L 469 Anthrazit

I found this 1 kg can of anthracite lacquer at the VW Classic swap meet. I've always told myself that if I saw an original factory can of anthracite for sale I would buy it. On first seeing it I assumed it would be completely dry but it's still liquid and fairly full. I think my car is trying to tell me what color it wants to be.

Getting reacquainted with the front brakes

It's been many years since I've done a front brake job on an old VW. The last time the front brakes were done on this car was about 12 years ago, when NOS wheel cylinders were installed by a local mechanic. Initially I thought I'd be able to get away with a brake fluid flush and adjustment, but the right front brakes were locking up. Stuck wheel cylinder(s)? Collapsed brake hose? The car has probably only seen 1000 miles since the brakes were done so how bad could things be?

I was stopped in my tracks soon after starting by an odd thing: Both lock nuts turned together when I tried to loosen the outer one on the right side. That shouldn't happen. I didn't have a thin 24mm wrench so had to source one. Luckily Lanner Kahn at VDUBEngineering in Canada offers a nice purpose-made 24/27mm spindle wrench, so I ordered one up. Once I got things apart the problem was obvious. Someone had used a larger diameter lock plate from another VW. This is the kind of hackery that can cause you to lose a wheel on the road. Not only that, all the expendable parts were shot—bearings, seals, the whole lot. Luckily, with a little help from Bill and Steve's, I was able to find everything I needed to put things right. Here are the old and new parts for comparison—it's as if the last bearing repack was done using only a crow bar and a sledge hammer. Nothing like seeing someone else's shoddy work to remind you that you're better off doing it yourself!



Turned out it was the wheel cylinders that were the braking problem -- gummed up from lack of use. I cleaned and honed them and I think they'll be all right for awhile, though I'm going to start searching for another complete set of NOS front cylinders just in case.

Early VW 1500 wheels: new and improved

A few years ago I found five NOS VW 1500 wheels. They're the early 4-slot version meant only for 1961–63 models. Unfortunately while NOS means "new old stock," it doesn't necessarily mean cosmetically perfect. While these wheels have never been mounted on a car they had picked up some surface rust and shelf wear in the many years they were warehoused. Off to the powder coater.





After some online research I decided to use Andrews Powder Coating in Chatsworth, California. They focus on powder coating for cars and motorcycles, and they are a supplier to ICON. That's good enough for me.



The wheels came back looking like new. I had Andrews match the OEM semi-gloss black. They masked the lug bolt and brake drum bearing surfaces at no additional charge, which saved me the trouble of scraping the paint off later. Wheels can come loose if these areas are powder coated, so it's best to keep them unpainted.




One interesting thing about these wheels is that they're all factory replacements made after 1964. The newest one has a September 1970 date stamp. Three of them are safety rims with additional bumps that keep tubeless tires from breaking the bead on very hard cornering. I really like the idea that VW was still making parts specifically for the earliest VW 1500s into the 1970s, and incorporating safety improvements into them too. I still have all five of my Ghia's original April 1962 stamped wheels, but I'll keep them in storage and use these newer ones on the road.



I found a very nice used Pirelli Cinturato CN 36 tire recently, and I had it mounted on one of the newly powder coated wheels as a test. Pirelli has reissued the early '70s vintage CN 36, and I'm thinking about buying a set of them for the Ghia, but since they're slightly wider than the original size (175-15 rather than 165-15) I wanted to see if there were any fit issues. There aren't. A bit more expensive than the comparable Michelin XZX, but with an extra helping of awesomeness. My car now has a very cool spare.

Gray e-brake boot

My best find from the VW Classic weekend was an original gray e-brake boot. It's a surprisingly hard to find item, and I've been trying to locate one for years. It's really clean and there are no holes or rips. I picked it up from a seller at OCTO for a very reasonable price. Couldn't believe my luck.

Several years ago the restorer of a '58 beetle had a short run of gray repro boots made in Belgium, and I bought one when they were available. Here it is next to the OEM original.




It's not perfect—the shape and texture are a little off and the gray color is too blue—but it's well made. It's also the style without the adjustment access slots/flaps on the sides. Some original boots have these access slots and some don't, and I don't know what applications got which boots, or when. The supply of these repro boots now seems to have dried up as well. I'll sell this one and put the proceeds back into the Ghia's restoration.

Gray e-brake boots are very much in demand and it's surprising to me that a good quality reproduction isn't currently available. Respraying black boots gray is always an option, I suppose, but I doubt the result would ever look exactly right.

In other brake news, the rear brakes are finally completely assembled, adjusted and bled. If all goes as planned the engine will go back in next weekend.

