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.

Leak from carburetor solved

When the engine was rebuilt I fitted a new old stock side draft carburetor trusting in the fact it would work smoothly. I experienced a problem with the car when it was first back on the road, total lack of performance and poor acceleration. I tracked this down to a sticking choke valve which was easily fixed with lubrication. However another problem with the carb was more persistent; this was a very slight fuel leakage from around the brass pipe which the fuel feed line is attached to.
General tapping in of the brass fitting made no difference and also the use of sealant gave little improvement. I resorted to removing the brass pipe from my old original carb, smearing it with Loctite and have now cured the leakage.

More electrical issues resolved

The intermitent fault on the instrument cluster related to the ignition and oil warning lights looks to be linked to the wiring on the backing unit - I will dig out another from my stock and replace and hopefully this will resolve it.
I also established the fault with the fog lights was caused by a faulty relay via swapping across the one from my 65. Whilst I have 4 of these they all turned out to be useless so will be looking for one on The Samba.
This should solve the remaining electrical issues and the next snag to resolve is the drivers door window which separated from its lifter due to rust, will see what I have in stock.

More electrical problems solved

The swap across to the later indicator flasher and wiring worked perfectly. Additionally I have tracked the grounding out of the horn to a faulty plastic washer that fits between the head of one of the 3 screws that hold the horn ring in place and the actual horn ring. I replaced it with a new piece of plastic and the horn no longer earths out and works as it is supposed to.
Next on the list is to resolve the ignition and oil lamp intermitent working.

Tweaking the electrics

The engine is back in place and clutch adjusted and the car seems to drive much better now as well.

Next task is resolving some of the residual electrical problems. Something that I thought was a problem just turned out to be a difference in wiring between the early cars and those from slightly later. I noticed that when I put on the side lights for the car that the lower left green light on the indicator cluster\fuel gauge came on. As this indicator light is wired to the fog lamps on my 65 I thought there was a fault in the wiring; once I had consulted the wiring diagram it became clear that this is how it is supposed to work and that the function of the lower left green indicator lamp changed at some stage from showing side lamps switched on to showing fog lights on.

With that sorted I am tackling issues with the indicator wiring and relays. Again the 62 cars wiring differs and uses a flasher relay with 3 terminals (S,K, +) rather than subsequent ones that use only 2 (S,+). So far I have amassed a range of dodgy early style 3 terminal versions, none of which work to my total satisfaction. As I have a number of 2 terminal ones I thought I would change to this later system. From looking at the wiring diagrams it looks achievable which just a couple of wires to swap around. Here is a quick sketch of the 2 systems.

Clutch repair and manifold update

Well the engine went back in again at the weekend and there was a lot of fiddling about before it happened.

I ordered a replacement clutch release bearing shaft only for it to have the slot for the internal circlip set about 1.5cm further inboard from the clutch cable arm end; no supplier seemed to be able to supply the one I needed. I then remembered that Pete at Cogbox mentioned that there were heavy duty shafts available and a quick search for these turned up a pack by BugPack with the shaft, bearing and fittings. This also has the slot for the internal circlip in both places. These heavy duty shafts are far sturdier and offer a better solution for retention of the release bearing clips so hopefully I wont have a repeat episode with the clutch assembly.

The shaft bearing supplied is a neoprene one and needs to be cut to size through various attempts at inserting, marking and cutting. All this was carried out and the engine went back in effortlessly.

I now just need to adjust the clutch and cure a small leak on the fuel inlet into the carb; the brass fitting has come looses and even gentle tapping back into place hasn't cured it. I will dig out the locktight at the weekend and see if that cures it.

I also obtained a replacement 62 only manifold for the engine from Bert3 in Belgium. It turned out to be distorted where heat had been applied in an attempt to remove carbon deposits in the preheater pipe. A local engineering workshop got it back into line but I think it is still slightly out of true as when the engine is warm it seems to 'hunt' rather than idle smoothly. I might need to remove and tweak slightly.

Damage limitation

Got the engine out today, The clutch release bearing had come off the operating shaft, one arm on the shaft was bent and one broken. The springs on each of the 3 clutch release levers that are part of the clutch pressure plate had all come off and were wrecked.

