Tuesday 2 April 2024

27. Karmann Gian Restoration - Doors & Engine

 

Now for those of you that have assembled a Karmann Ghia's doors before, you will cringe as I start this rebuild as I did it all in the wrong order. But you only learn by trying!. 


So the first job was to dig out the window mechanisms and clean off 53 years of dirt and grime. Then treat all unplated parts with rust killer and lubricate all the moving parts. It was then a case of offering the mechanism into the door and bolting it in place. 

I then tried to offer the glass into the door and it will only go in one way and that is down through the slot in the top of the door. Well somehow I had managed to get the glass out of the door, when I stripped it, without removing the metal carrier on the bottom of the glass, but it was quite obvious now that there was no way that it would go back in like that. The slot was now too small to allow it to pass through. So I had to figure how to remove the carrier without breaking the glass. This was achieved with lots of WD40 and very gentle levering. I could then mount the carrier onto the mechanism and then lower the glass down through the slot and back into the carrier.


It was now a case of lining up the four fixing bolts and clamping the glass carefully in place. I now fitted the guide rubber to the windscreen pillar and then wound up the window and had to loosen all the fixings again to allow the angle of the glass to be adjusted until it sat in the rubber correctly and then re-tighten them.





Now this is where the fun really began! I fitted the inner wiper strip without too much trouble but then tried to fit the anti-rattle rubbers. There are seven on each door and of all the jobs that I have done on the car this has been the hardest. These rubbers fit into the outer skin of the door, inside the slot. You can't reach them or re-drill them and the only way I could attempt to fit them was to pass the rubber down through the slot with a pointed pair of pliers and then try and push them into the holes with a small screwdriver. 






This takes immense patience, I even went to the trouble of making a special tool to try and insert them.       



It didn't work! and it took me over three weeks and 21 rubbers before I managed to get only 5 rubbers into each door. If I had realised how difficult these were, I would have fitted them when I had the doors cut open and before it was sprayed . But you live and learn.

Now the other thing that I discovered when cleaning the windows was that the driver's door window was badly scratched due to being wound up and down without any rubbers in place and after finding that having the glass re-polished was more expensive than buying a new one, I bought a new one and had to strip the door again to fit it.


The final job was to fit the outer scraper strips. I had to wait weeks before the new fixing clips arrived and then managed to break three whilst trying to fit the strip incorrectly. I thought that the rubber sat on top of the door and pressed up against the metal strip between it and the glass. I eventually discovered that the rubber fits "over" the metal strip allowing the clips to snap in easily.


                                     

Now the good bit. It's time to fit the engine.  This involved removing the carburettors and manifolds and the heater pipes and the front tray. It was more difficult to fit than expected as the new sports exhaust hit the underside of the bumper preventing it from seating correctly on the bell housing. I eventually modified the exhaust to give it some clearance and in it went. The carburettors went back on along with the heater pipes and rear tray and with the electrics and petrol connected it was time to see if it goes?



The final touch was to fit the steering wheel. This involved finding the old steering wheel and removing the associated parts that operate the indicators auto cancel and transfer them onto the new wheel. This involved drilling and tapping the new wheel to get the parts in the right place, but it worked and also extend the wire to the horn button. But it worked and the new steering wheel fit beautifully.



On the next blog I'll be fitting the door weather seals and fitting a couple of beautiful old badges that friends have given me.
         

Copyright 02.04.24 all rights reserved.

My Other Blogs:
1961 BSA A10 Super Rocket Motorcycle:
http://60sclassicmotorbikes.blogspot.com/2012/07/before.html

1961 Ariel Arrow Super Sport Motorcycle :
http://60sclassicmotorbikes.blogspot.com/2014/01/1961-aerial-golden-arrow-restoration.html

Miniature Land Rover Defender:
http://miniaturelandrover.blogspot.com/2016/02/1-miniature-land-rover-defender-idea.html?view=timeslide

Motorcycle Trailers / Caravans:
http://motorcycletrailersandcaravans.blogspot.com/2018/01/1-motorcycle-trailers-problem.html



Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday 30 January 2024

26. Karmann Ghia Restoration - Dashboard and Hood Frame

 

Well this is the point at which I make a bad decision and without studying the dashboard too closely, I decided to start building the dashboard.  So after fitting and wiring the switches I decided to fit a new cigarette lighter. I managed to buy a suitable replacement for the original, that was missing, and offered it to the hole in the dash, only to find that the hole was too small. I was now faced with the problem, how to make the hole bigger? Now obviously I could try using a hand file, but the bezel was only 1mm wide and I would need to be very accurate. Plus I wanted the hole exactly central to the existing one. So I bought a 24mm Q-Max cutter and then set about making a spacer, to fit the hole in the dash, with a hole in the middle for the cutter bolt to pass through. This spacer then held the cutter exactly in the centre of the hole in the dash. Then with masking tape, to stop the cutter marking the dashboard paint, I cut the hole and it was perfect.