1500 Ghia visor clips

Speaking of 1500 Ghia visor clips, I'm very happy to finally have a pair of originals thanks to Larry Edson. They're not 100% perfect—both have minor cracks from use—but they're very presentable and far better than most others I've seen. It's rare for any of these clips to have survived due to an overly complicated and under-engineered design. This has lead to a cottage industry in 1500 Ghia visor clip replacements, some more successful than others. A few examples I've accumulated over the years:



I've seen a number of Ghias with these bent steel hooks. They work surprisingly well, taking advantage of the spring tension in the visor mounts to hold the visors in place, and they're simple enough to not call attention to themselves.



John Copello made these machined aluminum and powder coated clips, and it's possible that he might still make them to order. They follow the original design fairly closely but are blockier and have fewer rounded edges. They lack the flexibility that the originals have, of course, but they work. They're presentable but are clearly hand made.



Someone painstakingly cast these clips in resin and then drilled, carved and sanded them into a more rounded version of the originals' shape. They rely on a tension fit to hold the visors up, but the resin is brittle and I think they would probably break if used regularly.



These crudely fabricated aluminum clips were in my '62 when I bought it. They're not much to look at but they do the job.

A number of years ago someone in the Type 34 Registry had a quality reproduction made, but to get a set of them you had to be in the right place at the right time, and I wasn't. It's too bad a larger production run wasn't done. There are rumors of some investigation into a new high-quality repro. Hope it really happens.

Modifying a '63 rear brake drum for a '62

It's only fitting, really, that one of the slowest Type 34 restorations ever should get one of the slowest brake jobs ever. That's what I get for trying to keep things correct for an early '62. Over the last few months I've been trying to locate the early parts I need without much luck. The unique early '62 brake parts are really hard to find, so you have to buy them when you see them even if you don't need them yet, because you eventually will. I've already found it's possible to modify a Type 1 oil slinger to work with a Type 3 drum. The drum itself was the next hurdle.

Over the VW Classic weekend I tried to track down an NOS or good used '62 rear drum without any luck. For a moment I thought I'd hit paydirt when I saw an early pinwheel drum in a box of NOS oval drums, but alas it turned out to be an NOS early front. I promptly scooped it up for future use.





Mmmmmm...Cosmoline.

A few other potential leads failed to pan out, so I decided it was time to drill a hole in the existing '63 drum on my Ghia to accommodate the oil slinger.



In this photo of my car's original beyond-tolerance doorstop you can see said hole at just after 12 o'clock. If you look closely you'll see there's a slight depression in the casting below the hole to allow clearance for the oil slinger tube.



Fortunately the '63 drum's casting also includes this depression, helpfully indicating the drilling location and saving me some time with a Dremel tool. After measuring carefully I drilled a pilot hole and then the final 8mm (5/16 in.) hole.



Testing the fit with an original Type 3 slinger. It's good to go. After a little cleaning and painting today the left rear brakes will be ready for reassembly.

Modifying a Type 1 oil slinger for an early Type 3

As mentioned in a previous post, 1962 Type 3 rear brakes are different than those on later models. One of the most obvious differences is the presence of an oil slinger on each drum, which uses centrifugal force to direct any gear oil that gets past the axle seal away from the brake shoes and to the outside of the drum. The Type 3 slinger (part number 311 501 631) is a unique one-year-only part only used up to chassis number 0 076 299. Many have been discarded over the years during service, so if you're in need of one, as I am, you're in for a search.

After looking for awhile and following a few leads to dead ends I decided to try another approach. Jason Weigel suggested I try modifying a Type 1 or Type 2 part to fit. Yes, 1950s beetles and buses also had oil slingers, and they're easy to find due to much higher production numbers, so I was able to buy a pair of Type 1 oil slingers advertised on The Samba for a reasonable price. Here is one of them (left) next to a Type 3 slinger from my car (right):




As you can see, the Type 1 slinger is considerably flatter. The Type 3 tube is also slightly longer. I stuffed the inside of the tube with a few pieces of wire to keep it from getting crimped closed and then carefully re-bent it to match the Type 3 part using a vice and a pair of metalworking pliers. The steel was more malleable than I expected.



The idea was to get the tube to correspond as closely as possible to the inside surface of the brake drum, as did the original Type 3 part, allowing clearance for the brake shoes and wheel cylinder. The slightly shorter tube length turned out not to be a problem.




Couldn't hear any rubbing with the drum back in place, so I think it will work. I'll still try to find another real Type 3 slinger but this will get me by for now. Next step: pulling everything apart again to redo the brakes themselves.

