Carpet Time

Pop out #2 done and dusted

Finally installed the driver side pop-out window which is a bit of a bollox job to do without damaging the outer seal. Not the best VW design and near impossible to install with the plastic anti-rattle pieces (they have been left off for now)

Next will be to screw the latches to the 'C' pillar so it's all sealed up. I am told the carpet is now in Australia for the car so that will be next focus and then I may replace the pop-outs (both) after that with my NOS set including the anti-rattle pieces if I can. Not a job I am looking forward to. For now they pop out's can remain latched closed and they can't rattle!

1500 'S' Crankcase

I have had the original 1964 'S' crankcase sitting in the roof of the garage for years because it was cracked. Not the worst news as these early cases are a bit rubbish with the small galleries, small hardware and lack of cam bearings... but I wondered if it truly was beyond salvage so got it down onto the bench after work  today.

As can be seen, I had previously faced the cylinder base areas and installed M8 case savers.

The 1 & 2 side was cast on 15th of June 1964 (1st shift).

The 3 & 4 side was cast on 2nd of September 1964 (2nd shift).

I find it quite odd there was such a difference between casting dates but suppose it's correct as the car was built on the 17th of September 1964 so it's unlikely to be incorrectly stamped.

I will be grinding out the crack to see how bad it is soon.

TPS erratic so about to be replaced

While I was messing with the black VW ECU (Sam working on his lap top) and checking thermo fan turn on temperature etc, I took a couple of photo's of the inner metal panels.

Quite pleasant in there! And apart from the replacement headliner, all original items.

Nice huh.

After calibrating the TPS a few times, warming the engine up, messing with fuel maps, and generally being poisoned by fuel vapors, we concluded the TPS was failing after a while.

It seems to work until the car is warm and then goes full spastic.

So armed with this knowledge, a pair of new ones (1 plus a spare) have been ordered from https://www.cbperformance.com/ and will be here as soon as postage allows.

This is hopefully the gremlin I have been chasing for a while now.

Black VW's matter

Thought I would take the black VW out for a spin and to check a few things.

1500 'S' Windscreen installed

I got up the other morning thinking I need to make a move on some of the outstanding items for the notchback such as the windscreen which I had previously installed with a seal I wasn't happy with.

Here is the car ready for the screen to go in. Apart from carpet and the front seats, I think were all good here.

I do need the 2 x correct slotted screws to secure the 45' grey foot plates as I have just seen!

As you can see, the antenna wire is there ready for the radio in the future. I have purposely left the Blaupunkt radio out at this stage to enable the carpets to be installed with a bit more room.

All done here. Note that I have left the steering column in original worn paint condition as a nod to the original owner. I think that was a good move regardless of folk thinking I'm a moron!

Seat release cables and gubbins all completed (all NOS too!).

Seat release lever attached to the cable.

Seat release cable secured as per original.

And here it is with the windscreen installed (original German marked item!). The trim is original too from this car and although not 100% perfecto I felt it was OK. The seal came from ISP West from memory and sits 99% perfecto. I believe that over time it may sit slightly better but it's as good as the black car in fit and finish.

The original wiper arms and NOS blades are now fitted up where they belong and look spot on. Closer every week now.

Under dash wiring completed 1500 'S'

I was fitting up the door cards and arm rest to the drivers door tonight and once that was completed (photo's soon), I stuck my head under the dash to see where I was at there with any outstanding work.

I then remembered that I was 1 x short grey wire and 1 x 4 wire joiner short in completing the fuse box connections. This just happened to be my lucky day though as I had just found a box of miscellaneous VW parts in a box in the garage which contained those 2 x items on the weekend just gone.

A quick clean of the original wire and joiner and within minutes I had completed the wiring as per the original 1964 1500 'S' wiring diagram.

All original fuse box (wet blasted), cover, headlight relay, flasher relay, hoses, wire joiners. I have made a couple of small modifications to the car though in order to future proof it (3 x extra wires to the engine bay area for tach, oil pressure & oil temp if I install any of those). These 3 x wires are well hidden inside the left rear fender and up above the fuse box area for now.

I also added an inline fuse to the black wire heading to the coil from the fuse box as this circuit is not fused from the factory which seems dumb to me as it can fry the loom out if there is a short anywhere between the coil and the fuse box.

As you can see, there are no fuses installed yet - this is to happen soon as I test each circuit.

Assuming all is okay, there is nothing further to do to the wiring on the car.

The NOS Blaupunkt speaker is installed with the wiring sitting there along with the NOS Hirschmann antenna plug ready for when the car gets a restored radio that is correct for the car (I have one but it's 1966 and thus slightly too new for the car).

The wiring has been a reasonable exercise and not overly difficult to get back to original. I 100% avoided cable ties in this car's build along with powder coating of any items, zero stainless steel fasteners unless original to the car and zero plastic electrical crimps.

The extra wires ran to the rear of the car were taped to the new colour correct loom (as you would have done back in the day) to also avoid cable ties which are just nasty on original cars. I also am not a fan of heat shrink on restored cars unless there is a very good reason for it and in this case I have only added a small piece to the horn wires up front in order to seal out moisture and dirt.

