Really OT Kit Kar Build

Unfortunately this is very short, but my wife shot a couple videos of me behind the wheel. We had a nice sunny day and got the SS 100 out for its first ride with both of us in it.





But when I put gas in it it was seeping bad at the top of the tank and I had to tear this all apart and completely regasket it.

Here’s what it looks like after I added 13 new screws and some internal back up to the tank.

That red plastic Wisco brand fuel cap is unfortunately quite old. It needs replacing.

 

I got the fuel tank to seal up tight which Is a real joy. Unfortunately I messed up the fuel sender somehow. It appears to be a loose ground at the gage.

Anyhow I put some gas in it and took my wife out for a ride today. It starts instantly and runs good when cold but as it warms up it starts to get rich and load up at idle. I think the float may be a little bit heavy with dry gas and also I think the main jet and idle jet are slightly clogged & the idle air bleed is very clogged.

But it starts right up and I did get it up to 55 which is the fastest so far. My wife took this little video of me backing out of the garage today.

https://youtu.be/XIJ8CTPUM9I

 

I knew that was nonsense about a loose ground to gauge. I screwed up the ground inside the tank by using too much sealant.

I have devised a method to repair this without disassembly. I must add a tiny stainless ground screw from the outside.

I got the carburetor tuned up and it starts and idles and runs much better but I could not take it very far because I blew the oil pressure sender. I think my oil pressure relief valve is stuck and it’s causing very high oil pressure.

There’s actually one on each end of the engine and I’m not sure if it’s one or both. I have to dig into it now.

Also I measured my temperature sender which is supposed to be 100 ohms and it is 16,000. I need two new senders now.

 

I could not get the temperature gauge to work but I got the oil pressure sender leak sealed up. After I cleaned up the pitting on the oil bypass plunger, the pressure came down to a more normal 30 psi.

I took the carburetor and distributor out and overhauled them both.

Actually I just cleaned the distributor up and put it back in after straightening out the bent clamp. What moron…!



It was in perfect shape. The carburetor was a different story.

Every hole in the carburetor pointing towards the sky except the Venturi was plugged with dirt. All the air bleeds just simply plugged. The main jet was half plugged & the carburetor was full of dry gas residue.

I spent some time cleaning it up and flat filing the base. I also flat file the manifold so everything would seal 100%.

Now if only the rest of the manifold was 100% good. But it’s not. I’m gonna have to give it a propane test because I think there are some minor air leaks that are causing me to have a stumble.

Whoever stripped off the EGR valve and the vapor recovery purge system from this car didn’t do a good job of plugging up the manifold.

Anyhow I static timed the car with my fluke meter and The dwell was OK. The car started right up and it ran pretty well once I adjusted the carburetor. I drove it around and I was pretty happy with the performance overall except for that little stumble off-idle.

Of course it was that stumble that caused me to stab the gas, laying rubber in the driveway.

 

Well An inspector from the California Highway Patrol came to my house this morning. I finally got my car approved by the highway patrol and the DMV. Vaahoooo!

Now it has license plates and registration, and the title will soon be in the mail.

Considering that I’ve had this car for 21 months now it is really fantastic that I finally got it registered, and in the end I really had no problems at all.

The inspector looked at the serial numbers and the speedometer and the engine of the car and decided what it was, & that was that.

There were no questions about missing smog equipment or if it was too low, whether my lights were strictly legal, or if the horn and wipers work. Nuthin’!

 

Nice joyride time!

 

A little bit. But this car still needs much work. The frame is crap up front.

I will be taking it apart again.

 

I got the plates mounted, but the rear mounts still need reinforcement. The front looks better after trimming the crooked fender tips to match. I did this with a pneumatic cutoff wheel, and then board-sanded it even by hand. Unfortunately I took pics before the touch up paint.

before: Marking with blue tape really shows up the ugliness. How come the previous owner never fixed this snaggletoothed mess?


after:


I retuned the carb and it’s running well in the garage. We have been too socked in with fog to go driving yet.