New again

I picked up the restored speedometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, and radio grille from North Hollywood Speedometer today. Nice job Patrick, thanks! My Ghia is not worthy.

Best $60 I've ever spent

I have always dreaded brake work on older aircooled VWs because of the hassle of dealing with the rear axle nuts. Getting the nuts loose involved a breaker bar, a good length of cheater pipe and some colorful language. Getting them tight again was something I was never able to master with hand tools, so I would do the best I could and then limp over to a local shop to have them torque the nuts to spec. I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally buy a torque multiplying tool to do the job. This tool, popularly known as the Torque Meister or Torque Dude, multiplies the torque nine times, allowing the high-torque axle nuts and flywheel gland nut to be removed and installed with simple hand tools and minimal effort.




Once I got the left rear drum off I found a hardened sludgy film on everything. I knew there was a brake fluid leak, but a lot of gear oil has been leaking over time too. The previous owner had the original rear drum replaced with a later style drum without an oil slinger (311 501 615 D), but the bearing housing and all the other internal parts are still the original '62 Type 1 parts, so the gear oil that would have been directed to the outside of the drum had the slinger been installed was instead just spun around onto the brakes. Nice. At least rust has been kept to a minimum.



Here's the source of the brake fluid leak. One of the nice things about 1962 model VW 1500s is that the rear wheel cylinders are the same as Type 1 front cylinders from the same time period (113 611 057 B), so they're easy to find. I was able to buy new OEM German cylinders from ISP West at a reasonable price. ISP also had the oil slinger I needed, used, but when it arrived I was disappointed to find that it was damaged—the drain tube is crimped flat. ISP noted the damage on the invoice and offered the take it back if I can't get it straightened, and that's a possibility. It'll be hard to get the tube straightened without causing collateral damage elsewhere. I'm going to see if I can find a better one first.



I still have the Ghia's original '62 left rear drum, part number 311 501 615, but the friction surface was heavily scored and very rusty. I had a local shop turn it to clean up the braking surface but the inner diameter is now about .5mm beyond the wear limit. This drum is toast. I'm going to have to locate a good used one somewhere, or have the later one that's on the car drilled for the oil slinger.

VW 1500 replacement wiper arms

Not long ago I bought a pair of NOS SWF Type 3 wiper arms. They have the part number 311 955 407A, and they'll fit 1967 and earlier Type 3s. They're not the wipers my Ghia would have come with originally, though, but rather a later part that replaced the earliest design. The original 1961–66 wiper arms, part number 311 955 407, looked like this:


[image pilfered from thesamba.com]

The arms that replaced them have a slightly different appearance:



As far as I can tell, the 311 955 407A arms were introduced in the 1966 model year, superseding the earlier arms as replacement parts. I'm not sure what the functional difference is between these and the earlier arms; they both have the same poor design for clamping the arm to the wiper shaft: a small set screw that fights in vain to hold the wiper arm to the shaft against substantial torque. Working against the laws of physics, they would commonly strip themselves loose, especially if someone tried to run the wipers when they were frozen in place in sub-zero cold. The wiper shafts would get scored and galled to the point that the set screw could no long hold them in place securely.

In 1968 VW enlarged the wiper shafts from 5mm to 8mm, but this didn't solve the fundamental problem. Sometime in 1968–69 VW introduced a redesigned shaft/arm connection in which the arm was clamped around the shaft instead of being held by a set screw—a huge improvement. Wiper arms featuring this new clamp design were offered for earlier cars with 5mm wiper shafts too, as a "factory cure" for problematic early wipers. These clamping replacement arms were what my Ghia was fitted with when I bought it. They're fairly scarce—I guess the majority of early Type 3 owners just muddled through with their original wipers. Here are the two types of replacement arms side-by-side:




In 1970 VW finally solved the problem properly when splined wiper shafts and arms were introduced.

When I restore my Ghia I'll probably end up keeping the clamping arms it had when I bought it. They're fairly rare parts, and even though they aren't what the car was fitted with when new they were made to fit early 1500s and they're a big improvement on the original design. They're correct, if not actually "correct."

[Thanks to Russ Wolfe for his help in sorting out the complicated Type 3 wiper story.]

Rear suspension cleanup, part 2

I got to the left rear suspension today. There was evidence of a substantial brake fluid leak, so I'll need to do a complete brake once-over before the Ghia sees the road again. The left rear drum is missing its oil thrower, so I should start tracking one of those down while I'm at it. It's a Type 3–specific part that was only used until chassis number 0 076 299, a month or two into the 1963 model year, so I'll have a search on my hands. It's probably time for me to buy one of those Torque Meister tools (a.k.a. Torque Dude), so I can get the axle nuts on and off without breaking a breaker bar.



