Woodburn VW show

  aside from the ocean of beetles and transporters, there was an impressive T3 showing, including at least a dozen notchbacks. some highlights:

  one of the several "rat rod" beetles... this was the most radical of them to me, like whoever put it together just did whatever came to mind on the pot that morning; suicide doors, NOS, and a split front window? fuck it, bro:

  once again, OE wheels on a lowered chassis...nice. this one didnt appear to have been driven there; the front shocks were missing, no windsheild etc. i really liked the look of it, though:

  check out the spikes...this car was the cleanest 'rod... and a ragtop:

 this guy wasnt actually part of the show, he was just in the parking lot area, but there was something i liked about it. i guess i'm weird, i like stock wheels on a lowered chassis...

  this was one of the many notchbacks on display. not the nicest, but i like the ones that actually get used. and Porsche wheels:

 

another notch', very clean. gotta love EMPI 5-spokes:

  the T3 row... there were more elsewhere, but the highest concentration was along the fence. that orange late-model squareback had a full-length ragtop:

this single-cab was in the parking lot, too, and should have been in the show. behind those bitchin' 5-spokes are drilled, slotted, ventilated disks with Wilwood calipers (!):

and finally, in the back corner, i found a type 4. a '74 412, actually, and when i saw the $300 price on the window i did get a little excited until i saw the engine compartment:

  not only was everything melted, but the whole cargo area was covered in shattered safety glass, even though the rear window was intact... i guess it figures that the only type 4 there would be a burned up wreck on a trailer:

  in fact, it was inspiring. next year I'll be there with my kick-ass 4-speed lowered '73...

idler arm bushing

  the idler arm bushing was the worst of the bunch...  i shopped around for bearing bronze for weeks, trying to find anyone selling small quantities, but i never found anything less than 3', and all i needed was less than six inches. copper and its alloys are also really expensive right now, so it was likely to cost at least $50 just for the materials. instead i used what was left of my Delrin:

  the through bolt needed some light sanding to clean off what was left of the old bushing and some rust and make it pretty... the bushing is done, sitting on top of the headstock:

  i used the BMX cup press again to install the bushing in the idler bracket along with some Delrin scraps for spacers:

  i decided to modify the threaded end of the bolt to accept a cotter pin to keep it from loosening, a common problem on this model & super beetles. my car's bolt had actually been double-nutted by somebody to try and keep it tight. with the castle nut and a cotter pin i wont have to worry about it:

  

control arm bushings

  once the subframe was removed the level of wear on the entire suspension/steering was clear: totally fracked. both control arms made a shrieking noise when moved through their travel and the radius arms just clanked around inside the through holes at the tail of the subframe. i couldnt even see any bushing material at the pivot:

  the OE bushings were a rubber sleeve bonded to a knurled steel insert that was pressed into the arm:

  the axle hammered out, but the rubber had to be cut out with a hacksaw:

  leaving the bare steel sleeve inside the arm:

  that was the easy part. unfortunately, years of driving with worn bushings had ovaled-out the ends of the opening, giving a range of diameters depending on where it was measured, so 4 individually-sized bushings (two per arm) had to be made. i took two measurements at 9oº to eachother at each opening and used the average to size the OD of the bushing. 

  the bushings were made from 1.5" Delrin rod. my first attempt was made by turning down the outside where the press fit into the arm is, center drilling the end, then parting it off and drilling/boring the hole last. after parting, the piece was flipped around, the chuck jaws changed from external to internal, then drilled and bored from the backside. i didnt think it would make much difference, but it did, and i ended up with a bored hole that was not concentric with the OD. this pic is in between turning and boring operations...the bushing is on top of the compound rest and the parting blade can be seen against the stock:

  this method also resulted in dramatically tapered ID, for some reason. the only reason i could come up with is that the work was held in the chuck by the small OD (for surface area) and i think the clamping pressure of the jaws compressed the material enough that when the boring bar passed through it, more material was removed due to the compression, and once it was removed from the chuck, it sprung back to normal and effectively enlarged the inner diameter. 

  for the second bushing i tried a different approach that worked well enough to use it for the rest; i did all turning, drilling, and boring in a single set up, then parted at the very end. this gave a much more concentric result, but i still had a frustrating taper on both the OD and ID...

  the next step was to press the bushing onto its axle, using it as a mandrel, then make the final cut on the OD to the press fit dimension. this ensured they were concentric:

 

  the very last step was to press them into the arm then run a reamer through... i found a 20mm used reamer on ebay for $17 that was still good enough for plastic... i tried doing it by hand at first, then used the slowest speed on the lathe...

it actually fed itself and gave a really good finish... i would have never tried something like this if i wasnt able to gradually start the motor from a dead stop thanks to the variable speed...

  the axles for each side had to be cleaned up and polished before they would slide in, so i made a simple mandrel for them for sanding:

  once i got my method sorted out things went pretty quick; i think the first bushing took me a couple days to make, the second one took most of one day, and the last two i made in just a couple hours. 

  nice...

  i also replaced the radius arm centering rings with custom made Delrin ones... i'm not sure it was absolutely necessary, but it seemed like i was on a roll...

  i've been painting for the last couple days and its finally all ready to go back together...

building a mini-machine shop

  i realized that it was going to be so expensive to have all my front end bushings made by a machine shop that it made more sense to buy a mini-lathe and make them myself, so after weeks of research i drove to Harbor Freight and bought the 7x10 with a 20% off coupon for $320. not a bad price, but it comes with no tooling and requires extensive cleaning, modifications, and adjustments to make it accurate/reliable. 