 

So I still have this awful hole in the fender where the steering shaft enters.


My first cardboard pattern for a trim plate.


Hogging out the rough part from a bit of aluminum.

Polished up a bit, with hand-cut rubber gasket, I’m showing the first trial fitting on the fender. I had to pull the steering column apart for the installation.

 

In my labors I discovered that the body is still sitting on the steering stabilizer, even though I had lowered the mount. This was a problem from the beginning.

I re-welded the steering shaft and reassembled the car, then took it out for a ride to the VW shop. It looks much better with the trim plate.


The paint on the shaft was still soft and of course I scratched it up.

The paint on the shaft was still soft and of course I scratched it up.

I had just overhauled the carburetor and the car ran better than ever, but far from perfect. I had to set the idle too high.

I had also removed the front shocks which were stiff as a rock. The car was much quieter and more comfortable and I drove it on a bumpy road on purpose so everything would shake down.

If you’ve ever heard about bump steer on vehicles that have unequal length tie rod ends, this would be a prime example. The left front wheel has a tie rod half the length of the right, and it tended to jump around quite a bit, without shocks.

I didn’t drive it over 45 mph.

There is random banging noise as the chassis loads and unloads during body roll. There is so much rust and damage to the frame, and the front axle attachment to the chassis is largely ornamental. It slips under pressure because the frame head is so weak it cannot be located solidly. The sheet metal floor amplifies the noise to a serious boom.

It’s a total joke at this point, but it was still great to drive it around town.

I bought a new rag joint and a new intake manifold, as both mine suck. I also got a fake K&N air filter element. All from EMPI. I don’t expect greatness.

On the way back I lost a wheel cover. Now I have a reason to customize the wheels One of them had a dent, and that’s the one I lost.

Now the cylinder head bolts are starting to come loose and I noticed oil seepage around the right rear of the engine. I’m going to have to go through the engine from top to bottom.

I also found the master cylinder was starting to leak. The brakes were soft at first, and I found fluid under the car when I returned. I went back and bought a new master cylinder.

I have had my fun for now, and now the work resumes. Last night I drained and removed the fuel tank and its bracket.

All the wiring is disconnected, battery and front floor are removed. Two dozen screws are out and about two dozen remain. Also the rag joint has to be split, and the front parking light brackets must be cut loose.

But I designed the wiring so it all stays with the body. The windshield is off, top down, floor gone.


Soon I will be able to hoist the body off and start chopping the frame.

 

I have the rear body apart and on a cart.


I built the reversible hoist in 1973. I built the cart yesterday out of a couple of old plan carts from our engineering office.


Our old office finally went paperless and I recycled all of the carts.

 

Here you can see my initial frame mods. I had to do this to stiffen the rear frame and get the body off the muffler.


First I added the square tube between the shock towers. This bears the rubber body mounts (not shown) below the body.


Two pieces of galvanized tubing brace the shock towers down to the square tube crossmember under the frame fork. Two more pick up the frame at the bumper brackets.



None of those tube steel to tube steel bolted connections had sleeves in the tube, but they all do now. I sleeved each connection, plus some that haven’t been made yet, in preparation.

 

I spent some time examining the car tonight. Right there is where the axle smacked the frame doing violent burnouts.

Did it even worse on the passenger side.

I put together this cart to rest the front part of the body on while I work on the frame.

 

The weighting is the hardest part.

I had to counterweight the reversed hoist quite a bit. I used a piece of conduit as a cross bar and I used the front bumper as the spreader bar.

Here she is off on the cart.

 

I got the garage organized some more and I took my funky master cylinder arrangement apart so I can begin rearranging the brakes.

Before I can do any other work to the frame I need to figure out how and where I will mount the master cylinder and establish the brake line routing so I can make allowances in the frame.

