1970 VW Fastback (3 Viewers)

[Owyhee Jackass]

My wife had one of these in high school, it was her first car. A friend of ours sent me the ad for it, I forwarded it on to my wife as I've done thousands of times with other 'classic' cars and asked if she wanted to go check it out. To my surprise, her reply was 'Sure!' It was about a 3-hour drive, so we made a Saturday road-trip and checked it out. It turned out to be everything I expected, crusty, rusty, flat tires, and a home for mice and wasps. The price was right and I had another friend who happened to be bringing an empty trailer home from North Idaho, passing within 20-miles of it the next day. Wife didn't say no, so we're the proud owners of this gem.

Guy tried to 'sweeten the deal' with a non-running 30-year old snowmobile or two, but we declined his offer. I guess he made the same offer to my friend that showed up the next day to haul it back to Boise.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Plan for now is to just clean it up and get it running. It had no engine or transaxle and was originally equipped with an auto.

The same friend that sent the ad to me for this one, found a 1969 squareback that was being parted. It had a type 3 engine and manual trans and I was able to buy what was left of it. So now we're the proud owners of two Type 3 VW turds.

I keep italicizing 'friend' as he's more of an enabler than a friend. I have no need for another project, but I do enjoy bringing vehicles back to life. This is the first non Land Cruiser project like this I've had in 20+ years.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

First thing I did was get some new tires on the fastback. Big O has 'old vw' tires (that's the description on the sales receipt) for $89 each. Same MSRP as mountain bike tires, crazy. I wire-wheeled, media-blasted, primed and painted (Eastwood Rally Wheel/Argent Silver) the wheels and got tires on it, so I can move it around. It's nice how small and light it is, I'm pretty limited for space.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Next order of business is/was pulling the engine and tranny out of the donor and collecting parts. I'm puling the fuel injection off the 'new' engine and putting dual carbs on it. Got those ordered. Need to find some linkage and brackets. Getting other parts rounded up from said friend and created an account on The Samba as well as JBugs, this is a whole new world for me.

 

[SKULLYOTA]

I just sold my aircooled VW yesterday

CIP1 in Canada is another good place for parts. I believe they are the same owners as SoCal Imports (another good place for cheap VW stuff)

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Not much progress over the winter. But, I did acquire some sick slot-mags for the squareback. I only had 5 tires/wheels that held air and two vehicles to move. I'm getting concrete poured on that gravel spot in my alley. Had to swap tires from one to the other to move them out of the way. Checked Craigslist and found these cool mag wheels. The squareback is a parts-car, but it is growing on me...

 

[SKULLYOTA]

You get this running?

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Ha!

No. It hasn't been touched. Right after we got these, my troopy required some extensive rust repair which took me most of the summer (Memorial Day to Labor Day to be exact), then winter set in and with no garage, my to motivation to work on cars wains...

I got the fuel injection stuff pulled off the donor engine, put dual carbs on it. Need to get the linkage fixed/straightened out. Then I'll be ready to stuff the engine and trans in. It was auto/fuel injected, will be manual/carb'd.

I also had to put a clutch cable tube in, surprised to find out that VW had a different chassis/pan between autos and manual cars.

 

[SKULLYOTA]

Clutch cable tube sounds pretty bad, I'm not sure about a type 3, but fishing a new hard fuel line from front to back had to be one of the worst jobs on my beetle

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

I need to do a better job of documenting what I'm doing on this project. One, it's so infrequent that I work on it and I forget what I did...

As I mentioned before, I had to add a clutch cable tube to the tunnel. I purchased this plate 2701 | VW Chassis Tunnel Inspection Plate Kit Clutch | Airkewld - https://www.airkewld.com/Chassis-Inspection-Plate-Kit-2701-p/2701.htm

Cut a hole in the tunnel:

Drilled holes in the back-end of the tunnel, and put a new piece of tubing that I bought some tubing from McMaster 12mm O.D., 1.5 mm wall McMaster-Carr - https://www.mcmaster.com/50295K723/

Here's a shot of the back-end of the tunnel on the squareback.

And the hole-saw hole I added to the fastback:

And the added hole and tubing for the clutch cable:

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Looking into the hole I cut in the front of the tunnel:

Could barely get my mig tip in there, but got it tacked in place.

