Father & Son Build - Ready for the Road?

Well, there really isn't a question as Sam and Nate did get the car road worthy-ish. Heck, they even drove it a few minutes up the street to a little car show back in June. Just the same, there was a whole bunch of work that took place beforehand as Sam and Nate spent 4 or 5 weeks working on the car to get it running and driving once again. This is a compilation of a few days worth of work which included Sam finally deciding to do something about the very sharp rear fenders, installing the engine that Nate rebuilt the top end on, running basic wiring and switches, installing rear brake calipers, and a whole bunch of other work that culminates with Nathan installing some left over racing Yohohama tires on some brand new to the market, JBugs 5 Spoke Aluminum Beadlock wheels. Enjoy this recap and stay tuned for the next video which should just about bring us up to speed on all the work that was done prior to going to the Desert Dubs Vintage Volkswagen Show!

Video Transcript

Hi guys I’m Sam and I’m Nate and welcome to our garage.

We're recapping a whole bunch of stuff that we did on Nathan's car prior to the Desert Dubs show back in April. It's now July 20th, and we've still got plenty more work to do. We haven't done a whole lot on the car since, other than we added some tail lights and turn signals so that we could drive this thing on the street.

Nathan, you want to hop in, hit the ignition switch? Alright, you want to hit the brakes, you want to hit the left turn, right turn. Very nice. Running lights are already on. You want to hit the turn signal? These are just temporarily mounted in place. I've got one zip tie there, one zip tie there, one zip tie there.

Lights are on just temporarily so that we could drive this thing on the street. We actually went to a car show. Goodness gracious, that was a month ago now because that was before the empty engine battle. It was the day I drove back to California. We took this thing to a car show just down the street at our O'Reilly's, where Nathan actually won a bucket of goodies, a car wash bucket. We haven't been working on the car mainly because it's 105° in the garage. We've got a big old swamp cooler over here that we commandeered from Grandpa's. It's not really good for the audio, but we have to stay cool in here somehow. So enjoy this recap of all the stuff that has happened prior, and we're still working on this car. You'll see some more of those videos coming out soon enough.

This is kind of just a random assortment of stuff I still want to get done before we go to the show. Review mirror, one of our prototype wiring harness, some parking brake calipers that will fit with these narrow rotors, throw out bearing, new brake lines for these calipers, a new starter, a new pressure plate, a switch, and some warning lights for our temporary wiring. Door handles all stick on so we actually have a door handle to grab instead of just going like that to open our door. Most importantly, I've got the forehead saver 1000, also known as VW Thing door pocket beading. I'm going to put this on our fender, or our fenders specifically. This one right here seems to have made friends with my forehead a couple times, so I'm going to put this on a eral quick. Conveniently enough, Thing door pocket beading is nice and small so it doesn't look really obtrusive like a big old piece of standard pinchwelt.

One forehead saver 1000 installed. I've still got work to do, so I'm going to keep on doing it starting with this pressure plate. Believe it or not, this is actually new. Either in the sand rail or in Nathan's car, it's actually correct for a 1972 Beetle, but this transmission's from a 1970 and earlier Bus, so I need to swap this out to an early style pressure plate and then I'll stick on a new throwout bearing on this transmission even though it's just going to come out in a couple miles anyway. Then I can stick this engine in place. I'm going to probably run a new throttle cable first just because I have all the room, and then I'm going to stick this engine in by myself.

The biggest difference between these two pressure plates: centering ring early style, no centering ring late style. We're going to put the early style one because that one's going to work.

Torqued to spec. So I've got our new heavy-duty throttle cable installed. Now I'm going to pull out this old throwout bearing. I'm going to save the clips because this transmission is going to be probably coming right out. Yeah, not the greatest throwout bearing. A new Sachs Germany ought to do the job well. Let me grab a little grease for those. And everyone's favorite trick: let’s get one side on, no side's on. Much better. I don't know that we actually have a starter bushing in there, oh, unless that's the edge of it. Alright, let's see if I can tap that one out real quick. There we go. Old bushing, new bushing.

