Really OT Kit Kar Build

Closing up a big gap where the plates don’t quite cover.





The frame painted and bolted on.


This really reinforces things underneath the running board and fender edges.

 

Too cool!

 

This is why it’s always good to tear an old car apart and put it back together yourself. You find stuff like this buried under the rust and paint.

For some reason, the piece of tubing used for the steering shaft had a cut in it.

This is bizarre as the cut isn’t completely through, but the tube cutter mark goes 2/3 of the way around and is quite deep at one point. It might have gone unnoticed, because this tube was dirty and rusty and painted badly.

Now I burnished this tube on the wire wheel until it was shiny and ready to paint. That’s when I noticed the defect.

YIKES!

 

Well I spliced the tube back together after cutting it completely apart.

I got the steering set up & the steering wheel on and everything seems OK, although it’s rubbing on the fender just a little bit so I’ll have to cut some clearance in the fiberglass. There never was enough & before it was rubbing on the grill.

I got the windshield reinstalled and I cleaned up the windshield wiper motor. I put some new wires on that and installed it with new blades.


Unfortunately they’re big ugly black modern blades instead of the cute little chrome blades that should be on it. At some point somebody stole the blades off of this car.

I also made a hood prop rod and retainer clips, because I was tired of holding my hood open with a piece of rope. LOL

 

I put some temporary floorboards in the front compartment. These were cut from an old washing machine, bent in a vise with angle irons and clamps, and installed with 1/4-20 bolts and #12 screws.




Very light and sturdy enough to carry the batteries.

The tank frame is screwed to the chassis, and the fuel tank is in and plumbed up now.

This car had serious fuel system leaks. I hope I have solved those.

They adapted 3/8” SAE fuel hose to the 6mm VW tubing. Poorly.

I made a custom adaptor to solve that issue, and installed all new 10mm & 6mm German hose, bypassing the old tubing completely.

I also left off the electric fuel pump. I think it was installed because the VW pump couldn’t suck fuel with air leaks in the system. Or perhaps it is dead & I will need the electric pump.

Soon we will know.

 

I have not started the engine yet. Still wiring the car, and it takes forever, because I keep changing the design to reduce wires. I am finally wiring the fuse box, switches next.

Meanwhile I fiddle about with little things that bug me, like the steering column bracket. This crude, rusty chunk bit me every time I put my hand under the dash. I trimmed it down and shaved it, then installed some extra air.

This thing was a menace, but now it’s sanded and painted and back on the job.

Those ratchet straps holding the gas tank down were so hokey I couldn’t sleep at night. I made some nice proper steel straps to hold it down.

 

I have been trying to align the body better, and add rear body mounts. In some of the pics above you can see where the underside of the fiberglass was reinforced with long hollow' blisters" in several places. Unfortunately also on the rear facia panel touching the muffler.

What's inside those fiberglass reinforcement "blisters" on a plastic kit kar?

Half of a cardboard tube.



In this case, burnt to a crisp, as the rear body reinforcement was rubbing on the muffler. Actually, there were no body mounts at all, aft of the seatbacks. The rear body sat on the muffler, and where I clouded in yellow the muffler had worn thru the fiberglass and cardboard completely.


Anyhow I carved all of this away, so I have 1.5" clearance to the muffler now. Later I will buy/build a better muffler, and redesign the reinforcement to not hit it. The body alignment continues...

 

The builder of this car left out quite a number of bolts, and at least six steel brackets, which are integral to the structure of the car. I’m getting it squared away nicely now but it was a wobbly mess when I got it.

The worst part of this entire car was the electrical wiring. What the hell is this pile of wires in the nose of the car? Some of it went to the fuel gauge. The rest is for the lamps and it is a tangled mess.



Here I have loosened the fuse panel, but otherwise the wiring is exactly as I received it. Yuck!

I tore the wiring out of this car a year ago, because it was a mess of crude taps, splices, extensions, and loosely crimped terminals. It’s still not all together but the lights are done, the fuse panel is in, all the major wires are done, and I have the gages polished up and gettin’ wired.

Of course, unlike a production vehicle where everything is well thought out in advance, nothing is well thought out on this car, and you have to fiddle with every little bit.

The original wiring harness seemed to wind up a little short at random switches and every damn lamp, and so it got bits spliced onto it.

Wires were spliced with electrical tape and marked with 30 year old bits of sticky masking tape.

Yet here was 3 extra feet of harness just coiled up underneath the gas tank doing nothing!

Well it was soaking up the dripping gas, which turned all the electrical tape into goo and made the colors on the wire run off.

 

Cut corners is never fun correcting down the road

 

The only thing that saved this car is that nobody ever took it down the road. Less than 400 miles on the clock since it was built.

 

Yippie! Today It started and ran, but I did not drive it. I just poured some gas in the carburetor and ran it a little bit in the garage. It revved up and it idled down ok. Nice!