The next job was to renovate the clocks and as soon as I put them on the bench I noticed that I had two clocks with grey faces and one with a black face. The time clock was definitely an odd one out. Well I searched the web for a "grey" clock but could not find one anywhere. But eventually I found a grey faced Rev Counter of the correct size and purchased that. The next job was to strip and clean the speedo and fuel gauge. Removing the bezels and glass was a slow and delicate operation 
without breaking the glass  but the result was excellent and they now look beautiful. 

At this point I still hadn't realised the mistakes I was making, but it is visible in this picture. So Now I decided to buy the upper and lower dash pads. I had to wait some time for the top pad to arrive from the USA and the bottom pad came from Germany.

In the mean time I could fit the radio. This is a replica vintage look radio with DAB, USB and Bluetooth with four speaker outputs and a separate feed for a sub speaker.


Well my dashboard pads arrived and as soon as I offered them up to the dashboard my mistake was obvious. The holes at the top left and right on the dashboard were still visible below the pads. Plus more slots on the far right and left. I had mistakenly thought that the pads would cover these holes and I was wrong. I had really wanted to keep the blue painted dash. But now I had no choice. The whole dashboard had to be stripped again and I had to order the wood laminate facia. 

So while I waited for the dash facia to arrive, I decided it was time to fit the windscreen. You will have read that I broke the original screen getting it out. So I now had a new screen, new rubber and new chrome trims. Now I have a very good friend who used to work for Autoglass as a fitter. So I asked him if he would help and he came along to the workshop. 


As usual, nothing is easy, we managed to get the new rubber around the glass but could not get the chrome trim to fit and after a whole night of trying, we gave up and went home. I spent the next few days reshaping the chrome trims (which come flat) to fit the shape of the screen and my friend returned for another attempt. Surprise surprise, it wouldn't fit on the car. The whole screen and rubber appeared bigger than  the aperture. In a final desperate attempt, I found the old, 50 year old, screen rubber and spent a whole day cleaning it up. My friend returned for a third attempt and this time, with the original screen rubber, it fit!


The wood laminate arrived and it was time to start reassembling the dash. With the laminate stuck in place with contact adhesive, I now had the job of cutting out all of the holes. The larger holes were not too difficult, using a sharp Stanley Knife to carefully cut around the hole. But the switch holes posed a small problem as some of them were not indented on the laminate. I ended up using a small drill from the other side of the dash to find the centre of the holes and then drilling from the front by hand with the correct size drill. 

After refitting all of the clocks and switches I could now fit the two new top and bottom pads. I had previously only laid them in place. It was now time to fit them properly. Well the first thing that I discovered was that the captive bolts on the bottom (German) pad were 6mm. No problem. However the bolts on the top (American) pad were imperial and after a lot of searching I discovered that they were 3/16" Whitworth, which of course, I didn't have!  This meant a trip to a local Nut and bolt company who fortunately found some and gave them to me (Thank you).  Getting the nuts onto these pads is extremely awkward and takes ages to do, but there it is, fitted!

So now a change of direction, as I was looking at how to fit the four loudspeakers for the radio. Now the rear speakers had to go into the rear plastic quarter panel interior trims and these trims were in really bad condition. They had become brittle and had much of the edges broken off and one trim was actually broken in half. I searched for new ones on the web and found that they were really expensive. So I decided to try and repair them. I backed each one with thin aluminium, held in place with epoxy resin and pop rivets. Hopefully, once they are trimmed with vinyl, they will look fine.

Now in order to fit these panels, the hood frame had to be in place first. So it was time to fetch the frame down from the loft and have a go at fitting it. I had previously stripped the frame and had it powder coated. So now was the time to fit it. Well it's really nice to have something go well for a change and the frame fitted easily and even the rear window catch worked correctly.


So next time I'll be reassembling the doors and fitting the engine.








Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)