Ed Begley Jr. Would Be Proud
Today, I began by measuring up and sketching the main part of the sub-chassis and then drafting it up on the computer. I now have three detail drawings (forward battery tray, rear battery trays and frame) and one assembly drawing that shows the whole thing. I converted the DesignCAD (my drafting program) files over to pdf files and e-mailed them off to Mark for peer review.
This morning, I continued measuring and drafting the sub-chassis. I spent most of the day measuring and sketching the aft battery trays and drafting them up on the computer.
This morning, I picked up the VW chassis at Plastic Media Stripping. They did an amazingly good job of removing all of the crud that was on the chassis. To my surprise, the floor pans were a lot worse off than I thought. Not only had they been drilled in many places for various seat-mount configurations, they also had hundreds of pinholes. What was surprising was that I figured, with that may pinholes, the metal in the floor pans would probably be thin enough to put my foot thru. This turned out not to be the case – the metal was solid – it was just shot full of holes! It looks like the decision to replace the floor pans is going to be a no-brainer.
I trucked the chassis over to a local Volkswagen restoration company and asked them to replace the floor pans and also see if they could straighten out the threads where the rear right diagonal arm’s kingpin threads into the chassis. They said that they didn’t think that they’d have any problems with this. I asked them to use the heavy duty floor pans and not the run-of-the-mill ones from Brazil. I suspect that I won’t get them though, as they seem to feel that the Brazilians floor pans are just fine. I also asked them to remove any seat rails, seat towers, jacking points, battery hold-downs, etc and to weld up any holes that they create in removing these parts. It will be interesting to see what I wind up with. On a previous trip, the owner noted that he could get floor pans with all of the stuff removed already. His son, who took the order today, seemed to want to use a pair of floor pans that he had on hand. Hopefully, the owner will override the son’s decision when he gets back. They did comment that the media blasting job was one of the nicest that they had ever seen.
This morning, I loaded the chassis up into the pick-up and ran it over to Plastic Media Stripping, to have them strip off all of the old rust, paint and rubber. Then, I went home, assembled my pair of metal saw horses and positioned the Bradley sub-chassis on the saw horses. I started measuring and making sketches of the sub-chassis for Mark and managed to get the front battery box drafted up on the computer. Actually, I shouldn’t say that it’s just for Mark. I‘m going to be using the drawings as a basis for designing a new sub-chassis.
Once home, I disassembled all of the parts remaining on the VW chassis. This, for the most part, consisted of removing stuff from the rear end including the transaxle, the brake drums, the brake shoes and all parts mounted on the rear brake backing plates, the rear stub axles, the diagonal arms and the spring plates.
This morning, I disassembled the front end of the chassis along with the shifter, pedal cluster and brake lines.
Today, I spoke with the folks at Electro Automotive and they recommended the same system that Mark is looking at – a 144 VAC system., using 18 8-volt wet cells (Trojan T-860, T-875 or T-890) for now and perhaps Lithium-Ion batteries in the future. I disassembled the entire front end of the car today – coil-over shock absorbers; tie rods & steering damper; steering box and trailing arms; spiders & brakes; front beam; shifter rod; master cylinder; pedal cluster and front and long brake lines. The only hitch in the giddy-up was the ball joints in the lower trailing arms. They wouldn’t release from the spiders, so they’re in the shop as assemblies. All that’s left now is the rear end. Then, I can get the VW chassis to the media blaster and measure and draft up the sub-chassis for Mark so that we can start designing the new sub-chassis.
I did note something odd about the front shock absorbers. These are standard EMPI adjustible coil-over shocks. However, someone put a ring of metal between the bottom of the adjuster and the two pins that index the adjuster on both shocks. This ring renders the adjustment feature useless and compresses the spring by about 2 inches. what I’m wondering is — how did he disassemble the shocks to install the ring?
Today, I had the help of a couple of landscapers (who had been hired to fix a leak in the main water supply to the house — sigh…), and we pulled the motor. Afterwards, I got the transaxle and two half shafts out, disassembled a part of the brake system, and removed the pot box.
