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Old April 24th 2012, 15:14
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owdlvr owdlvr is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Canada - West Coast
Posts: 851
Well, 300km on the new seal and holding fine (knocks on wood).

Drove the car down to a Vancouver Swap meet this weekend. Before heading down I needed to mount up the club badge onto the car:


I had planned on just hanging out at the swap for a couple of hours, keeping my wallet firmly in my pocket. Sadly, that didn't last long. Geoff found me a 1302s badge, which I paid way too much (in my mind) for. Hard to negotiate when you so obviously have the car that needs it parked 100ft away! I'm such a cheapskate that $20 for a much needed badge seems like the worst spend I've had on the whole build. Forget the ridiculous spending I did on the wiring harness...this one hurts! haha.


I was picking up a set of 4.5" wheels from Rob, but then one of the guys rolled into the swap with a full set of 5.5" sport rims and tires in his stash. Two of the tires are dated 1980, and while all four have the molding nubs still installed they aren't exactly a set I would trust to drive on! A deal was made, and I soon found myself trying to figure out how to stack 4 rims with tires and 4 bare rims into a car which will has no storage space or room. Out came the passenger seat, in went the gear, and then I layed the passenger seat on top. Thankfully I still have my ratty old seats, so fear of dirt is non-existent! One more tire and wheel combo, and two rims are still go be loaded in:


I've managed to find time to mount up the rally intercom, into the only spot available in the car. Without the belts on I can easily reach the volume knob, but once strapped in the location is useless. Sort of a pain, but there is no room on the trans tunnel which is reachable, and I'd have to extend the wires by quite a bit to mount it under the dashboard. This will just have to do. I trimmed out the wire length and resoldered on the ends for a clean installation. Also wired in an output line for interior video, and and input line for the iPod. When cruising and not racing I can listen to tunes (mono, in one ear only), or while shooting video the camera gets a feed of what's being spoken between the two seats. (hopefully not "OH &^$%!!!!!" :P ) Last thing to do for the intercom system is repair/replace my headsets. The Peltor intercom requires dynamic microphones, and I have passive ones currently.


I keep tossing the GoPro in my laptop back to shoot some video, and then promptly forget that I have it until I'm down the road strapped in and unable to move. Speaking of which, I also welded in anti-submarine belt mounts this weekend. There was much debate over whether I should put my mounts to the floor or mounts to the seat mounts. The proper way to do it is with plates welded to the floor, and a bolt going through the floor and plate. But that assumes that you also have your seats properly mounted to the cage / floor. I've got my seats mounted to factory sliders...so, it's a bit of a grey area. Technically if the seat breaks free the belts should hold me and the seat in place. Eventually I decided that I'm in a '71 Volkswagen Beetle with just a 4pt roll bar. If I've managed to hit something hard enough that my seat mounts have broken free, I'm in a whole world-of-hurt that makes the anti-submarine strap mounting far less of a concern. With that, a 1" seamless tube was welded across the bottom of the seat mounts and the straps are now mounted to that.

Even though the tires are old, and likely unsafe, I couldn't resist mounting up the wide sport rims to check out the look. They've got 205/70/15's on the back and 165/15s on the front. It's a terrible combo that rakes the front end of the car and just looks...wrong.


So now I'm in tire juggling mode between now and my Spring Thaw departure on Thursday. The 165's I had on 4" wide hub-cap rims are being mounted to the 4.5" sport-style rims today. They'll go onto the car tomorrow morning, and should have that "narrow period" look that match the rest of the car. The wide sport rims will have the 80's cal-look tire set removed and my 205/60/15 track tires will be mounted. Not 100% sure these are going to fit on the front of the car, but tomorrow night late I'll mount them up to see. They'll totally ruin the period look of the car, and it's probably far too sky-high for wide track meats (no adjustable suspension on the front yet)...but they will be safer and more fun for 1200km of pavement rally/touring. If I'm not sold on the look, the narrow sport-style wheels will get coat of poor-mans-chrome (silver spray paint) and get remounted on Thursday morning.

Sleep, who needs sleep?

-Dave
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'71 Type 1 - Rally Project
'58 Type 1 - I bought an early!?!
'73 Type 1 - Proper Germanlook project
'68 Type 1 - Interm German 'look' project
'75 Type 1 - Family Heirloom
'93 Chevy 3500 pickup - Cummins Swap
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