TheSamba.com :: View topic - Preserving Ruby, my 1963 Patina restoration project

Thu Jul 21, 2016 1:47 pm

A shot of the Trans

And the mess in my garage that afternoon...

Thu Jul 21, 2016 2:19 pm

Nice progress so far

Fri Jul 22, 2016 10:35 am

After stripping off all the bolt on parts from the pan like the shifter, brake, etc I decided to tackle the tar boards. Lots of guys will just chip into it with a screw driver and a hammer, or use a heat gun and then try to pull it up but both of those methods leave lots of nasty tar you still have to deal with. I decided to go a different route. I bought several pounds of dry ice and then a few bottles of isopropyl alcohol or rubbing alcohol which you can get at a drug store. Break up the dry ice in a large bucket and add a few bottles of the alcohol to it and presto, you have liquid nitrogen, sort of ;) Mix them together and then pour it on the tar board, it will immediately start crackling and making noise. Thats the tar board freezing and pulling off the pan. After the noise slows down, about 2 minutes, grab the tar board with some thick gloves and it will pull right off the pan leaving no mess!

And after about 40 minutes the flat pans were done.

Next step is getting the center tunnel done.

Fri Jul 22, 2016 10:55 am

The center tunnel was more of the same method but I used some metal to keep the ice mixture on top of the tunnel.

And here is the finished product

So with the Pan stripped I loaded it up in my truck with my brother and took it to the powder coater to be stripped, and coated. Again, its hard not to be happy with how nice and solid and straight this pan was to start with.

And after cutting off those snubbers I polished the metal so after coating it should look factory.

Fri Jul 22, 2016 10:58 am

:shock: :shock: wish I would have known that doing my 67'...going to have to add that to my arsenal of tricks :lol:

Fri Jul 22, 2016 2:47 pm

FullFender wrote: :shock: :shock: wish I would have known that doing my 67'...going to have to add that to my arsenal of tricks :lol:

It works like a charm and takes no time at all. The best part is that there is little to no mess since the mixture evaporates.

Fri Jul 22, 2016 5:16 pm

Cool trick with the dry ice - thanks for posting that.

Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:50 am

EverettB wrote: Cool trick with the dry ice - thanks for posting that.

No sweat, I hope others will give it a try. Huge timesaver!

Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:10 am

jasonvw wrote:

You mentioned you didn't like the tire combo. I dig it, What are the rears? I also love the body dolly idea, I will have the same space issues in the future with the next project. My girlfriend and I also call our Bug Ruby. :lol:

Sat Jul 23, 2016 10:12 am

sixfootdan wrote: jasonvw wrote:

You mentioned you didn't like the tire combo. I dig it, What are the rears? I also love the body dolly idea, I will have the same space issues in the future with the next project. My girlfriend and I also call our Bug Ruby. :lol:

The dolly comes in handy for sure when space is a concern. Being able to store all the parts under the car and still clear a standard garage door is a nice bonus. The rear tires were 195/60s and were just a bit too small for my liking. I like a fat tire tucked way up in the fender on my cars but lots of guys like that size. Wheels were Flat 4 BRMs.

Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:52 pm

So now that the pan is off getting coated and I have some time, I decided to get the trans up to Rancho for a rebuild and upgrade. Its the stock 6 volt trans and it looks to me like it had never been out of the car. The inside was ground out for the 12 volt conversion someone did in the past. Other than being pretty ugly, it seemed to function ok.

So I took it up to Rancho and we are going with a 12 volt freeway flyer trans, powder coated case and axle tubes, Late throw out bearing conversion, HD shaft and HD side plates. It should be a killer box when its done and look 100 times better than this mess. Now its just a waiting game.

Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:23 pm

I also decided to try my luck at removing the factory undercoating all over the underside of the body. Again, the OG paint under there was most likely going to be in mint condition since the coating was put on when the car was new so I was't about to go after it with a razor blade or screw driver. I tried the diesel fuel and scrub brush but that did nothing but waste 1/2 a day and make the car stink :) I decided the best bet would be to get the coating super hot and scrape it with a soft scraper. I broke out the heat gun and picked a few rigid plastic scrapers at ACE hardware. I shaved the ends of the scrapers into point to give them some bite into the rubber coating. I put the head gun on high and concentrated on a spot about 1x1 until it was super hot, then with the scraper the rubber coating just slides off.

