, much tighter than the 002 ever was. I guess this is what happens with a new box. Be interesting to see how it is after a few months of driving. I've never had a new (fully rebuilt) VW gearbox before. I look forward to the experience.

I've also been painting a certain brake assembly matt black in the interest of not hanging out like the proverbial. It's full installed now. The lines need a few clamps and the brakes are in need of a good bleeding and should work well I think. That nasty bent tie rod has gone and been replace with a suitable donor. I was going to try and straighten the bent one, but I really think it may be beyond it. Poor old thing. Long Tie rod VS turbo diesel landcruiser + snatch strap = sadness and bent tie rod.
Pulling out the fibre glass matt the other day for my father in law yielded just enough in the way of offcuts the fix the front panel, so I'll dig into that soon enough. It all needs to be mobile and registered by the 15th of october so the clock is ticking. Otherwise I need a blue slip inspection...and I'd rather avoid that thanx. Till next time...

October 10th, 2008.

Lots going on this week. I've had the week off and the main idea is to get the car back together before next wednesday..when I run out of chances to just get a pink slip. :o/

All was back together on monday and I even got the motor started. Then I realised the sump was leaking AGAIN. :o( Anyway, off the sump came again and back to Mark's place to be tigged up completely. I't now a loverly blue again and back on the car...

The other thing I've been wresting with for the past few days is the new wheel studs. Suffice to say, it seems to be sorted now, three different drill bits later and some thread lock too. Don't ask. All that is left to be done is a little clearancing on the front adaptor plates.

The other thing I discovered is that behind the plates lies a front hub designed for a 4 stud pattern. Be worth figuring out what the configuration is at some stage.

I also finally got some rubber on the new rims. I'll be throwing these on for rego.