Today, I removed the sub-chassis from the Volkswagen chassis. This was fairly easy to do, but required moving the jack stands around a bit. The sub-chassis is bolted to the main (Volkswagen) chassis in 6 places. There are 2 U-bolts around the lower beam tube at the front end, there are 2 U-bolts around the rear torque rod housings and there are two brackets that connect the sub-frame to the two lower mounting bolts for the transaxle. The frame is going to need to be redesigned as I was able to identify at least three structural flaws in the factory’s design.
First, The front battery box hangs cantilevered in front of the chassis and the rear battery trays hang cantilevered beyond the rear of the chassis. This made the frame bow up longitudinally (fore-to-aft) in the center — under the floor pans. As a result, the bottom flanges of the two main C-channels buckled slightly — not to the point of catastrophic failure but enough to warrant a redesign. I suspect that the buckling occurred as a result of dynamic loads (car bouncing along the road) and not static ones.
Second, there is a small cross member (angle iron) near the rear of the car that is bolted to the aft ends of the transaxle support forks via a pair of small 1/8-inch-thick metal brackets (see photo). The cross member bowed up in the center (between the transaxle forks) — probably because the aft battery racks were pulling down on the ends of the cross member.
Third, there are a pair of diagonal braces that support the aft ends of the rear battery racks (already removed when the photos were taken). They run from the aft outboard ends of the two battery racks up to the tops of the rear shock towers. Both of these braces were snapped off at the shock towers.
I’ll need to give the redesign some pretty good thinking. I may also want to see if I can incorporate mounts for the seatbelts and seat positioners into the frame instead of just bolting the belts and positioners to the floor pans. In the meantime, I’ve got all of the VW chassis parts to recondition.
Fellow cyclist and Personal Trainer Ray Christian came over and helped me lift the body off the car and set it down on the concrete. That’s all we did today. I rode the Red Rock Loop Road for the first time this year with Ray and a friend of his. It was a great ride..
I stayed inside the shop for the entire day, cleaning up and disassembling parts and putting them into Banker’s Boxes. Here’s the list of what’s in where…
DISCARDED
• Lester Charger Hatchback Area Fiberglass Pan
• Radio
• Seatbelts
• Battery Cables
BOX 1
• Curtis Controller
• Anderson Connectors and Large Cables
• Shunt, Fuse, Fuse Standoffs
• Bare Instrument Panel
• (5) Instruments
• Terminal Block, Lights & Relay
• Turn Signal Arm
• Charger Outlets and Hardware
• Bradley S/N Tag & Hardware
• Reflectors (Bad)
• Bradley GT II Aluminum Badge for Trunk
• Headlights
• Headlight Trim Rings
• Headlight Retaining Rings
• Headlight Bucket Gaskets
• License Plate Light Fixture
• Defroster Compartment Lens
• Front Marker Light (1) – Hella TVK 18 SAE IP3 TVK 25 SAE 176 VW 171953155 A3EO
One was damaged and I need to find another.
• Front Bumper Hardware
• Heater Coils
• Heater Base Plate
• Fuse Box & Fuses
• Converter Box
• Pushbutton
BOX 2
• (16) Lug Nuts
• Gull Wing Door Hinges & Hardware
• (4) Door Struts
• (4) Vents and Hardware for Rear Deck
• Steering Wheel & Hardware
• Bradley Logo Horn Button
• Rubber Seal at Forward End of Glare Shield
• (2) Defroster Duct Hoses
• Hose for 96V Motor Blower
• (1) Gas Strut for Trunk
• Headlight Bucket Hardware
• Headlight Pans
• Rear Bumper Hardware
• Bumper Rubber
• Heater Diverter Sheet Metal Piece
• Heater Fan Motor & Electric Parts
• Hardware Bag (Especially for Steering Wheel)
• Miscellaneous Hardware Bag
BOX 3
• Heater Box
• Heater Hose Tee
• Heater Vent Tubes
• Horn
• Wire Looms
• Wire Plastic Conduits
• High Current Cables
• Hatchback Gas Springs
BOX 4
• Bags of Seals and Gaskets
• 48V/96V Bat Handle Switch
• Wiring Looms
• Fender Moldings
• Hurst Shifter & Ball Knob
• Bowden Cables to Rear of Car
• Brake Fluid Reservoir
• Speedometer Cable
• Hardware Bag
Of course, none of this has been restored as of yet. That’ll be a rainy day task while I’m waiting for parts to arrive. Then again, it almost never rains in las Vegas.
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
