Good morning

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

We’ve been having some weather here for three days, and so these pictures are a couple days late. The boat yard was very wet this morning and I was out there sweeping off the wet leaves and excess water so I can work later. This was basically a repeat of yesterday except yesterday was worse.

Hoisting off the front axle. I need to check it out some more for straightness.


But more importantly I need to check the frame out for straightness, because I think the axle is fine and I know the frame is bent.

This is the adapter that makes the frame longer.


I’m checking the frame with a big pipe clamped in the adapter. It’s off a half a degrees down on the driver side. The driver’s wheelbase is also about 3/8 shorter.


After the sun dries things off a little more I’m gonna go out and resume work. I hope the weather is nice where you guys live, because I hear they are getting pummeled back east in places.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

The adapter is finally off.






I didn’t get a lot done yesterday because it shopping and we had another rain that required me to clean up wet leaves in sweep water out of my boat yard. But after two successive rains the concrete looks really clean now. Lol

I wish the head frame on this chassis looked better. There’s rust perforations around the bottom.



I set it up to check the frame twist and it is not as bad as it looks in this photo. But it is twisted down 0.7° at the driver side.


I woke up too early, but the weather promises to be nice today, so I may get a lot more work done.

You guys have a nice day

 

[CaddmannQ]

Well it’s afternoon but it’s been a good one.

I spent a lot of time burnishing hardware on the rear suspension arms, shock absorbers, and axles, and giving them an anti-corrosion coating.

I am making my first relief cuts in the damaged frame area, and here I stopped to change the cut-off wheel.

My plan from the beginning was to aim directly for the nuts.


I got to a point where it was starting to pinch the disc, because the frame is starting to relieve itself. I have made the first cross cut on the bottom, so no turning back now.

Meanwhile there was an ancient mouse nest, with some kind of tiny seeds in it, concealed in the tunnel. I caught that on fire and had to blow it out of the tunnel with an air hose.

I expected something like this and I have a fire extinguisher close by, plus a garden hose, but it was very minor in the end.

Just a bit stinky like a hay fire.

 

[Rodburner]

I love my angle grinder with cutters and flaps, but with that stuff with the big access holes and nothing inside like wiring, my sawzall would have been my tool of choice. We’ve only had 2 days of warm weather this year so I just sat on the porch and soaked it up. Only done small indoor projects so far. Keep up the good work..

 

[CaddmannQ]

I love my angle grinder with cutters and flaps, but with that stuff with the big access holes and nothing inside like wiring, my sawzall would have been my tool of choice. We’ve only had 2 days of warm weather this year so I just sat on the porch and soaked it up. Only done small indoor projects so far. Keep up the good work..

Thank you.

The surface was rather irregular for using a sawsall but I could’ve done most of the cutting that way. I could’ve done a lot of it with a nibbler. The only thing left in the tunnel forward of the pedals is the fuel line. So I still have to be careful about that.

I think that tunnel is only 14 gauge steel but there are some parts I have to cut through that have been reinforced with thicker plate, and the grinder just zipped right through that with no effort.

I did several strategic cuts designed to allow the frame to pop away from any weld draw in the heavily welded areas. This only worked a little bit but the frame did untwist about 0.2° and by the growth of the saw cut, I can see that it has lengthened just slightly, Maybe 1/16 inch, on the driver side.


I’m pretty sure I’m going to do some mechanical straightening here . First I have to finish the cutting and it’s way too early to start that yet.

The temperature got up to 80° in the boat yard today and it was very pleasant.

It will be increasingly warm here and expected to be 90°F next Saturday.

I hope The storms back east have all cleared up by now.

You guys all have a nice day.

 

[meanstreak]

Good morning all you MOers. We have had nice weather the past 3 days. Last Thursday we got about 2 inches of rain but no storms . They stayed south of us. We are at 67 now, 7:45 am, headed for 88. We have about a 50% chance of storms tonight, which also means a 50% chance of none.

Anyways, you all have a great day.

 

[CaddmannQ]

I was determined to get the bottom off of the headframe today, and armed with my trusty grinder and a few cut off discs I laid into it with gusto.

