TRANSAXEL'S AND ENGINES

 Caleb decided to grace me with his presence today and help me pull out the Transaxel.

 This is his "this bolt shall die"face....LOL!

 Got the transaxle out.

 Here is the transaxle pulled all apart.  It needs all new seals but looks like it's in pretty good shape otherwise.

 Here it is degreased and ready for paint.

 And painted.....looking better!

 I have also pulled apart the engine.  It looks like it's in really good shape....just need a new set of Piston rings and cleaned up a bit.

More Later!!

Jason

COMING TOGETHER

I've applied three clear coats over the whole car now.  I will finish it out by wet sanding it down to about 2000 grit and the high speed buffing it with a finishing compound to give it that glassy finish.  Even without the last two steps its looking nice and shinny though.

More later!

Jason

COLOR AND CLEAR

I have sprayed and applied the first coat of clear on the main body of the VW.  It's starting to actually look like something!!

 I will be spraying one more clear coat to give it that deep gloss look I love!!  Can't wait to get it out in the sun .....hopefully I wont see too many flaws once I do....LOL!!



MORE LATER!!

NEW SEATS!!

I just finished re-upholstering the seats for the Superbeetle.  I bought new seat padding and tweed two-tone seat upholstery but re-used the old seat frames and springs.  I bought the upholstery from TMI and the padding from JBugs.com.  They are still a little dusty but it's late and I don't want to wake up the house with the vacuum.  I decided to take a brake from the painting and body work to put the seats together.  There is something motivating about seeing something come together and start looking nice! Can't wait to get them in the car when the time comes.

More later!

Painting Process Begins!!

 Today I started the Painting process by spraying a sealer onto the main body.  Tomorrow I will finish the sealer on the main body (only a few spots left) and spray all the other body parts including, Hood, Fenders, Rear deck lid, Doors, Blinker housings, Gas filler cover ect.

 Once the sealer is done then I will begin to spary on the high build sandable primer.  It will get at least two coats of that, sanding in between them.

 I masked off the rear drum brakes since I will be rebuilding them and don't want sealer/paint all over them.

Its looking cleaner already....Robin is enjoying seeing this transformation.

More later....Jason

71 VW BODY WORK

 This is a view of my garage as it is right now....pretty crowded.  There is organization to this madness though.....I might be the only one who could make sense of it but it works for now.

 I spent countless hours working on repairing the hood because I was having a hard time finding a good aftermarket replacement for less than several hundrend dollars.  Since this is going to be a daily driver, not a show car, I decided to repair rather than replace it. 

 Once in a while I get a volunteer willing to help me for a few minutes.  Here Caleb was very excited to help as long as he got to use the power tools......A short time later he managed to wire brush his arm which put an end to his help for the day.

 Under the front hood is the storage compartment.  I have begun spraying on a rubberized lining to help seal and protect the inside.  

 The brakes were in sad condition.  The fronts I am converting to disk and the rears will be rebuilt completely new.....it will also get a new master cylinder.

 Front struts, springs, ball joints, sway bar and tie rods (hanging there) are all coming out.  Some will be reusable so will be cleaned up get new bushings ect. then re-installed.  Ball joints will be new along with tie rod ends.

I have the hood, rear deck lid, all the fenders and doors off the car and will paint them all seperately.

 The roof had alot of slight low areas....not dents (for the most part) but more like warping in the metal.  here I have used a finish bondy filler to fill the low spots and even it all out.  The thickest parts might be close to 1/16"....most is less.  The different colors you see are from several guide coats I sprayed on to help identify to low areas.

Another picture of the trunk area with the rubberized coating. 

I'm hoping to start sealing/priming it this week so I can have it in paint by the first week of Oct.

The goal is to have this car on the road by Thanksgiving.

More later....Jason

SHIFTING GEARS

About 3 years ago I purchased a 1971 VW Super Beetle project car.  Since we moved into our current house it has sat in my garage gathering dust.  After I had pulled the 327 V8 out of the 70 GMC Robin (the beautiful godess who married me and has a ton of patience with my projects) decided she felt it would be smarter to get the VW done and out of the garage before doing much more on my 66 Chevy.  I agreed....mainly because I really need the space to tear down the 66.

So.....I figured I would post some of the "before" pictures for you to see.  I will be posting more pictures soon.

 The hood had some very poor dent/rust repair done some time back....you can see the rust popping through the paint.

 The front fenders came with it but I just threw them away.  they looked like someone had beat them with a hammer and left them in the rain for several years.

 Overall the car seems pretty clean as far as the body goes.....however.....upon closer inspection I discovered alot of poor bodywork under several layers of paint.....I determined to take it down to the metal and fix it right.

 The interior was pertty beat up.....so, true to my nature.....tear it out, throw it away and make it new.....its the only way to go.

Now the engine.....this beast has a 1600 cc 4 cyl that at max output gets a whopping 48 horse power....LOL.  The guy I got the car from swore the engine was good but we'll see....rebuild kits are not expensive if I need to go that route.....she obvioulsy needs some TLC.

327 V8 Pulled Out!!

 I have finally found the time to pull the 327 and turbo 400 tranny out of the 70 GMC. 

Now to clean it up and figure out what it needs to get that #7 compression back where it needs to be.