All the wiring is complete but there are 3 terminals I did not solder yet. Just crimped. Also there is no switch panel and I have four switches just hanging loose under the dash.

I only have one seat in the car and there's no doors yet. But it’s coming together fast now.

 

Final wiring done.


I polarized the generator today because it wasn't charging. I also started the engine on the stock fuel pump, and it worked fine. Seatbelts are in, and I am working on the seat mounting.

 

The seats don’t fit well & never did.

It was 1AM when my wife stumbled out to the garage and told me to stop drilling. I was on the last seat bolt: #8.

The seats are still not in the right position. They both need to move closer to the tunnel. They interfere with the doors.

This car will have a lot of extra holes to plug in the floor.;(

 

I got the seats and doors on today, and then I climbed in and out of that car for the first time in 19 mos.
Holy Frijoles it is tiny, and the doors are so small as to be worse than useless!

I am not kidding. It is literally easier to climb over the door, and I believe this will lead me to "weld" the doors shut with fiberglass and epoxy.

Also, my steering wheel needs to be 30mm closer to the instruments. I'm going to bob the column at some point.

 

The SS is running and today it went out for the first drive in 19 mos.

In line at the DMV.

Now I have to take it to the Highway Patrol for inspection.

I took Judy for her first ride in the car. She was suitably excited.

 

Congrats! That’s an awesome accomplishment

 

OMG a stick shift car! It has been 19 years!

It just dawned on me that I haven’t once driven a stick since my father died in 2002. I drove his Civic to my sister’s house one time.

I always drove a stick shift until 1990 when I sold my ‘59 Edsel. That car had a strong engine & a weak transmission, and once I put fat tires on, it ripped out the first gear in about two months.
Anyhow this came to mind when I recalled what my wife said as she was taking a video of me driving the car.

She caught me doing a heel and toe downshift, & sticking my arm outside the car for a signal, instead of using the blinkers.

She told me that “all your feet and hands have to work at the same time, and you need three feet, and an extra hand to work the turn signal!”

35 years ago I lost my glasses in the river and I had to teach my wife to drive the ‘59 Edsel which was three on the tree with overdrive. It was a grueling experience from which my transmission never recovered.

 

I have an inspection scheduled with the highway patrol January 5. I talked to the officer who will do the inspection today and he seems very reasonable and it doesn’t sound like I will have any problems. At least getting a title. Getting it on the highway might be a different story, but for the next 30 days I am legal.
other issues, the temperature gage is not working and I believe the sender is bad. I still have some gasoline vapors driving me nuts and I need a charcoal canister recovery system on this car.

The voltage regulator is a piece of Chinese garbage. It wasn’t charging, and I opened it up today to find various parts were shorting out, and all the points were so poorly adjusted as to be laughable. I don’t know if I can fix it or not, but I’m going to give it a try, because I was able to adjust all points to look square.

I have not adjusted a voltage regulator since I was driving the 47 Plymouth back in the 1980s. I don’t remember the procedure so I’m gonna have to drag out the motor’s manual.

 

I found a good used Bosch electronic voltage regulator for only $25! No more breaker points! Now I need to get the electronic ignition kit for the distributor, but for now it charges, so I’m gonna concentrate on the other problems.

I bought an imitation Volkswagen balljoint breaker tool at harbor freight, made in China of course. It looks like the real deal. The forging work looks very nice. Machine work….yuck.

I just hope the forging is not brittle around the pivot hole. Anyhow, if this works I will be able to take those front springs out. Since it’s going to be wet and I won’t wanna drive the car, I’ve got lots of time to do this before the roads dry up

I changed every fuel hose, because I had stupidly put restorer quality German Volkswagen hoses on this car, thinking they looked cool and very Volkswagen. And of course they fit perfectly.

They got soft because of gasohol. It was evaporating right thru the hoses, making my whole garage smell like gasoline.

Anyhow I now have modern USA Thermo plastic reinforced fuel hose that is resistant to modern fuels. It doesn’t quite fit, in other words it is very tight. Nothing is going to leak. I also have a brand new fuel pump because, why not?

Unfortunately I still have a vented gas tank. I want to close the vent and run it to a charcoal canister to control the vapors. Of course these things are totally obsolete and you can’t find them for sale anywhere.

I was just gonna go buy the cheapest most generic one from General Motors but they work differently than the Volkswagen.

The General Motors relies on a vacuum signal from the operating engine to initiate the vacuum valve/purge cycle and the Volkswagen uses air from the engine cooling fan to pressurize the canister and evacuate it to the air filter. You can’t pressurize the GM canister because it brings its purge air in thru a filter on the bottom.

But I can build whatever canister I need, because all I need is a gasoline resistant sealed container that I can fill with activated carbon, a bit of filter screen, and some 1/2” plumbing in and out. (13mm if I want it to be “really Volkswagen”.)

It normally goes inside the rear fender but I have lots of room above the transmission. That will keep the hoses short. Then I just have to seal my gas tank vent and run a vapor tube all the way back.