I don’t have a rollover trunnion, so I just hoisted the frame up in the air on its tail bones.


After cutting all the way around I realized that some of the metal I thought was rusted completely away inside the frame was still attached. I had to cut a window into the frame so I could see what was going on.


So this is what was going on. Big patches welded under the frame, and lots of toasty mouse nests, roasted with the grinding heat.



I plugged that window back in place, and you can see that the original tunnel bottom in that area was completely rusted away and there is no original Volkswagen bottom left inside the headframe.



Looking up inside the tunnel, I can see more mouse nest.


Also I see I just barely kissed the fuel line with my grinder. Just enough to wipe the rust off.


You can see I still have another foot of Tunnel bottom to remove here but this will be easy by comparison to what I have done.


Twisting the headframe around into alignment will be no problem now, because it is quite flexible with the bottom removed.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

Yesterday, I took another chunk out of the bottom of the frame and hosed out the tunnel really well to remove all of the old mouse nests. You can see where this rusted through completely and there is a patch underneath it. This is the backside of that big ugly weld.

I dried it all out with the air hose and shop vac, & it will be fine because the weather is very dry here and expected to hit the 90s this week. There’s already plenty of rust and I don’t wanna create more.

I did not manage to remove all of the cancer yet. There’s still another foot of bad seam along the drivers side of the tunnel under this patch, that has been poorly repaired and will need attention.


But not this morning, because I have other things that need attending to. You guys all have a nice day.

 

[Bobster]

I think your VW has a coolant leak, Cadd...

Do they not make segments of the floor pan for patching in?

 

[Rodburner]

For how many patches he’s found on that thing, he coulda picked up a few more old bikes and built a tube frame…lol

 

[CaddmannQ]

Well the mouse flushing was completely successful on the inside of the frame looks pretty good now that most of the cancer is gone.

You can buy all kinds of original reproduction style patch panels for this Volkswagen frame, $$$, but I’m not going to do that because it’s not a Volkswagen anymore. I don’t have any need to keep it original.

I thought about having a complete tube frame built just for this car and I was not prepared to absorb the $5k~$10k price, and plenty of other caveats.

Basically I’m going to put this car back together with steel that I already have, and I think I’ve got a plan that will make it work but it involves a lot of welding.

I need the practice anyway.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

I spent a good part of yesterday working on my fence, repairing rotten boards and putting up concrete board where I don’t want the dog to chew it.

I cleaned up the bolts for the headframe, and did another little mock up on the floor of how I want this to go together.

The idea is that I want to make the floor flat up front, and I will reinforce the chassis above and below the floor both, but I’m going to get rid of that head frame tube completely, about 6 inches forward of the baby blue line.

What I’m going through now will allow me to straighten and bend it until I get an alignment between the axles. At that point I can start welding in the rest of the frame, and once it is rigid, I can dispense with the unnecessary bits.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Mockup number 37 or so . . .

I think this is going to be really solid, and it’s going to add about 35 or 40 pounds to each front wheel, which it needs desperately for traction.

Looking inside the tunnel where I have cut it.


The little red circle indicates the fuel line, the red X is the tunnel itself, and the white arrow shows a bead of weld that attaches the bottom of the tunnel to the big patch next to the gas pedal. Looking through the rusty holes in the tunnel you can see the patch. Fortunately this goes back in less than a foot so I won’t have too much cleanup to do.

That bead of weld that I pointed to with the white arrow was made by cutting a big window in the tunnel and then welding it back up again.


Temperatures here will be in the 90s, so it’s going to be perfect weather for welding. All the metal will be preheated.

You all have a nice Saturday.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners. Today is Mother’s Day. My mother passed away six years ago so today we remember her.

I got to go and see my daughters house in Exeter yesterday, for the first time. It’s not as famous as the Exeter in England, but it is s nice little town & I lived down there myself for over five years. I’m not surprised that she would move back there, since her early childhood was happiest there.

She bought a brick house, and it’s not very large but it is rather unusual, since here houses are not made of brick typically.

We had a lovely visit and a nice lunch, and after driving home I was inclined to be lazy for the whole day.