And the backside it secured with a weld too.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Found another ancient artifact:

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Pulled the fuel injection off the donor.

Before:

Took me a few tries, but I think I figured out the carb, linkage and air cleaner...I'm missing the rubber seals that go between the carb and air cleaner, there's also a rubber boot that seals the joint in the air box. Come to find out, the vw guys say the factory air-box is junk and I should toss it and put on individual air cleaners on each carb.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

I'm missing a bracket to mount the coil, will probably fab something.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Took the spare tire carrier pan out of the frunk and pulled the access plate for the transmission shift tube off. Interesting that the automatic equipped car has this feature on the front, but not the other things necessary for a manual car on the rear. With these item removed, I was able to put the shifter tube in with a new bushing in the bracket at the shifter. No pics of this, but I used this guys youtube video for guidance.

It was a tight fit, had to have my wife help, I got it shoved all the way up to the access plate, then used a section of tubing and had her smack it with a mallet, while I watched it in the tunnel. The access hole I cut previously for welding the clutch cable tube in came in handy to help keep the tubing on the shifter tube while she whacked it.

Shifter tube in position.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Couldn't find the grub-screw to attach the tube to the trans, just went to a local VW garage/junkyard and they gave me one. I need to start hanging out with some VW guys more often as I'm pretty clueless on this thing.

I think I'm almost ready to stick the tranny and transaxles in next.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Been awhile took me several tries but finally got a fan belt on the thing. The generator is off a type one and the bolts fowled the pulley. gut them off as they were too mangled on the end to back out.

Also pulled some more fuel injection stuff out and began trying to get a fuel pump installed. Studs are too short so had to make some new ones.

M8x1.25 x about 53mm seem to be long enough for the phenolic spacer and mechanical pump. Got a new pump rod as well. Looks like it will all work. Had to order some gaskets before I can button it up.

Made a bracket to support the air cleaners.

 

[bobm]

Brother had a fastback with Porsche engine! I had a Squareback and a Bus , made a heatrise tube for the Bus out of empty beer cans . Squarebacks pedals use to freeze in winter , also had to use de- icer inside on windshield . Lots of fun

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Pretty productive weekend on the Fasty. Air-cooled-cruiser friend came to town and stayed with me for 3 days and we got the engine, trans, axles in and got it to fire up and run for a second on gas. Woo-hoo!

Friday we messed with the generator pulley and belt, I purchased a new pulley online and couldn't get the belt tension right. Even after cutting those studs down. Finally figured out the dish of the inner pulley half was about .2" too much and had to cut that much material off the pulley as every time I'd tighten the pulley nut, it would push the pulley into the tin and cause it to bind.

Next order of business was getting the fuel lines plumbed to the carbs. A trip to the parts store to get a 1/4" barbed tee and some fuel line and checked that off the list.

Clutch and throw-out bearing were checked, bearing was bad, but my buddy had another one on-hand, so that got swapped and we were ready to stuff it in by early afternoon Friday.

I tore a muscle last week and have a 'dead-arm', can't lift my right arm away from my body at all, so I was a bit worthless, but another guy showed up to say hi right at the perfect time to help lift/drag it into place. Probably took about 10 minutes to get it from the engine stand and into the car and somewhat secured in place.

 

[Owyhee Jackass]

Saturday we got the axles bolted in and checked the fuel tank. Tank was clean, this car was originally a fuel injected variant and I'm converting to carbs, so there's a return line on the bottom of the tank that I had to plug. Also had to clean out the insect nests from the lines, but we got fuel in the tank and plumbed to the fuel pump.

Tasche got all the wiring hooked up. We took a trip to the junkyard to get a battery as new batteries have gotten ridiculous and we just needed something to get this thing running at this point. A reconditioned battery, with a core, was $43 vs. a new one at Advance Auto was $200.

This car didn't have a key when I bought it. I purchased a 'new' key and cylinder from Jbugs for $14. It cheap Chinese junk, but was able to get it in and turn the car over, but it won't return from the start position and I had to use a dremmel tool to make it fit...I'll be taking the OEM cylinder to a locksmith and getting a key made this week.