Red needle tacho

The photos with this post show pictures of a red needle tacho which accompanied a car bought from the US over 10 years ago and were part of a full set of restored instruments with the car.

The unit seems to have been made using an original VDO case as with many repros and reads up to 8,000 rpm without any read line section at the high end. It carries the name of VDO at the bottom of the dial face and looks to be therefore assembled from VDO parts.

On the rear it is clearly not an original VW\T34 unit as it doesn't have the cutaway at the top but looks to be dual 6 and 12 volt.

From the shots of Tachos on the Type 34 register and Pure T34 site it looks closest to a Tim Dapper unit but not an exact match.

Does anyone have any views on who may have created it and what its value today would be so I can sell it on for my friend?

News on my 1965 T344

The front seats on my 65 model have been giving way for a number of years now with no sign of any replacement material to repair them with.

I have got by with some cunning repairs in the past and unfortunately the drivers seat has now deteriorated in a big way.

A friend kindly supplied me with the interior from a scrapped 65 with the same style, but not colour, of material. There is some damage to the material but I am hopeful that I can use it to repair mine and then recolour it. Watch this space.

Key Fobs

Here are photos of a couple of original key fobs as issued by German VW agents back in the 60s.

The green one was issued by a VW agent in Rudesheim and is similar in style to the ones used by Karmann. The brown one is a little more compact, I added one of the repro VIN tags to it as you can see.

Volksworld Magazine article

The car was photographed extensively yesterday to appear in a future edition of the UK's leading VW magazine, Volksworld.
Not sure when it will appear and will post details as soon as I know.

early oil cooler

Mark Poulton kindly gave me a NOS oil cooler for the early engines. I will hold on to it in case of need and don't intend to strip the engine to fit it at this stage as the existing one seems to be working well.

A post door shoulder seal

Unlike the later cars the early ones had a seal on the A post in the door shoulder area rather than on the door shoulder itself.

Here are a couple of shots of the nearest seal I could find to use in place of the original VW one. You can also see the screw and cap washer that is fitted half way down the seal to make sure it stays in place.

Fuel guage

The fuel guage on the car has refused to work since it got back on the road, this makes driving a little precarious unless you know the exact amount of fuel in the tank.
I decided it was time to rectify this little niggle and checked out the instrument cluster and the grounding of the tank and connection to the fule sender unit. Seemed all was OK.
This potentially left the problem as being the fuel sender unit itself. I took it out of the tank, it was one from a 63 I had used as the original one was very battered; I replaced it with one from 11\61 that was in my stash and normal function was quickly restored.
I noticed a few little differences between the unit stamped 61 and the 63 one, nothing of any significance but still interesting to note.

A fresh pair of eyes

I have a small list of ongoing issues that continue to bug the 62, Clive Richardson dropped by last weekend to pick up some roof trims for Janet's 346 and he managed to give me some ideas on a couple of the issues.
The battery continued to drain until flat and Clive suggested to check that the rear boot light wasn't staying on. This turned out to be the cause and a bit lax of me as I had already had to sort this out once before. It needed a new and larger rubber buffer on the underside of the rear boot lid to ensure that the light switch is fully depressed when the boot is closed - problem now solved.
The rear opening quarter lights did not seal well to the rubber\body and Clive suggested that maybe the 3 small plastic blocks that act as the hinge mechanism and which are sourced from t14s may be too deep, pushing the window too far to the rear of the car and preventing correct closure. I removed the window, sliced a chunk off each of the 3 blocks and it now closes really well, will repeat with the other window next weekend.
Finally I mentioned vague steering, Clive checked the wheels and thought that there seemed to be play in the bearings; on inspecting the car there was no play in the bearings but the NOS angled inner tie rod end had loads of play in it for some reason. Luckily I had another NOS one in the garage and within an hour had split the tie rod off the drum\steering box arm, replaced the offending tie rod end and re-assembled - it now handles well.
Next to tackle once again are the ill fitting door windows and front quarter light frames, I have been playing with these on and off for 6 months and still can't get them to fit how I want. I will update as soon as I have progress.

The final piece

The only original spec piece missing from my 62 restoration has been a really good set of the correct Lemmertz 15" wheel rim embellishers.
Whilst I managed to pick up a set of correct Lemmertz embellishers, even with the correct date, they were too badly scratched to merit going on the car and stripping\re polishing and anodizing was horrifically expensive.
In the meantime I have been using a really nice set of stainless steel embellishers, not sure what they were off, may have been Volvo and they looked very good although a different profile.
I saw the advert below in the Samba last year for a set of reproduction Lemmertz style embellishers and ordered a set (these are aimed at T14 and T2 and the same as for the early t34). There was a delay in delivery due to some production problems and they finally arrived today. They are a spot on reproduction with the exception that they are not anodised, I will have to consider if I want to make them more scratch resistant and get them anodised or keep polishing out any marks that appear. This is achievable as there were a couple of marks on one due to damage in transit, the marks came out very easily with fine wet and dry and chrome polish.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=832832

Francisco at Kaefer Nostalgie persevered with the production and shipped them to me from the US and I am very happy with the end result. Here are photos of the reproduction (Bottom), original 62 with scratches (middle 2) and the stainless embellishers (Top).