Thanks again to Mike in the UK for having the correct wiring loom remade for the car. I think it's one of the key ingredients to any car to have the wiring loom and electrical system as correct as you can get it on a restored car.

1500 'S' Front Finished

After months of looking for all the correct pieces I am happy enough with the front compartment to call it done. The hose for the breather pipe was a big hold up with it (who has this hose available now?) however (unbelievably) I had a section of new cloth wrapped hose in the garage that fixed that!

As shown above, I wasn't sure if the sender wire ran over the breather pipe, however I moved it below to protect it as that seemed logical (as below).

The washer hose is still missing as I can not locate anything right now but that can be dealt with as I find it later. Otherwise it's pretty well perfect.

It's great to see another whole section of the car completed. The 2 x outer screw holes to secure the cardboard to the firewall have been left out too for now as it was going to pull on the cardboard more than I was prepared to accept (this liner cost way too much $$$ to damage).

The rear compartment is next with the installation of the original side trim panels which requires some contact adhesive spray to make it all work (which entails a lot of masking up and prep work). Sounds like a job for the weekend to me.

1500 'S' Okrasa Tin-ware

The tin-ware and intake manifolds for the 1500 'S' have been a headache for a couple of years thus far because there is just no simple way of cutting the tinware to enable the manifolds to be bolted in nicely and keep the tinware sealed in an original way due to the angles of the manifolds and them being attached by 3 x studs.

Anyway! I measured up and sliced each top piece similarly from side to side on the weekend then installed a nut-cert at the top of each opening to enable a small tinware plate to be installed once the manifolds are secured to the heads. This seemed to be the neatest and most correct way of doing the modifications.

As you can see, the sliced up tinware is going to enable the Okrasa intake manifolds to be secured without much drama now.

As shown above, the 3/4 side tinware is of course different to the 1/2 side because the oil cooler resides there and due to the way the air is ducted internally through the tinware because of the oil cooler, there wasn't the opportunity to open the tinware up further due to the multiple layers of steel. I think it's going to work fine however I had to move the nut-cert on this side over from center to make it work. I am betting that once the engine is back in the car with everything painted and fitted, almost nobody will even realise this engine has Okrasa heads anyway!

Yes Please!

My old VW boss, Ron dropped in a week or so before Christmas for a chin wag and to see the 1500 'S' (among other VW nonsense here!).

I bought the 1500 'S' back in 1989 following a conversation I had with Ron. The car was owned by one of his clients and he had just given them the bad news that the engine was completely fucked out. As a result of that (more on that later), the owner put the car up for sale (or was about to) and I made the phone call to go see the car.

Luckily the advert had not as of yet been placed in the paper so my parents and I went there to check it out and amazingly a deal was done for $1000 which was pretty well every $ I had to my name thanks to my folks putting away some $ every week, as well as what I had made from working at Ron's VW workshop. It now seems like an amazing deal but at the time I would say it was about right on the money considering the car was 25 years old, had rust, had a bad engine and was generally in need of a full make over.

As I was 15 at the time, I couldn't even drive the car home which was a bummer however that kind of paved the way for it to be parked away safely and put under cover, basically until 2013 when I completely dismantled the car to every component.

I did take it out occasionally and yes it won a fair amount of awards for originality and best Type 3, but I knew all along that the car was on borrowed time and needed a lot of work.

As for the original engine being 'end of life', this was completely true even though the car had only 85,000 miles on it.

I think I dismantled the engine when I was about 18 or 19 to find the heads were cracked everywhere, the rings were broken, the oil pump worn out, the rod bearings worn to copper and the #2 main bearing was cracked into 5 x pieces - one was in 2 x pieces and the other was in 3 x pieces!

As for the crankcase, I sent that off for crack testing and the results were just epic. The workshop that checked it - Adelaide Engine Service - told me it was the worst they had seen for a long time.

Every other item bolted to the engine, oddly enough, was deemed to be in very good condition such as the carbs, distributor, fuel pump, tinware etc. All of those items have since been refurbished or made good.

Eventually I sent the crankcase off to be machined all over and the cracks ground out and welded. This seemed like a good idea at the time but within about 1000 miles, it was again cracked and pissing out oil. Live and learn!

I still have the original crankcase in the garage wrapped up and I just don't know what I will ever do with it. I suspect nothing but as it is the original to the car (0 682 209), I can't fathom throwing it away. The idea of a coffee table seems to be the most obvious but I have a genuine BRM for that!

At the end of the day I don't mind that the crankcase was junk because the idea of the early cases with their pissy little oil galleries as well as M6 oil pump studs and M10 head studs didn't excite me anyway so the results of all this are the car is now running the latest magnesium VW dual relief case with all the modern alterations - full flow, case savers, M8 head studs, larger oil pump, cam bearings as standard, bolt together rocker shafts etc. Common sense stuff we should all embrace because it's better than original.

Anyway, it was good to see Ron drop in and chew the fat. He was impressed with where the car was heading and how it was turning out thus far. A period correct performance VW 1500 'S'.