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Rays 1973 412 build thread (finally)
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 8:40 am    Post subject: Rays 1973 412 build thread (finally) Reply with quote

Its been about a decade coming.....but at 8:35am this morning my 1973 VW412.....whose engine self destructed in and around march 2003.....arrived from long term storage...to its new garage in Des Moines Iowa.

I should have initial pictures up by afternoon. For the most part I will post links to my photobucket account because I will document all of the processes. I will also put this thread up on the 411/412 forum on STF.

Basics/background/story of the car:


Sorry this will be long...

I got this car in 1993. From about 1987 forward I was driving a gold 1972 412 four-door which came with an automatic as a daily driver.

At one point living in Atlanta, I T-boned a van due a failed traffic light. Needed a new chassis. Found a 1972 411 wagon up on blocks. Took two days to strip the gold four door and swap engines and drivetrain.
I drove for about 2 years.It ran like a top...put a zillion miles on it...but it It had lots of problems that were unrepairable (previously poorly welded front end change).

All of my driving life I looked for a two door with 4-speed. I had installed the 4-speed from a 411- two door wreck I had found in Oklahoma City....in the gold 412....then in the grey 411 wagon.....then when a 1973 412 wagon presented itself....I stripped and scrapped the 411 (dont cry both the gold 412 and the grey 411 were unrepairable)....the engine, driveline and new suspension components went into the blue 412 variant.

I was a happy camper....great car! I drove this group of type 4's....roughly 300,000 miles collectively because I worked a job as a regional technical rep...and covered 13 states from Atlanta. All the while...looking for one particular car.

There was a very interesting VW shop on the east side of Atlanta, east of Decatur near Avondale estates. It was one of a zillion places I used to prowl for parts. I always told the old man and his son every time I came in...what I was looking for and asked if they had seen any cars like this. Nada.

One day...we hear the garage is closing. the old man is retiring. Im buying some trinkets and I ask my usual...."seen any type 4 two doors"?
The old man thinks for a minute and he says...."you know...I think I remember that about 10 years ago.....this guy brought one in with a blown engine....he lived out near stone mountain in XXX area. The owners son didnt want to pay the tab for a new engine so he took it home".

I had heard this same story a zillion times....but I went out exploring anyway. When I got to the street/house described.....I looked out back....and under a old car port...I see the rear end of a 1973 412. I get out and go look.

Its complete...not a scratch on it except for a small rust hole where the water from a leaky roof dripped for ages. It is a two door...with factory four-speed!

Behind the rear seat...is a cardboard box with plates from:
Germany (oval tourist plate), Norway, North Carolina, Georgia. In the glove box is this pack of documents:

End of assembly line printout
original insurance documents from Frankfurt Germany
original emmissions manual
original owners manual with stamp book complete
tag for a motorola saphire AM/FM radio (in the dash)
documents from a dealer in Frankfurt pertaining to purchase and installation of a Blaupunkt Wolfsburg III Am/shortwave radio (in the box with the plates complete!)
an original European dealer guide complete with foldout maps of all of Europe (still has the Berlin wall clearly marked)
the original shippings and customs documents in triplicate...showing that the car was purchased as a tourist vehicle by an American teacher in Frankfurt, driven for a year or two, sold to an American air force serviceman, shipped to Oslo Norway, tagged and driven for a while, then shipped to the US.

The last tag sticker was 1983.

I had to have this car.
I knock on the door...speak to the son....and he tells me a short story...and says..."yeah....I guess I could sell it but it aint going to be free just because its old and doesnt run"....""I need $300". Shocked . Rolling Eyes Very Happy ... Laughing ... Wink .....he says...."it will cost you a bundle to get running and since no one knows how to work on them...I'm betting it ends up in the scrap yard anyway."

I act like its pulling my own teeth....then I say...well....OK...I guess I could part with $300.
I go down and get $300 from the teller machine. Come back the next day and tow it to my girlfriends house. A week later....with my spare engine installed...I drive by and blow my horn at the guy out in his yard. I think he crapped himself...and looked not too happy.

I drove this car all over the south, then moved to Dallas...and drove it all over the central southwest. Built a new engine for it in 1995. It was my daily driver until 2003. At the time of its demise.....the entire front and rear suspension down to the last nut and bolt were new/rebuilt.

Its been sitting for a while, has minor rust and is covered with an inch of dust. But its complete and I am about 50% done with rebuilding the original engine case.

More to come. Ray
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Mike Fisher
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"I think he crapped himself....and looked not too happy." Laughing
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dawie
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 10:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You must by very happy to eventually have the car back with you.

Congratulations!
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19super73
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Woot! Can't wait for the pics and the resurrection!