I cleaned up the wheel and found the April 1962 date code. I have all five of the original wheels, but I also have a set of NOS early Type 3 wheels that I'll probably end up using instead. The NOS wheels are the 1961–63 slotted style but are later replacement parts, so they have the extra safety bump on the rim that allows the safe use of tubeless tires.

Rear suspension cleanup, part 1

I spent some quality time under the Ghia today, cleaning and painting the right rear suspension area. There was a lot of surface rust that I wanted to address. It was over two years ago that I cleaned off years worth of grease that had built up, and rust began forming very quickly after that.



Early Type 3 swirl brake drums. I kept the wheel mounting surface free of paint—I never want to see one of my wheels passing me by when I'm driving down the freeway.



Here's a good shot of one of the early rear Type 3 axles, which featured stamped steel lower shock mounts welded directly to the axle tubes. Early in the 1963 model year these were replaced by redesigned axle tubes with separate forged shock mounts. Another example of early Type 3 weirdness.



With the wheel removed there was a clear view of the transmission serial number, 35694, which is consistent with a build date of March/April 1962. With this number there's no doubt it's the original trans.

When the car is completely restored the paint will be redone properly, but this will get me by until then. Next weekend the left side gets the same treatment.

Engine reassembled

Today I finally finished reassembling the engine. It took awhile for me to track down all the parts, which for some reason I had stored in a number of different places. The last time I was at this point was the summer of 2007.




The last time I assembled the engine I had a really hard time getting the flanges to line up where the intake manifold's heat riser connects to the tube from the muffler. This time I put some effort into bending and rotating the muffler tube so that its flange would line up better, and I got the bolts started at this connection first before securing it elsewhere, which made it a lot easier to get the manifold in. Hopefully this will put less strain on the manifold when the engine is running—broken welds between the heat riser and intake tube are common on these manifolds, probably due to bad flange alignment.



Along with the intake manifold there are some other new parts that I didn't have for the last assembly, including NOS heater ducts (above), and the correct air cleaner intake boot and a quick-release clamp. I also used one of these cool looking old stock carb-to-manifold gaskets that I got from BerT3 (below). No one will be able to see it, but I like knowing it's in there.



Once I've cleaned and painted the rear suspension the engine can go back in.

Gauges sent out for restoration

I took the gauges to North Hollywood Speedometer today. They tested the tach and it's in good working order, so it only needs cosmetics. They're going to make a new glass for it to replace the cracked original—either CNC etched or silkscreened scale and VDO logo—and will replace the late silver-finish escutcheons with early brass parts from donor gauges. The speedometer needs calibration but otherwise tested o.k., and it will get a cosmetic restoration along with the fuel gauge and speaker grille. I'm going to hold off on having the clock restored for now because North Hollywood Speedometer doesn't repair old Kienzle clock works, they replace them with modern quartz movements instead. I'd rather see if I can get the original clock working again myself. I'm not planning on installing it anyway since I have the tach, but I would eventually like to have it restored and ready to go.

When I was there one of the guys showed me a work in progress, a beautiful reproduction VDO Type 3 tach built from a clock housing. It didn't have any graphics on it yet but the needle and other details looked perfect. I told them it was probably being built for someone I know—so who is it?

The fabrication work on the tach will take longer than their usual turnaround, but they say I should have everything back in a month or two.

New year's resolution

I've decided to try something slightly different with the blog this year, something that I hope will help motivate me to make more progress on my own 1500 Ghia's restoration. I'm only going to post when I've actually accomplished something on the car. This means there might be more variation in activity depending on how much progress I'm making—more frequent posts if all is going well, and less frequent if nothing's happening.

This weekend's nice weather gave me a good opportunity to dig the Ghia out from all the junk that has collected in the garage and get the area cleaned up so I can get back to work. I cleared out all the spiderwebs and dust and whatnot from under the car, and wiped everything down. I was disappointed to see more surface rust on some of the hardware than I would have expected from a year or two of sitting, but it's nothing that can't easily be dealt with. Just a good reminder that a car that doesn't get driven is still subject to the forces of entropy. The rear axles and suspension in particular are in need of some attention. I had cleaned off years of grease and road dirt in 2007, but of course that's what had been keeping the rust to a minimum, so I gotta get some new paint on there.

I uncovered the engine too and gave it a once over. The NOS intake manifold got a final sanding and several more coats of matte gray hi-temp paint, and now it's ready to be installed. I just have to find the gaskets. They're around here somewhere.



Finally, I removed all the gauges so I can take them to North Hollywood Speedometer for a restoration quote. I'm bracing myself for the shock.