Door Work

I'd removed the doors to access the hinges, which were sagging, at least on the driver's side. I sent the hinges to John Copello (www.copellos.biz) to have new hinge pins installed (John is a machinist and parts fabricator who does A-1 work). While the hinges were out I inspected the doors, and realized there was a not-small amount of rust and rust damage to the bottom edges of the doors. I proceeded to strip the doors mechanically (window regulator, etc.), and then paint stripped the door interiors and bottoms, both inside and out as you can see here. The passenger door was actually too far gone; I had another door from a coupe that I retrieved and stripped in this fashion. Here you can see two coats of MasterSeries Silver Primer applied. The rework included welding in a small patch panel on the passenger door, and doing some dolly and hammer work as well. I feel like I am going backwards, and not forwards at this point. Here it is 11/27, and only now is the car really ready for the wheels to be installed and the whole thing sent back out for final painting, two months past when I estimated.

But it looks solid, and there is that thing called 'peace of mind'.

Front End Work

Mounting the front axle was not too much of a problem, however mounting a new TRW steering box turned out to be a challenge. There are two locating pins on the backside of the upper torsion spring tube on the front axle. The pins are alternately used to mount the steering box for a Beetle, or a Ghia, depending upon how you orient the mounting plate. When I mounted my box, it certainly did not align center with the hole for the steering tube in the car body. I believed that the mounting pin was located improperly, and proceded to grind it off the axle beam tube. Bad move. I contacted several resources and found out where the pin was supposed to be, and welded (actually, JB-Welded) a replacement pin on the axle tube, and then remounted the steering box. The box still does not seem to align properly with the body, but the direction comes from reliable sources, so I'm going ahead.

As you can see from the pics, everything seem to work out OK. We'll see for sure, when it's time to install the steering column.

On this work, in addition to the new steering box, there are new tie rods, a new steering damper, new shocks, new inner and outer wheel bearings, and powdercoated the discs.