And that's just the SR15 NEC starter, model 15 new EC for economy. These are better than the Bosch ones out currently because these actually fit a D-bolt properly and they're both made in China. Bosch current starters are made in China, this starter made in China, but this starter actually has a D-bolt slot. I can hear the racetrack, all the quarter midgets and whatnot blasting around. Studs poking through the mount there, studs poking through the mount there. Perfect. Alright, I'm going to throw that upper engine bolt in on this side.

And we might need a little bit more height. That one's in. Should be able to get a nut on this bottom side. I can. Good. Alright, let's move over to the other side. Yeah, so I'll just start on the bottom and then we'll finish up up top. I had a washer, it went down there. One step closer. Try to get our throttle cable run through the fan trap. One OOS, old old stock. Alright, let me hit this. That seems to work alright. Cut that down a little bit. There we go. Alright, let's go hook up some fuel lines.

I don't know at what point I shut the camera off or turned it back on, but anyway, I didn't originally plan to run a harness through here, so I pulled out the original harness. Now I'm going to push this fiberglass rod through the quarter panel and try to get it to come out here, or you know what? It might be easier this way. There we go. Now I can tape an old accelerator cable to the rod and hopefully pull it back out. Stupid fiberglass shards. There we go. I would normally use electrical tape, but I'm out, so I'm just going to use some Gorilla Tape. We'll see if it'll work. Alright, here goes nothing. Alright, that works surprisingly well.

Alternator, alternator ground, warning light, coil, oil pressure, get those there. These are our tail light wires. We aren't worried about those. Also, tail light wires, not really worried about those other than the fact that we are worried about them. We don't want them to get torn up or destroyed, so we're just going to take these guys, try and tuck them up and out of the way. I need a jumper terminal on that for that.

This oil pressure switch I'm probably going to have to replace, but at least we'll have a wire there for it. Alright, this ground wire, we don't use it with an alternator. For those people that are running an aftermarket gauge, you can hook this up to the negative side of the coil, then all you have to do is run a wire from your tachometer down to where the voltage regulator is underneath the seat, and you can hook up to this wire for your tach signal. We don't need it right now. We'll tuck him out of the way. We do need to put on an original style open barrel crimp to convert this over, and power to the front, power to the starter, and then from the starter to the battery. Not the ideal size wire, but it will do the job. This is for a generator, not an alternator. I'm going to cut it open and split it out because these things never drill out easily. What you can do is just cut it, spread it open. There we go. This is what ends our starter. Alright, so that is all the engine wiring done. I'm going to move inside and get this harness hooked up underneath the rear seat, and then we'll do some more running up the front of the car.

Alright, here again, we're not using this brown wire. I do need to hook up this red wire here to that red wire there. I probably could have done this at the back of the car, and I need to hook up that green wire to that wire. I'm just going to use butt splices on both of those. Why not? Good thing I didn't cut that wire that goes to my starter. I need that wire, the one with the ring terminal. Save that, that goes to your starter. That's important. I think in the future I'm just going to start doing all these modifications outside the car.

I don't know if you guys can see it, but got our circles in a rectangle: one, two, three, four, and then a rectangle. I've got those scribed in here. I'll drill a couple holes, that way I can put a couple screws and washers on the back, and I know where I can mount my switches and my warning lights.

I've got my plate. I just took the pieces of plastic I trimmed off and used those as washers to hold it across the back side here, couple nuts. I've got a basic dash set up on our backside. Power comes in from the battery, out to the starter. Power is jumped over to our ignition circuit, out to our coil, to our alternator, and to our oil pressure light. Starter wire, battery wire, coil wire, oil pressure light, generator light, and oil light is usually the one with the green stripe. Oil light, generator light, power to the coil, power from our battery, power to our starter. Let me see if I can't get this guy all through there and give it a test. Power on. We've got a starter and power to the coil. Now I can disconnect our battery jumper and get this all hooked up.