The sheet metal that attached the master cylinder to the frame was badly rusted. I chiseled it all away and reattached the master cylinder with this series of bolts, spacers, nuts, clips, and struts. There’s a half inch all-thread that goes clear through the frame tunnel to the other side. There were already holes rusted through the frame so I didn’t actually have to drill them. LoL

This was a super hokey arrangement, but I didn’t have to spend any money to put it together, and it actually worked ok.

As the master cylinder stayed in its original position and the pedals were moved rearward 15 inches, the brake pushrod was extended with a piece of water pipe and some basic barnyard welding.

I burnished off the old rust, paint and dirt, to make sure it was sound, before I actually used the old rod.

Not so much the master cylinder itself, which started to leak a little bit after driving the car four or five times.

Anyway, I went to the Volkswagen Shop, and now I have a new master cylinder, and a new steel brake line kit, and all of that old stuff has been removed from the car.

it’s difficult to tell in my photos but this car also had the rag joint from a Ford on it and I bought a genuine Volkswagen rag joint to put on the car. The Ford part worked but it didn’t fit quite perfect, and looked like shit.

Soon I will be cutting and rebuilding the frame and in the process I will be able to get rid of this ugliness.

 

Damn... That pans been molested. If it was me, I'd consider building a new tube frame from scratch.

 

How's the little car doing?

 

Hey guys it’s been a long time since I posted progress on the kit car. I guess it’s way past time for an update!

I did, but this is not a high HP car, and once the frame is extensively remodeled it will be OK.

At one time this car had brand-new pans put into the frame, but the frame itself needed work. It wasn’t well done. There’s gonna be a lot of little holes to weld up and I have to correct the patchwork at the pedal area. The whole frame forward of the firewall is going to go bye-bye. As you will see I have already chopped off big pieces.

SO Much work has gone on since I last posted about it here. I am also posting about this car on a welding forum and a Volkswagen forum and I just sort of lost track of this thread.

I towed the chassis out to my boat yard and stripped it completely except for the rear suspension and brakes.

Here you can see I am test fitting some frame rails.


I strip off the wheels and the front axle assembly and brake master cylinder.


I take the engine off and roll it into the garage on a little cart for safekeeping.

The rusty tubing all came off and got cleaned and repainted.

The whole forward frame is going to change, and I had to start chopping it away so I can do various things to the chassis.

This is all 1980s repair work, done over the rusty chassis, the cancer of which is revealed when I split the tunnel open.

Not only was there lots of old oil and brake fluid inside the tunnel, there was quite a bit of debris from mice nesting in the tunnel. I set the stuff on fire with my grinder, and went through several rounds of decontamination to get all the burnt crap out.

You can see here I have stripped a lot of it down to bare metal and just shot it with some rust-converting oil.

I built a primitive trunnion from random junk, so I could flip the chassis over.



I propped it up with a steel saw horse and steel tubing, and went to work on the bottom.

I pinned some steel tubing through each shock absorber perch, for legs to steady the chassis.


I burnish everything down to bare metal with wire brushes. There was a lot of very light rust, and it all came off quite easily, as well as the layers of black paint, grease, and dirt, which this car had acquired in various places over the past 50 years.

I would have disassembled the rear suspension as well but the main pivot bolts are rusted in place after 50 years and it seems impossible to get up the backside of the threads. Fortunately, although Rusty, this was a low mileage chassis and the rubber suspension bushings are still fine. If it had sat out in the desert 50 years, they would be crumbling; but this car was stored indoors its whole life after kitting.

Cleaning up the chassis…


The transaxle is all cleaned up and ready to repaint.

 

There was a lot of random casting flash on the transmission case, and I knocked a lot of it off with the grinder, which make it looks a lot nicer.

I burnished the entire transmission case with wire brushes down to the bare aluminum, and washed it with acetone. Here it’s getting a paint job on the hoist with self etching fusion paint.

This is a preliminary mock up of the new front framing arrangement.