It takes some time and every spot needs to be wiped down with Acetone after the rubber is gone to get the leftover adhesive off the paint but if you go slow, this is what you get.

It took me just over and hour to get this far and a few more hours should finish this wheel well. After Im done removing the rest of the undercoat I will buff all the paint to seal it up.

Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:53 pm

So after jumping around to a few other projects on the bug and doing some prospecting on the undercoating removal which looks like it will go well, I decided to get the motor apart and over to VW Paradise. By doing the tear down work myself I figured I would save Jason Lauffer some time and let him do the clean work while I did the dirty jobs. Motor is a B case, 1970 1600 Single port that ran pretty good. I never gave it a tune up or tired to make it perfect when it was in the car, I just drove it. Since Im going to all the effort on this car, I decided why not do the engine and try something new that I haven't done before. I have had 1600s, 1641s, 1776, 1835, 1914, 2007, 2276, and even a 2332 and each had their benefits. All were dual port. I did some looking around when planning this motor. Mainly I wanted to see what was possible with keeping the single port heads. I ran across this engine combo,
http://www.aircooled.net/1800cc-vw-engine-no-machine-combo/

It was not an engine I had ever thought about and I liked the fact that I already had many of the parts already. I had some H beam 5.4 rods I never used, an Engle 100 cam, and so I bought a counterweight 74mm crank and the thick top pistons to round out the engine. I also have a new set of Weber ICT carbs so those are going on this engine along with an A1 sidewinder header and muffler. Heads will be the OG single ports that Jason is reworking and valve jobbing. It won't set any land speed records but it will have nice power and probably live forever. I will be posting about the build in the near future.

My motor came apart pretty simply, and no surprises. All parts inside were stock and I could not find any evidence that the motor had ever been rebuilt. The case is nice so thats a big relief too.

Tue Jul 26, 2016 2:27 pm

Before I trucked everything over to Paradise I painted the cylinders and also the sump got the paint treatment too. I figured I would go gloss black on these parts and although I am still not decided on engine tin color, I plan to do the case black so I mixed up some gloss black and sprayed these parts up.

Then I smoothed off the raised ribs and polished them up for some nice contrast.

The 1800 engine build parts all ready to go.

And I grabbed a set of these valve covers since I rarely see them.

And now everything over at Paradise on the build cart ready to get processed

Tue Jul 26, 2016 2:53 pm

The last thing to tear down was the front beam. I really only need the torsion arms for my new beam so I pulled those off and then sold off the old beam.

My original stock spindles were in decent shape. I will clean these up and press off the knuckles for a future project.

The 2 inch narrowed beam was pretty well built but not what I want so I cleaned it up and sold it off.

That pretty much wraps it up for the greasy work. Now its back to getting all the trim etc off the body and getting it ready for new rubber and the rebuild.

Thu Jul 28, 2016 3:53 pm

Some shots after I removed all the rest of the trim and interior. Headliner came out and the car is basically stripped down as far as I plan to go aside from the fender trim that I will remove later.

I also tool apart the door locks to get them rechromed.

Does anyone know where the small C looking clip goes? I imagine it must go on the set screw somewhere but I can't see how to install it in the lock tumbler and it just fell out when I took the push button apart. Any help would be appreciated.

Wed Aug 03, 2016 12:00 pm

I have most everything off the body now and I have been buffing on it in all the spots that will be hard to reach once the pan is back on the car. I also finally got my pan back from powder coat and it looks killer! Gloss black looks better than new.

It looks pretty awesome sitting under that body.

I also picked up a bunch of other parts from the coater as well like my gas tank, spring plates, beam, trailing arms, various other gloss black parts and I got my engine tin as well which will match the gray of the seats. I am still waiting on my trans to be finished up and my motor is going together this week. I think by the end of this month it should be time to rebuild this car.

Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:47 pm

Holy crap. My buddy just found your post on my old car. All I can say is holy shit! Looks amazing so far

Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:55 pm

Your motivating me to build my ruby 63 rhd rag...grrrrrr I don't need another project!😊

Fri Aug 19, 2016 4:54 pm

That car is really special to me in many ways, I'm glad it is in the right hands. Bravo!