Assembly

I have again spent several days working on the car without posting anything. I have the front fenders bolted on with the fender beading. The cover plates are undercoated and screwed in and the hood latch and badges have been bead blasted and installed. However I don't have a hood release that is long enough so I will need to get a new one of those before I put the latch pin in the hood.

I have also all but finished the wiring under the hood. At this point the brake lights and turn signals do not work for some reason. I'm hoping it has to do with the fact that there are no bulbs or that the converter is not grounded, but I need to spend some time figuring that out. I also realized I wired the front turn signals into the output side of the converter rather than the input side. That means if you step on the brakes, the front blinkers come on as well as the back... Oops.

Assembly

I've been so busy working on the car I have not had time to post anything. Now it's time to catch up, so here goes.

I have gotten all the sound deadening in the doors and rear quarter panels. I have also gotten the door latches and striker plates installed and adjusted. With the sound deadening in the doors they have a very nice solid feel to them already. I'll put a little fiberglass insulation in the rear quarters to help eliminate some of the engine noise, but that will likely be when I get to working on the interior. For now it will stay like this.

I have also mounted the rear fenders with the fender beading. The driver side fender has been undercoated but not the wheel well. I had a can of undercoating I had to use before the nozzle got so clogged it wouldn't spray any longer.Once the rest of the undercoating is done and the rear end is lowered, I can bolt the body back on the pan. I also have the deck lid seal installed and the T-handle installed and adjusted.

The wiring is by far the biggest job I have been working on. So far I have the main harness run front to back and hooked up in the front. The headlight harness is also run and half hooked up at the switch side. The wires are poking out of the wheel wells but I don't have the fenders on yet, so that is as far as I can take it. I've also run the dome light wires but I can't do much more until I get the turn signal switch painted and installed.

Finally, I have built a speaker block off plate and installed the speaker grill and radio block off plate. I still need to get the screw to hold the ashtray and glove box in place. I also need to paint the ashtray, glove box door, taillights and license plate light. I will need to get the speedometer rebuilt but I may do that after I get the car on the road. The one I have looks OK except the needle is broken.

Paint's Done!

After many nights of working on sanding and polishing after the girls go to bed, I can finally say the paint on the car is finished. Its taken me 1416 days to get this car painted and ready for assembly. I still have some paint work to do on the gas tank, tail light housings, license plate light housing, ash tray and glove box door but none of that stuff should take very long.

After finishing the paint work today, I decided to put the head lights, Volkswagen script and horn grills on the front of the car. I also fixed the back of the driver seat and installed that. If you look close you can see both front seats in the car. They have cleaned up really nicely. They're not perfect, but they will do the job.