Applause
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 17, 2012 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some pictures. It may look ugly...but thats because it was totally primer at the time of storage. Lots of light surface rust. Only five known rust throughs in easily fixed spots. I have new front fenders and a good rear deck lid...but will be restoring these parts as well so all can see how to do certain type 4 only parts restos...like the body solder fix for the right front fender rust line and R&R of the engine deck lid rust throughs.

The inetreior was already gutted by me but I have most of an entire new interior in parts...carpet, panels, headliner...working on the seats and I have a solution for the dash resto. The trunk is ugly but I made patterns for the liners and vinyls long ago and have sources for mathcing materials.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


The rear bumper has one fixible dent. Its not twisted...just only held on by two bolts at the moment. This car will have the bumpers and trim dechromed and painted black baked epoxy....including finger plates and drip rail trim. The original color is L96M maraton blue metallic and will go back to that with black accent. The headlight surrounds will be body color. I will make a black set to try them on as I have several sets of bezels.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


The engine compartment will be painted Ford engine gray because colors like L-96M never last inside of the heat and oil

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Lots more to come. Ray
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My god Ray, this has been a long time coming- feeling really happy for you! Keep the progress and pics coming.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ray this will be intresting to watch, looking forwart to next session!

/Lars S
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, Ray, I'll race ya! Laughing
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tram wrote:
Hey, Ray, I'll race ya! Laughing


Races restoring 411/412's .....can also be a race toward hanging yourself or having a heart attack! Laughing

A little more of the back story may help to understand why I am not in a hurry.

During those years of driving several 411's and 412's a zillion miles.....all along the way I seemed to have quite a bit more time and space to work on them. So I learned the ins and outs of alot of the wear parts. I found a lot of solutions on what would fit and what would work.

The cool thing is that as I went through each chassis and retired it....whole sub-assemblies like front and rear suspension, engine, tranny..whatever...that were brand new or restored at that moment...simply went from one car to the other.

So....when this car blew the engine, it was the most restored at the time. When it was parked, every last nut and bolt of the front suspension was new. It has the bronze idler bushing. Steering box with new bearings and seal and pumped with synthetic grease. New type 4 outer tie-rods, new type 3 inner tie rods, NOS type 4 ball joints with grease fittings and gasket seal modification, new delrin centering rings on the radius arms, new dual durometer radius arm donuts, urethane sway bar mounts, Audi stub/strut mod with KYB Gr-2 struts, and.....a hybrid strut bushing using the upper shell with symmetrical bolt pattern ....with centers cut out and asymmetrical late model bushing seats welded in....and an NOS centerlink. I have new urethane rabbit control arm bushings. Not ideal...but better than stock.

I will be doing delrin control arm bushings and make a pictorial of it.

I never got to install a rebuilt centerlink on my car.....I rebuilt them for other people.....but I I will be doing a pictorial rebuild of one soon. Also I have not done the castor and camber mods on my car on the front...and will be doing a pictorial on that too. I have done them for others though and know they work.

I do have the twin swaybar mod on the rear end.

Anyway....The point was that while restoring a driving...or actually restoring sub-assemblies while it was a daily driver....I found that doing so caused old parts to excessively wear new parts attached to them. In a five year period....I actually had to rebuild the front end about 2.5 times.

I learned that certain things on 411/412's because of really long suspension components, high leverage, lack of adjustment points, and other material issues...these cars are best not driven long distances...until certain complete sub-assemblies are renewed or improved. Some of these parts are just too rare to keep wearing out prematurely.

This is why I tell every new owner of a 411/412 that found a bargain parked......if you value the car.... have some self control and do not drive it until you have done certain things to it.....or as Tram is finding out...and we all find out....these cars can be heart breakers.

I vowed that it would not drive again until it was done correctly.

The really cool thing is that over the 10 years its been sitting still...I have had piles of sub-assemblies to work with to improve things...and figure out how to do things. Thankfully I have been able to make some parts for others to try to prove what works and what does not.

The engine is nearly ready to start trial assemblies. I have 12 awesome Male cylinders to choose from.
One set is a brand new early 90's Mahle set complete (90 mm domes, wrist pins, rings etc.....I bought last year. oddly though, my bore gauge tells me that these are about .0015" slightly larger than I like. I say that because the ring gaps are slightly excessive....but the pistons and wrist pins are pristine.

So...I have a set of Deves rings new.

I have the set that came off when the engine blew and are pristine and ar actually tighter and straighter than the NOS ones. They still have some hatch marks and no scoring. The were a Cofap set that turned out to be mahle jugs an Kolbenschmidt pistons circa 1993. Superb. Those still measure great at the skirts...but each has a slight valve dent in them from the engine blow. I'll post a pic, they are worth saving for spares.

The last set is a set from the engine I stripped in 1995 that I built for this car. They are nice and straight with a few scores.

