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.

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.