Not sure now if it was a failure of the pressure plate that led to the release bearing and operating shaft damage or the other way round.

Will be ordering new parts and switching to the later style clutch release mechanism and pressure plate; at the same time we will also be checking the fly wheel to make sure there is no distortion that could have caused the failure.

At least no major damage to engine or gear box.

62 details

Here is one more difference on the early 62s compared to later ones.

I never looked at the 62 handles properly when I took them off and when sorting through my collection of door handles to supply one to another T34 owner I noticed that the back of the original 62 handles in the finger grip area are hollow, where as all the later ones are solid.

Post 62 handle at top, 62 at bottom in the photo.

And one more thing

To solve some of the electrical problems on the car and remove the need for a separate switch for the windscreen washers, as the valve in the push button unit leaks, I bought a NOS switch unit which was of course very expensive but looked great.
It solved some of the electrical glitched linked to the resistor on the back of the unit but the new valve in the washer switch leaks equally as well as the old one.
If any one knows how to repair these then do let me know.

Happenings since May

It hasn't exactly been a smooth transition from restoration to on the road for my 62, in fact it's been more trial and tribulation.

On the way back from it's MOT after the VolksWorld show the rear driver's side wheel decided it didn't like being attached to the car and came off at about 30mph with the exception of one bolt that held the wheel to the car and stopped it scrapping along the ground. Outcome was no one injured, a damaged wheel, dented pride but no damage to the bodywork.

So having got over that I tracked down a replacement rim and will be prepping it to go on the car shortly.

Electrical problems have persisted, most of them now relate to the multi function instrument cluster and I will be swapping over the back of the unit to see if that helps solve the problems. I also had to swap the early MPH speedo back to the early restored KPH speedo as the trip meter kept zeroing back to 0 miles.

Subsequently has issues with the brake fluid proof hosing I bought to connect the reservoir to the piping and the joint between that pipe and the master cylinder pipe. It bled fluid profusely and I replaced it and bled the brakes which now seem OK.

At the VolksWorld show the car picked up a dent in one of the doors and at the same time the door lifter decided to part company with the window glass - will sort both of these problems at the same time. I will use a guy who does dent removal and then replace the window lifter and glass from my stock in the loft.

Finally - I was driving the car back from London along the A40, just before where it joins the M40, very busy in early evening and as I changed down gear the clutch release bearing, newly installed of course, decided to give way accompanied by loud banging and grating.

After 5 hours we were home, the engine is OK and turns over and the gearbox selects all gears. So hopefully damage is restricted to the bearing and shift lever inside the bell housing.

I have taken advice from ever helpful Luke at Terry's Beetles and will be switching the release bearing assembly and clutch to the later style with the aid of a conversion kit from Pete at Cogbox - more to follow on this as it happens.

Here is a picture of the car abandoned on the A40 with us safely out of the way.

May 2009 update

Well at long last the registration for the car came through. It is now finally road registered and taxed under registration number 278XUT. I have a set of number plates on order in the correct period style from Vintage Supplies and they should be with me next week.

Here is an image of the VW birth certificate which has a few interesting things on it.

• It states that paint code L41 isn't simply black but Tukan black - never seen it described this way before


• There is an explanation of the M codes - not provided on my previous certificates


• M580 is shown as a pearl white roof, so the car was 2 tone originally

Strangely they can no longer put the engine number on the certificate for data protection reasons - No idea what the logic on this is, whoose data are they protecting and why would they want it protecting? They do however confirm your original engine number in the accompanying letter.

I now have the final pieces of carpet for the car, thanks Joel for the templates, and have also had the sill pieces made up with the correct heater outlet grommets, will be fitting these shortly.

Finally I went to the Stanford Hall event and whilst I didn't find any amazing NOS parts I stumbled across a couple of small items on my Friend Brian Johnsons stand which he gave me for free - a couple of original plastic end caps for the wiper spindles and a plastic seal for the door lock - really small parts but some nice final touches.

A small picture of the car also appears again in Volksworld this month as the Car that the editor, Ivan, would most have liked to take home with him - good man Ivan!