  the machine comes in a cardboard box with a crude wooden crate held on with steel strapping. its mostly assembled, but is covered with a cosmolene-like red goo for corrosion resistance while it sits on a shelf somewhere. this crap is literally everywhere and is very sticky, so it must be removed. the easiest way would be to just bathe it in solvent, but i dont have a tank and didnt want a bunch of runoff, so i wiped every part clean by hand. it took half the day to do it, but it was also a good time to familiarize myself with how its all put together. 

  although it comes without any tooling, some accessories are included, like a set of change gears for threading, external jaws for the chuck, and a live center for the tailstock:

  the first modification i did was to the studs that are used to attach the chuck to the spindle flange. it comes with three set screws instead of proper studs, and they weren't even long enough, so that if you threaded them all down tight inside the chuck body they wouldn't pass through the flange enough to use the nuts:

  i found 6mm hardened studs of the right length at Wink's that have the thicker, unthreaded shank right where they pass through the flange, which makes for a tighter, more precise fit:

  the next mod was kind of an accident...i broke the cheesy "glide plates" that are the bearing surface for the carriage on the ways by over-tightening them. i didnt realize how soft they were and one of them cracked:

  as they come from the factory they use a system of set screws and cap screws to adjust for play, but the material is so soft that you end up with 3 tight spots where the cap screws are and 2 high spots where the set screws hold the plate away from the ways, and eventually (overnight for me) they crack from the strain:

  my solution was to make my own from a special kind of plastic and use shims to precisely size each one. i used a material called HDPE, or high-density-polyethylene, which is similar to what those white plastic cutting boards are made of, so its hard with a slick surface. finding the right shims took quite a while, but eventually both sides were properly fitted and slop-free:

  the tailstock (probably the cheesiest part on the whole machine) has a really poor "t" bolt to secure it to the ways that has a shitty habit of swiveling around to some random position every time you take it off, so i found a good spring at the hardware store that keeps it aligned when the tailstock is off. the securing nut is also hard to get at sometimes, so i replaced it with an extra tall coupling nut and a brinze thrust washer. i've found that i'm constantly removing and replacing it, so this works really well:

 after at least a day or two of cleaning, adjusting, and tweaking, all cleaned up and ready to make some chips:

  very quickly i became aware of how badly i needed some proper tooling...all i could really do at first was clamp something in the chuck and watch it spin. i was so anxious to start turning i went on kind of a spending spree at littlemachineshop.com, a website that specializes in parts  & accessories for the 7" mini-lathes. not being one to dick around i went for the good stuff: A2Z quick change tool post, 5-piece indexable carbide-tipped turning tool set, 9-piece boring bar set, magnetic base dial indicator, 1/2" tailstock drill chuck, and a 5-piece center drill set. the QCTP is probably the most important upgrade, and worth every penny. without it, every tool change has to be set up with shims every time, a very tedious job. when i opened the box i couldnt believe how dainty it was, but it gets the job done. heres some of my first projects on top of the headstock with the QCTP and dial indicator in place:

  the large aluminum rings in the middle are on a VW case bolt and are sized for pressing the crankshsft bearings on a an 80cc 2-stroke i'm working on, the white plastic is Delrin that i'm making the control arm bushings out of (theres one finished one on the far right) and the two aluminum rods on the left are a mandrel for turning a small Delrin disk and just something i was practicing on...

  at first, the learning curve was really kicking my ass. i ruined several bushings and had to make so many trips to TAP plastics to replace the materials i was wasting they knew me as the "Delrin guy" and didnt even need to ask for another 6" rod. here's a typical days aftermath:

  i also had considerable trouble getting the tailstock properly aligned... the adjustment for offset is really crude and the casting so soft that once tight, the head of the (tiny) bolt that secures the adjustment sinks in, leaving a deep witness mark. that means that a minor change to its position is impossible because under torque the bolt just returns to its crater. for this my bolt-salad-hoarding of the last 10+ years came in handy... i dont know exactly what it was for, but i had a small, slotted, rectangular washer that fit perfectly inside the recess and was thick enough to be rigid and hold its adjustment along with a shallow head cap screw:

  theres also a set screw on the side of the base that forces the halves of the body apart, against the machined groove, so as to ensure its perpendicular to the ways. i replaced this with a standard bolt so its easier to tighten:

  the last thing was to make my own center for the headstock to check alignment between centers. a simple (steep) taper can be made by setting the compound rest to some angle (30 in this case, for an included angle of 60) and using its feed wheel to make incremental passes across the face of the workpiece. i used cheapo 1/2" aluminum rod, so its not perfect, but close enough to check for any major mis-alignment:

  this is still giving me trouble. the latest thing i noticed is that its actually a little high; theres no adjustment for that, and as a result everything i turn when using the live center is tapered. its very subtle, but enough to affect a press-fit. the amount seems to vary randomly from .003 - .008" over an area of 3". i'm sure some of this is just in-borne imprecision (it is Harbor Freight, after all), but i've become obsessed with correcting it, and in an impressive display of tweaking-out i disassembled the headstock to measure eveything, convinced i would find some gross assembly error or something i could correct...in the end i didnt find much, just more red goo, some grit, and a couple fasteners that could have been tighter. i used my dial gauge to check runout everywhere, but it barely registered anything:

  so its been a month since i bought it and i finally have all 4 control arm bushings, my idler arm bushing, both radius arm centering rings, a strut adaptor prototype, a new chain tensioner wheel for the derny, new shaft seals for its motor, and numerous mandrels & bearing press tools. right now the 412's subframe & control arms are being painted and will soon be ready for assembly... next post i'll show the control arm bushings, step by step (sort of)...