Engine line up:

Mahle 90mm domes
Pristine std/std crank I bought from Jake last year
Kolbenschmidt std/std bearings
Kolbenschmidt std rods
Double thrust cam bearings metal Leve from Jake)
9550 cam kit (chromolly pushrods, new rocker shafts, step studs for rockers, 911 valve adjusters, matched lifters, new cam gear, new crank gear, new springs, new retainers)
Intake valves new Intervalve stainless with stellite tips 42mm
exhaust valves Intervalve stainless 36mm w/9mm stems, stellite tips, chrome shaft
stock type 4 oil pump (I'm rebuilding two right now)
Also choice of a melling that I ran for a while wit ha modified spring system (more on that later)

heads are 1.7L Q heads with valves deshrouded, new seats with .006" interference, 53cc chambers...going out for refurb soon. Never been overheated...very clean. These are the original heads from this engine.
They have EZ-thread inserts for exhaust studs and use hardened 8mm studs in them. They worked great with 89K miles so I will use the same method again.

This is modified D-jet.

At the time of death it used a pertronix module in a rebuilt 205-905P distributor with adjustable trigger points position underneath, with both vacuum advance and retard and a 42Kv coil.

I'm working on an interesting exhaust.....a header just for 411/412. Well see how my welding is in the new year.
Ray
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ray, thanks for posting up pics of your car and of it's back story. I've never really looked at a T-4 (411 or 412) very closely, but that might have something to do with not many of them surviving the salt in my area. Your pics helped me understand a few things (in particular the engine compartment shot).
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 23, 2012 11:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks Bob, I iwll be posting a lot of detailed pics of the components of this car. It may be helpful to a lot of people. The engine compaqrtment layout is very different in certain ways. Its also very confined. Ray
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19super73
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any updates?
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just trying to get the garage all fitted out. The past two days are the first two days above 20 degrees in about 3 weeks.

We had a foot of snow two days before X-mas.....and its been largely in single digits or low in the double digits ever since. It was 40 yesterday and almost hit 50 today.

But....last weekend I bought a 30-60,000 BTU propane heater. I am building a pair of panels that will stand up along the width of the garage door. One has a 10" hole with tin flashing it in so the heater snout can be plumbed through with aluminum tube through snugly...from the outside. This way I will not have any open flame in the garage.

I also just got in last week....a 300 watt magnetic heater for the underside of my parts washer so I can get the solvent up to room temp. I am building new work bench and fold up shelves to the left of the parts washer tonight.

I hope to have the car off the ground this weekend and start pulling the suspension front and rear. Ray
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 3:13 pm    Post subject: rays 73 412 Reply with quote

nice car ray,, long job to doo,, if you want snow tire i have a spare set Very Happy happy new year,,bb412
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 5:51 pm    Post subject: Re: rays 73 412 Reply with quote

bb412 wrote:
nice car ray,, long job to doo,, if you want snow tire i have a spare set Very Happy happy new year,,bb412


Thank you! and happy New Year to you as well! It will be a while before I start thinking of tires.....but I am shopping for some for my daily driver golf right now! Ray
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you need any parts, let me know, I may be able to help out.
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raygreenwood
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

19super73 wrote:
If you need any parts, let me know, I may be able to help out.



For the most part there are no parts I am missing that are not parts that I will be fabricating anyway......but I may be in the market for some spares of certain types. Sometimes it is easier to have one laying on the workbench to rebuild before you remove the other.

Also....I am doing pictorial how to's of everything I rebuild. Very soon I will be starting a front strut/Audi mod pictorial. What I may need is a worn out middle years late 411/ early 412 strut cartridge for the photos. I am going to list all parts from all years side by side so that people can see the differences in dimensions. Ray
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

any updates on this? Smile
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 4:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As of this weekend....I have all of the front suspension off and laying on the workbench. All of the parts had less than maybe 10K miles on them when I parked her....right at 10 years ago with a blown engine.

For the most part its in excellent shape......but there are some expected issues. All of the urethane bushings I had installed were rock hard and literally shattered upon removal.....yet another reason I am not a big fan of urethane. It hardens up by about 3-5% per year.

The brand new KYB GR-2's are leaking out. As I get parts cleaned up over the next few weeks I will do pictorials on audi mode struts rebuild, steering box rebuild, control arm bushing rebuild, grease fitting and gasket rebuild for steering box, bronze idler bushing mod and a new radius arm bushing and control arm bushing mod. Ray
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PostPosted: Sat May 10, 2014 1:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Long time away for me...glad to see you've started back up on your 412 Ray. Mine's still in the garage, waiting for money/time on the dropped valve seat rework...like you, job changes have been a real buzz kill lately. End of Space Shuttle's been a real challenge.

Still have your reworked steering link from ~2004 in it, (thanks!).

(MGVWFAN)
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