RyanB's Buggy

[RyanB]

Well, what do you do when your other project stalls out and your not sure how to move forward?

YOU START ANOTHER PROJECT RIGHT?

Nothing super ambitious here. Just a woods buggy is in the plans. I do have a Bus reduction transmission I plan on putting in if I can figure it out. Otherwise all stock to keep it simple and less expensive. I got too crazy with my previous buggy trying to put long travel suspension under the body without modification to the body and thus was one of the reasons I let it go. Now I have another and this one will stay air cooled and stay swing-axle with the possible redux mounted. If/when I get grandkids I plan on taking them on some adventures in this one like my own grandfather did. He's the one who nurtured my love for buggies and VW's.

1st up is to remove the body from the pan and shorten the pan for the glass buggy. Putting the body up for sale if anyone needs one. Super cheap. Like $100. No delivery...

Will be a few weeks before I can really get started as next week will be on vacation. Plan is to have this done by next summer so I can take my Grandmother for a ride in memory of my Grandfather.

Had to remove the image links. Apparently this board cannot resize on it's own. Here is a link to the album which should be public. Just 4 pics so far. I'll resize them for the future I guess.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... cc54ea7492

[Leatherneck]

That will make a cool little buggy, don't miss your ride date either, Grandmother won't be happy if you tease her.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Ryan, if you still have my email shoot me a line. I have lost yours out of my contact list. I might have some info for you.

Lee

[RyanB]

OK. So I got down to business and stripped off the body. Boy, this thing is in interesting shape. Whoever did the replacement pan on the drivers side was in a hurry. THe passenger side had random metal "welded" in. I say that because it basically fell out when I started shortening the pan.

I received some info from Lee, but since I was familiar with the Manx style cut, I went ahead with that. I've done 2 of these already and this is my 3rd.

I took some measurements of the body. According to what I took, the pan needed to be shortened 15 1/2". An odd amount as a normal Manx is 14 1/4. This probably should have raised some red flags in my head. Ahh well. I made my cuts and put the 2 half's together and brought in the body. The thing must have sat on uneven surface in the sun for years or something. It's very badly warped. A previous owner also looks to have attempted to VERY poor glass repair and it looks like it was done AFTER the dang thing got warped. I am basically going to have to cut out all the bad glass work. Force the body into shape on the pan and redo all the glass work. Uhg.

Couple of very very weird things in the 1st few pictures. I am missing some set screws or something on the front torsion bars and look at the notch that has been removed from the spring plates... O M G ....

I suspect I'll have to get new spring plates. Half of them are gone, which doesn't sound good for off-road applications...

<EDIT> Finally re-sized the images. This is kinda a real pain.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Almost together, lookin' good. Sorry the stuff I sent didn't help.

Lee

[RyanB]

Lee, it wasn't a matter of didn't help! I was just already used to doing the Manx style cut. Your document is coming along very nicely, doing a great job!

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The reason I like the other cut is that there is more surface area to weld up and the joins are in three different locations rather than one straight line which is why I not impressed with either the straight cut or the Chevron cut. We are in Sun River right now but when I get home I am going to tape up a cut on my black buggy pan and post it. The pix I sent were good but maybe the tape marks will make it clearer.

Continue on Mc Duff, yours is looking good.

Lee

[560]

Great start of a nice project, looking good so far.

Mike

[RyanB]

So, I've been a bit busy this past weekend. Putting in a wood stove so it will be warm enough to actually work out in the garage. Considering the amount of work I am finding this body to need, It may be over ambitious to think I could be done with it by this next summer. But still going to try. I've also made up my mind I am moving forward with the redux tranny. I need to talk to Dan Hecker soon about making what I need to fit it.

So, I spent at least an hour looking at the body, sitting on the pan. Trying to determine how I could fix the biggest issues. I have to take a few pics of the progress. At the link in the 1st post, you will find I uploaded 4 new pictures of the biggest problem area's. The "firewall" over the captains hat area that is badly warped, the rear area is badly warped and the very awful previous repair on the drivers side and the so so repair on the passenger side. It looks like they tried to repair some large cracks in the rear while it was not on a frame and it was warped when the repair was made. I basically have to remove the bad repairs. The good thing is that it doesn't look like I am going to have to re-cut and re-weld the pan shortening I did. This means I can finish up the welding on it. Clean it up and paint it. Then I can complete the major structural glass repairs. Once that is done I can fill in a bazillion drill holes this things has all over the place.

Not sure I posted it, but I traded my Baja for a PWC. So, since this now my new VW baby I plan on treating her right. Taking my time to do things so it looks nice. all too often I find myself wanting to rush things. Never happy with the results when you do that. But, now that winter is here and I have more time and my garage is setup I can start moving forward on this again.

Where I am at right now, is I've removed most of the "repair" in the rear and managed to get the body to at least sit down on the frame. Well at least with some help of some heavy bricks. I'll take some pics in the next few days and upload them.

<EDIT> Adding re-sized images.

[RyanB]

Here are a couple more pics before I took the body off the pan again to finish the welding on the pan.

A temporary board put into place to straighten the 'firewall'. On the other side is a piece of angle iron that will get glassed in to keep it straight and then remove the board.




A little hard to see I suppose. I've removed the bad "repairs in the rear corners and also from the cracked areas. Then added bricks to help push it down onto the frame.