Just to clarify following a posted comment - these rim embellishers are aluminum, not stainless steel - it was the ones I originaly fitted that were stainless

A pain in the Glass

Another update consisting of challenging and better news. Getting the drivers door window to work correctly continues to prove challenging, the prime cause is that the felt runner for the window channel in the chromed quarter light window frame is just too thick and therefore tight, as a result the glass keeps pulling out of the lifter. I will order some replacements from a UK supplier I have found and let you know how I get on once I have them. The other challenge in this area was that the glass was sticking proud of the door window rubber - cause is basically that the rubbers are too stiff - I have managed to find 2 presentable used ones in my stock and the glass fits much better with them in place.

Mark Poulton kindly donated a rear windscreen to me - my own is so badly scratched that you can see the scratches from about 10 feet away. I picked it up at the Stanford Hall meeting yesterday and fitted it today - it looks great, so thanks Mark.

Here is a photo of a couple of T34s at the meeting yesterday, both of which are well known to the club. Also here are shots of cross sections of the door window rubbers, the early style was a continuous hollow section, where as the later replacement is of a different style.

It was all going so well until the wiring melted

I set out today to cure the problem of the none functioning oil and ignition warning lights on the dashboard instrumentation.

I had worked out that it was a fault with the backing unit to the instrument cluster and had put off changing it for a spare as I didn't want to disturb the wiring or indeed have to replace it as it differs slightly yet again to later ones.

The photo shows the original 62 one on the left with 2 wires coming from the centre; the black one goes to the fuse box and the green and black goes to the flasher relay. On the later one there is only 1 wire (Green for some reason but actually wired to where the black one goes on the 62) the difference is that the wire for the flasher unit fits on to a spade connecter on the back of the unit at point K (top left) rather than being hard wired into the inside of the unit, so no problem to use a later one, rather than mess about and replace the wiring on the inside of the original one.

So this was all easy, I wired it all up, tested and all was great before permanently fitting the unit to the dashboard. I then put everything back together once I was satisfied that it worked without problem, turned on the ignition and within seconds the car was filled with smoke as part of the wiring loom burnt out. I had knocked the main feed wire off the fuse box and it had shorted out across other terminals and taken the least route of resistance through the thinest wire.

Looks like I have had a lucky escape as this piece of wire is easy to replace and I have plenty of original coloured wiring from the old loom.

My recommendations, tighten everything, check its connected to what it should be before turning on the ignition and ensure you haven't tightened the battery terminals prior to completing testing - I think the ability to quickly remove the battery cable saved the car. Oh yes, and keep a fire extinguisher handy!

Engine Decals and radio Bracket

The Decals that I fitted to the air cleaner and the rear air intake trough started to peel off at the edges. I think this must have been due to either an impurity on the paint work or not firming them down sufficiently at time of application.

Scott Taylor kindly sent through a new set free of charge which was fantastic of him, my problem was getting the old ones off. Looking on the internet showed a couple of chemicals that should remove them and I was concerned at the potential effect on the paint work underneath.

I decided to steam them off instead using a domestic hand steam cleaner, I tried it first on a transfer on the inner side of an old 62 glove box lid, it didn't make a great impression but did shift some of it.

I gave it a go on the transfers that I wnated to remove and they came off immediately without any damage to the paint. new ones have now been applied.

The radio rattles about a little when driving so I decided to replicate the bracket fitted to my 65, on left in photo. This looks to be a home made one and is fitted via the mounting screw on the back of the radio and then a self tapping screw into the bulk head - fitted the repro one to the 62 and now no more rattles!

November 1961 Type 3 Karmann Ghia, VIN 0002910 - a set on Flickr

November 1961 Type 3 Karmann Ghia, VIN 0002910 - a set on Flickr

Here are the photos of the car I took last weekend, just click on the link to see them.

What's new for 2010

I manged to do a few more miles in the car this weekend and took some photos which I will share shortly. Only other issues to surface were a pull to one side in the brakes, all wheels are well adjusted so I need to check all lines for signs of leakage and bleed if necessary.

The radio wobles about a little and reminded me that it lacks the rear support bracket fitted to the radio in my 65 344, I will make one up and fit to solve this small issue.

The engine ran really well, there is a slight irregularity on how it runs at tick over and I will need to check if there are any remaining issues with the replacement manifold I fitted at the end of last year - possible drawing in of air between the manifold and head requiring a further tweak to the manifold.