Joe's 1956 Canada Custom Project

[RustPatch]

Sunday night update. My back is being a little bitch so I'm gonna get all caught up ... thiis could be long.


I finished "rebuilding" the carburetor and had a leak problem which was just a bad float but I thought I could get by without doing the throttle shaft bushings ... this was wrong. Sent it down to Tim at Volkzbitz for bushings. He also found that the post on the diaphragm from the WW kit was a little too long so he replaced that. Then with the help of theSamba I just needed to clean up the surfaces better and use a thicker gasket. After that it went smoothly and the engine is now running properly.

Hardest part of doing the carb was finding this fitting for the vac line.

It's all together, all the fuel lines and vacuum line installed, BR8 vacuum advance distributor (From the guys at VWNOS, who were super helpful with some trouble-shooting). Some things still need to be cleaned up, like the oil cleaner, and breather tube but this is where it's at now.

Carb issue here:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=778705&highlight=

Clutch issue here:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=776763&highlight=


Time for metal work. I stripped out everything that was left in/on the car in preperation. Doors, headliner, hood and hood hinges, decklid mounts, hood latch and release cable, and the glovebox door all removed. I missed a couple door panel clips and, I just noticed today, four nails that hold up the carpet in the footwell area.

Metal work done by Brad Lang @ Plan B Hotrods. Brad was great to work with, lots of communication with little details and which way we wanted to go.

April 2023

Rear apron and bumper brackets removed. Rust underneath the bumper brackets. it's possible with a lot of time and money the apron could have been saved but the top edge was badly beat up and the exhaust area was also in rough shape.

Body braced and heater channels removed. The passenger side wasn't as bad as the driver side but both are getting replaced.

Test fitting the Klassic-Fab heater channels, fit was good as far as fitting to the body but the heater ducts at the back were in the wrong position and at the wrong angle to line up with the original mufflers. Also the lip for the carpet wasn't positioned correctly in the door opening. Had to cut some off at one end and add some at the other end.

Rear window gauges - removed rear inner louver/decklid mount panel and test fit replacement from donor oval window section.

blasting and epoxy

Spare tire well was in worse shape than originally thought and would need work.

Rear fenders are in really bad shape, front fenders are saveable but a lot of work. Headlight buckets are pushed in, dents everywhere, bondo everywhere else, and the metal is razor thin around the bullets. At this point I was still on the fence about repair vs. replace.

Passenger wheel well. May 2023

Test fitting Kaeger-nostalgie rear apron. Seems pretty good, pretty awful colour. The seal lip is a little larger than original but the decklid latch looks more like the original than the Autocraft apron.

Rear driver side crossmember/heater channel end cap area was in pretty rough shape with rust though to the lower edge of the quarter panel. It took some pretty creative repairing to make it look as original. Some repair panels had some things correct and some wrong. Brad and I were pretty happy with how it turned out. Thanks to Mika for his help and parts he supplied. Modified some of his 1955 and earlier parts to fit.

Passenger side wasn't as bad.

Heater channels fit in nicely now, used the heater tube from the original on one side and made the other.

Both rear mounts replaced with Virtanen parts.

Some of the little stuff ... Gauges repair, dents in the luggage area. holes from gas heater that were everywhere.

Close to caught up.
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I've been known to be wrong.

[earlywesty]

Nice updates. Keep em coming. We are in the middle of work 3 CDN customs right now, 2 of which are ovals!

[bwaz]

coming along really well Joe!

[RustPatch]

[RustPatch]

June 2023

New rear fenders. Perfect fit.

Spare wheel well and lower nose section of the front apron below the bumper brackets replaced. Wolfparts wheel well and a section cut from an Autocraft apron. The nose seems to come to more of a point than what seems normal to me but both parts fit together nicely. Brad hand made the piece that the tire rests on. The original was no good.

Then the decision was made to replace the front fenders. The fear of repair costs made me do it. I'm keeping them and maybe I'll learn to repair them myself when the project is done ...

BBT's. They fit nice, just needed a little massage at the corners where the apron meets the body. Just wish I could get an Oval fender with no horn grille cutout on the passenger side.

Bullet install - template from the original passenger fender.

Cip1 bullets. Is this normal on original parts? The drain hole is in the same location, left or right respectively, but the screw holes aren't.

Original passenger door needed a little work - small crease into the rear quarter.

Original driver door needed a lot of work. I don't remember if I mentioned it earlier but when I removed the door panel there was a flashlight in the door. The batteries in the flashlight ate through the outer door skin, inner door frame and into the heater channel. Even the donor door needed repair just to be the donor. It's gonna need a smidge of body filler.

Hood getting a little attention. Small dents around the wolfsburg crest removed and proprod tear repaired. Notice how nicely centred the trim, crest, and hood handle holes are?

Getting there. I hadn't seen the car with fenders on since I removed them in 2012. It was a little different. Good different.

Decklid needed a little repair. And the gauge repair under the window needed body work before the louvered mount was welded in. Also the over-rider holes were added to the fenders.

Engine Seal C-channel replaced

Dash holes filled.

August 2023

Back home and now I can learn how to do body work because I definitely can't afford not to. Updates complete. We're in real time now.

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I've been known to be wrong.

[VW_Jimbo]

Looking great! That’s a SHIT TON of work! It has taken me 40 pages to get all of that in! Great job!

Looking forward to the remaining work!
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Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[RustPatch]

[VW_Jimbo]

[RustPatch]

[RustPatch]

Siince I'm getting "closer" to paint, I need to sort out all the little bits that get painted so last weekend I found a pair of standard vent windows on Facebook Marketplace. I had to buy the door windows and rear quarter windows also but they were cheap and the vents were in rough shape ... which is what I wanted. The car came with a deluxe chrome vent window on the passenger side and I had picked up a set of standard vent windows quite a while back but they're in such good original driver shape that I didn't want to separate them so it's nice to find a beat up pair.

Original Polar Silver driver's and Chrome passenger's.

1st replacement set I bought (maybe Arctic Blue?) I've also got the matching divider bars.

Beat up set I just got (maybe Prairie Beige?) no dividers.

I also wanted to match the rest of the glass in the car as they're all original Duro-glas except the windshield (not original) and the deluxe vent window which is Sekurit. I picked one up from a local Samba member but it had some wierd markings on it which I assumed was from removing the glass from the frame. It did not come off with anything I had ... disappears when wet, but comes right back. A local glass shop told me to try Cerium Oxide and to lightly polish with no power tools. Yeah, that stuff works awesome!

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[RustPatch]

Can't let this get to page 3!

I haven't done much for a while, waiting for better temperature in the shop. I went through some boxes to sort out what's left and hopefully find something to do. I found the wiper motor assembly and all the bits and decided to get that all sorted.

The wipers were obviously later and creatively modified. The motor didn't look to be correct but after some digging I found it's just an older 2 terminal version ... with an odd, unmarked 2 terminal switch (correct me if I'm wrong). The motor is super quiet and seems to work perfectly. The switch also works. After testing that everything works I'm not going to disassemble anything unless I have to. There's a light layer of oil all over the assembly so it should stay protected until I need it and should clean up well enough.

The ends of the shafts are a little chewed up so I"ll try cleaning those up. Maybe replace, maybe have to take things apart.

Pretty much just needed the wipers, the little bearing caps, and all the rubber bits and it should be good to go ... whenever the day comes that I need it.

The headlight switch doesn't pull, push, turn so I may take it apart and see if I can fix it next. There seems to be a lot of good write-ups on these.

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I've been known to be wrong.