MY LUCKY FIND!!

 I call this a lucky find!!  Robin (my wife) calls it a curse.  I say its a lucky find beacause I purchased this 1970 GMC (which of course is made by GM who also makes Chevy and puts all the same engines in both lines) for $500.  The great part is this rust bucket not only has alot of useable body parts(Hood Fenders, glass ect) I can part out to someone working on a 70 GMC but under the hood it has a good 327 V8 and a good Turbo 400 Auto Transmission that will be perfect for my 66.  I will also be able to use the steering column, driveline and several other parts.....more on that later.

Robin says its a curse because she feels like a white trash family with a bunch of old, broke down trucks in the driveway while she has to park her van on the street....Pretty funny.....I told her until I start parking on the lawn and blocking the vehicles on cyndar blocks we cant be true white-trash....as she calls it. 

I also used this opportunity to promote the idea of building my shop in the back....it think this is helping my cause.  Hee Hee Hee!

This 327 V8 will need a few things to get it running up to par again.  First of all.....I tested the compression and found only my #7 Cylinder was a bit low.  Since this is at the back of the engine there is a good chance this is due to a leaky head gasket since the gasket seal there is thin, but worst case senario it might need a valve adjustment or valve job.  I won't know until I get it out and opened up.

It will also get a new intake manifold and new carb something in the 650-700 CFM range as well and a master gasket kit installed.

In order to use the tranmission I will be converting the 66 from Manual to Automatic, which overall is a pretty simple trick.....more on that later.

ONE TOO MANY ENGINES!!

Well...as I mentioned before, the engine I pulled out of the 66 was not the orginal 283 V8 but is the 267 V8.  I really didn't want to keep this engine for the following reasons.....#1 it is a much less common engine so harder to get parts for (not impossible though) #2 I really like the track record of the 283, 350, 327 etc but the 267 has a much shorter and less distinguished track record #3 I really wanted more of a performance engine.

The solution.....I need a new engine.

I had the 267 tore down to the block so I decided to finish the block out and sell it to someone not looking for a performance engine.

Note:  A good feature of the 267 is it is cast in the same block as the 350 so it's very easy to use in any GM vehicle and, overall, it is a reliable engine.

A little degreaser and paint and this block is looking halfway decent again.

Engine, Rust and Grease

 I removed the rotten wood bed and have removed all bolts except for the 4 bed mounting bolts.  This gives me good access to the undercarraige and will make it easy to remove the bed to prep and treat the frame when the time comes.  I have also purchased a new wiring harness for it so having this open will make it easy access.

 Next I pulled the engine.  I chose to pull the transmission at the same time since I will need to clean it up and will eventually replace it with something more street worthy.

 I disconnected the engine and transmission and the mounted the engine onto my engine mount.  (Note: I used #8 bolts for the carberator mount when I pulled the engine and for mounting the engine on the mount....you don't want the bolts breaking and things coming tumbling down)....And yes that is another project car in the background, a 1971 VW Super Beetle.....I'll be adding that to the blog at some point down the road.

 Next I started dissassebling the front end.  The front fenders were beyond repair.  They were rusted through on both sides (see later pictures).  I will purchase replacement fenders from LMC.com. As thin as the metal is and as large as the rust spots were I find it easier to just bolt new ones on then try cutting, welding and shaping the old ones.

 Soon I will trailer the truck over to my buddy's (TJ) father-in-law's place to be steam/power washed. Once everything is nice and clean it is much easier to work with. And easier to see what needs to be done.

 Front fenders, grill, grill surround, hood, both front fenders have all been removed.  Note: I left the brake system intact so I had an easy way of stopping it and keeping it in place when I move it around.  This is easy since the braking system is a completely independant system.

 More pics.

 As you can see the fenders are pretty rusted.  This could be repaired but for the price (couple hundred $$) I can just replace them.....much easier!

 I removed the seats and all the floor covering.  I needed to see what condition the floorboards were in.  I had pulled some of the floor mats back before purchasing the truck and had found some significant rust on the edges so I was concerned about how bad the whole floor was.  I was pleased to discover the rust was confined to the edges.  It will need to be cut out and have new peices welded in but it will be good as new, and not a real big deal.

 I tore down my engine.  I was having trouble reading the block number to positively ID my engine until I got a clean block and degreased it.  Uh oh Houston we have a problem!!  It is not the original 283 V8 but is a Chevy 267 V8.  Not a big deal??....well....the 267 is sort of the bastard child of Chevy motors.  It was only made for about 4 years between 1979 and 1983.  It was supposed to be a fuel efficiant V8.  It was discontinued because people did not like the lack of power and it had problems coming into emissions compliance.  Hence not many were produced and so there are not many out there and so it is hard, and expensive to get parts for it.  I have decided to purchase a crate Chevy 350 which will be easy and cheap on parts and give me plenty of power to boot.  It also has a proven track record that I like.

Since I intended to rebuild this engine I had kept things in a specifice order (as they were installed in the engine) so that pieces that might be reused would not be out of place.  This also allows for a neat and orderly work space which is important for organization and safety.

Block casting numbers were finally found (under many layers of grease) on the left side of the transmission flange).

More to come.....Jason