Tuesday 17 May 2011

Raw skin

 Not updated for a while so this what I've been doing. After taking the gear box out it was discovered one of the gear box mount studs had been sheared so I've bought an intermediate box mount and decided the studs also need to be replaced.
Broken studs

In the past week I have been splitting the axles from the gear box ready for cleaning and painting. After much degreasing and preping the axle tubes, spring plates and the gear box all have at least one coat of paint and should have the final coats done tomorrow.

Painted Axle Tubes
Painted Gear Box


Also tonight I cut the broken gear box studs off and fabricated an angle bracket with two new studs which I then  welded over the chassis in the correct position. I was a bit concerned by this and welding upside down is not ideal but it all seemed to go well.
New Stubs welded in
Gearbox mount stud bracket












Once the bracket was welded in I decided to start the first coat of POR15 on the chassis at the rear. I ended up doing the whole floor pan as once the lid is removed it wont go back on properly so I didn't want to waste it in case it goes off over night. Hopefully I should be ok tomorrow so I can give it a second coat before a final consolidation coat using Hammerite. Even wearing and old hoodie and vinyl gloves I still seemed to get it all over my arms and hands and this doesn't come off in a hurry so I'm sat here with sores from scrubbing!

New Brakes so it might stop now!

Thursday 5 May 2011

Slime


Just a quick update and a few pictures. Last night was de motivating, first of all I found another hole which may be to difficult for me to weld so I'll have to ask the spray shop if they can do it, then tried to get the rear hub nuts off but no joy. Over night I reassessed the situation and thought gear box out then try then hub nuts again with the nut smacker I ordered today.

Gear Box Out
Tonight I got the gear box out along with the spring plates, fairly straight forward after following Rob and Dave's air-cooled pages (http://www.vw-resource.com/). So no trauma other than a few tight nuts so nothing exciting to report. Monday night I should finish stripping down the gear box and start cleaning up and prep ready for painting.