Incredibly, we caught a tailwind going down Highway 99 and we also caught a tail wind five hours later coming back north. The computer on the Camry told me we were getting 39 miles per gallon. Traffic was going steadily between 70 and 80 mph. I drove nearly two hours and did not burn a quarter tank of gas.

The Tacoma would do well in a tail wind too, since it is so tall, but normally I’ve never gotten more than 22 miles to the gallon. Headwinds are a pain.

I’m going to work on the Volkswagen little bit today and then my sister is coming over for a barbecue later. It is expected to be lovely today and about 95°. So far this year the weather has been generally too wet and cold for my liking, so I’m going to enjoy it.

 

[Bobster]

I got to go and see my daughters house in Exeter yesterday, for the first time. It’s not as famous as the Exeter in England, but it is s nice little town & I lived down there myself for over five years. I’m not surprised that she would move back there, since her early childhood was happiest there.

I dated a girl from Exeter, RI. This was in what would be considered the "sticks" of RI where the good people live and probably still live unless they've built an Illegal Invader camp there, because of space and seclusion. Bidet ruining the country one neighborhood at a time.
Provolone (the capital) would be the opposite of good people and has always been known for corrupt politicians...

Keep buying/making/acquiring ammo, my brothers and sisters...

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

I cleaned out my garage a bit today and rolled the Volkswagen engine outside so I could do a test fit.

It did not fit. I knew this could happen which is why I did the test fit today.

Clearance is limited around the new struts.

By “limited”, I mean that it hits, and unfortunately it hits the valve cover retainer. When the engine rocks, it’s going to release the valve covers all by itself.

I don’t have a lot of room to move this strut before it hits the body. If I get everything straight they’ll be almost 1”clear on each side of the frame to the fiberglass. This tube is about 3/4” OD but I can mash it down a bit.

Currently I plan to shorten it slightly, mash it down in the other direction and bolt it to the side of the frame. This is not ideal from a structural standpoint, but then what about the car is?

Out-of-plane rotation forces will have to be absorbed by the bumper brackets, because that bumper’s not gonna flex unless you hit it with a truck. The rear bumper is literally a structural part of the frame.

I will need to add another sleeve of tubing inside the frame as a stiffener. That’s not particularly difficult to do do, except it has to lay sideways. I have to make it long enough that it just barely fits in the tube and I have to tap it in place. That’s what I did with all the sleeves on this frame so far. None of them are welded in place.

 

[CaddmannQ]

In other news, I had Jack to the back of this frame up 7’ so I could get any remaining junk out of the tunnel, and sure enough there was some.


In addition to various parts of slag, rust, and steel debris, I found a bit of string and this chunk of clutch cable housing.

 

[meanstreak]

Good morning to some of yous, good afternoon to the rest, lol. Another cloudy day, ab out the 4th in a row. We have about 2 inches of rain this week which is good. We have some veggies starting to pop up and things are just looking good.

Ya'll have a great day.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good afternoon morning Mossberg Owners…

I made these two new brackets that attach from my body cross member to the shock towers, and this will be plenty beefy. I didn’t add much weight.

I used the same long struts, without modification, but I moved them to the rear most bumper bracket bolt.



These were 3/4” emt smacked on an anvil cold. But they’re making this stuff much softer nowadays. In the old days it was much easier to crack when you did this.

There is plenty of clearance now.


Today I had to run errands and pay some attention to my wife’s car. I’ll get back on this this evening.

Y’all have a nice day.

 

[CaddmannQ]

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

My shooting and fishing buddy has been laid up, so I’ve been hanging out at home every day with wrenches, jacks, and wire brushes.

Today I will continue working on the car. Until further notice. Or you see my obituary.

The weather has just been lovely here and my wife has been gardening like crazy as per usual. This is the view from my kitchen door.


The front garden is all in shadows right now so I have to wait for the sun to move over a bit, to shoot that. Anyhow Judy been working hard at it, and it’s all just beautiful.

There’s my wife in the garden looking at her morning email. She wears contact lenses so I think this is the only photo I have of her wearing eyeglasses.



I hope you all have a beautiful day.