Alright, I think to wrap it up for tonight, I am going to get these brake lines kind of bent to shape to fit this caliper. I'm not going to go through and bother about making a bracket and everything else right now. I do actually have the brackets for this kit which will solve two problems: problem one being the axle spacing thickness in between that bearing cap and here. I can cut this off and stick that in there to take care of that. I'll have this mounting flange here to weld across the back of the trailing arm, and that will be a mount for our brake caliper. Alright, see if I can get these guys held in place and that'll get me in the ballpark. Alright, so from there to there, I want to do basically a 180 and then come up over here, and that way.

Wonder if I could come up over the top and up that way. It's kind of a little bit more extreme and tight, but does give us a lot more ground clearance.

My very first time, no redos or anything, came up with another design. Instead of going up and under and over, I went out and back over the top, and that way I can use a couple of rivet in clamps to hold this in place all the way up our trailing arm, all the way up to our flexible line right here. I can weld on a line clip right there. Now this is a floating caliper, but even if I was to hold this clamp here, you can see we've got a lot of flex in this line. We're talking about maybe a quarter inch of movement left to right on this caliper. That's not going to be an issue. So you can see how much flex we've actually got in this guy right here. That shouldn't be an issue, and if it is, well, I'll just put a flex line right here. With this side done, I'll go build another one for the other side.

Hi guys, I'm Sam and I'm Nate. Right now I got everything mocked up. I finished off with the brake lines. I've got a couple of zip ties, thick zip ties taped in between the brake caliper and the rotor to set the backspace so it's not touching across the top. I've got our brake line hooked up, I've got our brake hose hooked up, and now Nathan gets to bleed brakes the old-fashioned way. So Nathan, you get to get your butt up in the seat, and you get to start pumping that brake pedal, buddy, and I'm going to pull the front end out of the way and get our brake fluid out so I can make sure my reservoir is topped off as we're doing all this. Grab my bottle and clear hose and all that fun.

Look at this. I get to open the door with the handle, with the door handle. So weird, huh?

I've got our front-to-rear brake line hooked up, I've got two new brake light switches in place, I've got a reservoir topped off. You see our fluid starting to drop while Nathan pumps up the brake. Alright, I said I would never bleed brakes manually again, but I never said Nathan wouldn't, so Nathan's going to get his first foray into bleeding brakes the old-fashioned way. Pump it, Nathan, and hold. Are you at the floor? No, it's not moving. Okay, pump it again. Just pump, pump, pump. Hold. I'm getting a whole bunch of air and fluid out, so that's good. Hold on, not going. Pump and pump and hold. Alright, that one was all fluid, that's looking good. Hold on, I'm going to go check our fluid reservoir, make sure that we're still full of fluid. Fluid off for now.

Yeah, it's a lot worse, huh? Sucks compared to the Speedy Bleeds. Can't you just drill a hole in it? Or it's not how it works, Nathan, not at all how it works. They have a check valve which lets fluid out but doesn't let air back in, so you can't just drill a hole in it. There's already a hole in it.

Pump it up. That's way better, way better. Yeah, it feels better. It feels like stopping the car and not like all right, push it, hold it. Yeah, that's locked on there. Alright, sweet, let go. Alright, pump it, hold it. Alright, that's golden. I cannot pull that off for nothing. Sweet. Alright, this side's done. I'm going to go do the other side, and I got to get this thing taped back in place. But anyway, it's the same whole process on that side. I'm not going to bore you with the small details.

Alright, now that our brakes are bled, I'm going to have Nathan get to work putting the tank in place while I start cutting down our brackets for the back of the car and getting those ready to weld in place. What you need to do is take this guy right here and attach him to the port on the bottom. Then you can set that guy in place. So the best way to do it is kind of like tilted up, right? Yep. Gas tank brackets just kind of need those. Makes bolting up a gas tank really easy. Do we need to put a hose clamp on here? It's the flared end so that the fuel line comes on but it does not come off easily at this time.