On Saturday, I fired up the wood stove I put in to warm it up out in the garage and got to work.
Boy was I tired. A full day of welding in awkward positions...


Time to start finishing up the welding on the tunnel. Here it sits before I get started this morning.


A couple of relief cuts done and pounded into place. Welding down the side.


Most of the welding complete down this side.



Pan is flipped over after the sides of the tunnel are welded.


Bottom of the tunnel is welded. 2 additional metal patches welded over the area for more strength.


Pan flipped right side up after bottom of tunnel was finished. Completed welding in the additional metal over the cut area.


What a mess. Dealing with the poorly welded in replacement pan as well as part of being shortened. This is the before shot.


After shot of the drivers side pan welded together. This part alone took hours.



Drivers side pan repair was never completed by whoever did it before.



Finished welding up the drivers side front of the pan. Also did some minor rust repair.




Here is Sundays welding. I spent all day on this one area. After 2 days of bent over welding though my back was killing me and I didn't work into the evening like I did on Saturday. I think I came in around 3pm. Basically, there was random metal bits welded into the pan on the 1st image with some sheet metal welded across. It really looked like hell from underneath and I didnt like how it was done. I had a donor pan sitting in my backyard that had alot of cancer but this particular part was in great shape. So I cut it out of the old pan and put it into mine.


Today, this has to come out and be replaced. I could leave it in and clean it up but I want a nice pan.



Beginning to fit the replacement seat slide area from a donor pan. LOVE German metal.



Pie cut is done and welded in. There was some rust cancer in the rear area I had to take care of as well. About 95% done with this area.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

(Whew) Tires me out just looking at it, I think I'll go back to bed ! It's good to see some progress is being made.

Lee

[RyanB]

Another productive weekend working out in the garage. Getting close to having this pan done! I think that next weekend I'll be hitting it with the wire wheel, then the pressure washer and it will be time to coat it with the truckbed liner.



As with the drivers side, the person who did the pan replacement did not finish the welding. Looks like hell.



Welding complete


Time to tackle the corners near the tunnel.


A really odd area to make look good. Did what I could.


Need some additional welding and cleanup near the tunnel.


Finished cleanup and welding near the tunnel, drivers side.


Time to do some welding and cleanup on the underneath.


This took all day. Welding the seam near the bottom of the tunnel for each replacement pan as it wasnt done before. Went over the welds that put the pan back together to make sure everything is strong. Did some grinding to knock off the high spots.


Pan is about 90% cleaned up. All the tar crap is removed. Need to hit it with a wire wheel and then I'll go after it with a pressure washer. Then it will ne time for the truck bed coating.


A test fit for the bus reduction transmission.

[RyanB]

So, I had a looooong weekend and was time to get more done. The goal was to get the hubs off the transaxle and to coat the pan in Bedliner. I did get both done thankfully. However I think I may have broke my foot. I had the wheel hubs up on a block. While I was working on them my foot ended up underneath the axle tube. Yea well, you can guess what happened. The damn Hub/Drum rolled off the block. With the hub weight, along with the redux box... My foot is a nice black and blue now. Hard to put my boots/shoes on.
Uhg.

I had to create 2 of my own tools. As with everything it's a trial and error process. It was mostly a succsess. The Passenger side castle nut just would NOT budge. Even with the tool I made. I broke 2 11mm sockets on the torque drive. Then got a heavy duty impact gun socket. That managed to finally destroy the original 36mm castle nut I welded to the 46mm Socket. I then cut off the destroyed on and tried a brand new 36mm castle nut welded to the 46mm socket. That was destroyed as well. A bit disapointing. It worked fine on the drivers side. I ended up drilling apart the castle nut on the passenger side to remove it. So, will need to find a new one.

The drum/hub puller I made was a resounding succsess on both side. Though again the passenger side proved to be more difficult. It was actually bending parts of the angle iron, so I had to make another brace piece to put in. Was fine after that.

I also made a small error... Should never just assume. Looking at the nosecone of the RGB TRansaxle and the nosecone of the standard transaxle they looked the same to me. Well, apparently they are not. Putting the mount on the RGB transaxle and trying to put it on the pan it doesnt fit. I'll have to pust out the angle grinder and whack off the mounting area on the torsion housing and move it up. Probably take an hour or so but was unexpected.

here are the pics...


Well, sometimes with oddball stuff you have to make your own tools. The large Castle nut here is 46MM. My Torque tool fits 36mm. Here is a standoff to hold the Torque teeth.


Torque Teeth in place.


46mm socket, with 36mm Castle nut welded to it.


Torque Gear and arm attached.



Houston, we have a problem. THe metal was soft enough it started to strip. I had to pull it back off and weld more strength into it. It finally worked.


With the Castle nut off, the hub needs to be removed. This poor thing sat outside for YEARS. No way was it coming off easilly. 3 standoff's are drilled for lugs and put on.


2 Heft Angle Iron's connect everything, welded into place.


An extra puller I've had laying around for years is hooked up to my contraption. Worked like a charm


Drivers side drum pulled off. cute huh?


36mm Castle nut taking a beating on the passenger side.


Passenger side drum removed.


Initial painting of the transaxle after the power wash.


The bottom of the pan after coating with the bedliner.


Getting ready to put bedliner on the top.


Bedliner is on!

[BAJA-IT]

Good to hear you got the drums off.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Makes me tired looking at all that work so I took the day off.

Way to stick with it Ryan.

Lee