Drop it in, then you got four of these guys, one for bag. Let's just get those started on the back. Yeah, just get them started, don't tighten them. So just starting by hand. Yeah, so bolt washer and then slot it in. Perfect. Gas tank in.

Alright, let's throw this front end up on the way so we can get some more walking room. But we're not going to bolt it on because we need to put some fuel in that thing. Yeah, and we also need to, of course, get some front mounts and headlight mounts. Can't do any of that until we get fuel in, so yeah. Alright, so that's all the front done. You get to work on the back cutting these brackets down.

I've got our conversion bracket cut down to fit. I've test fit this on both sides. Now I'm going to use this as a template real quick to cut this one down, and then when I've got both sides in place and bolted, I'll have Nathan hold the pedal and I'll hold the rotor in place and I'll go ahead and tack it in two spots. Then I'll pull off our caliper, and that way I can weld the back side of this bracket. Alright, I'm going to have Nathan press the brake pedal. Alright, let go of the brake pedal for a second. Alright, press it. Alright, I didn't get very good penetration on either one of those, so more heat, a little bit more wire, and let's give that another shot. I need more wire. I got to get my welder better dialed in, but that bracket's stuck. I'm going to go stick the other side. Then I'm going to pull all this stuff off and fully weld it. Got it all dialed in, got a bead laid down there. I mean, we have rear brakes now. We have rear brakes now.

Should we get it to go on the trailer? It's good enough to drive at this point. I'd put this on the street.

Alright, got that brake line welded in place, or just tacked in place really. And now we've got our brake line all set all the way down to our caliper. Caliper half welded, and we've got rear brakes on this side. I'm going to go do the same thing on that side. Never mind Nathan, he's just mounting up some bead lock rings for his new wheels. Absolutely beautiful wheels. Did we get one done already, Nathan? Yeah, that way. That way. I'm sorry, I'm not going to bore you guys with all the nuances and the pain in the butt it is to go through and mount bead lock wheels, but there we go. And I don't know if I'm going to run the chrome center caps on these things or not. They just look so pretty even without, but they might look good with. I'll bring a set home, we'll see how it looks. But there you go.

We're one step closer to being able to drive, Nathan. I mean, once these wheels and tires are on the car, it'll drive. Yeah, hopefully it should drive. I mean, yeah, we've got brakes, we've got a transmission that works. Hopefully it shifts and it drives the tires. I'm working on insurance currently. Once I get the insurance, I can go down to the MVD here in Arizona and I can get this thing registered. Nate 88, right, Nathan? Yep, Nate 88. Nate 88 will be the license plate, and then we'll be able to drive this thing on the street legally. Granted, we're missing headlights and brake lights and turn signals and a lot of minor things.

Nathan, y'all ready? Yep. Drop her down. First time sitting on its own weight with the new wheels and tires and new rear suspension. Yeah, buddy. I don't think we could have planned that much better. Yeah, that's awesome. Like, boom, it's super wide in the back and make sure we're not in gear this time because now we actually have wheels on it, it could move. Running, running, turning, stopping car. You've got yourself a running, driving, stopping kind of car, or at least we hope it's driving because we haven't tested that yet. Yeah, we'll test that tomorrow.

It's only Tuesday the 16th. So we've got at this point just a whole bunch of, you know, we can do some minor stuff, cleaning up. I want to try and mount some headlights. I still have to mount the front end of this. It's still loose. We'll get there. The nice thing is, she's just about ready to go, dude. Yeah. Woo, we did it. And you are filthy, and you need a shower. This is what happens when a 13-year-old mounts his own tires. Yeah, he gets dirty, whatever. And on that note, life’s full of good people, if you can't find one, be one. Later, guys.