Back in beige

[nrc914]

They look great Jamie - hope the powdercoat is nice and thick now you've got them all wet and mucky with leaves!! I'm sure they would sell as it would give someone without the ability or who couldn't be bothered going to the effort you have to get the right seat fit.

If you need a hand getting the engine in one evening give me a shout and i'll see iff I can make sure I'm in working in Wokingham that day!

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

[jamie]

Cheers Nathan.

OK - next question for the audience...

I'm thinking of trim the top section of my (two-piece) dash in basketweave. What do you think?

[jonno1]

Would look good but could it be a bit of a dust and dirt trap and a bugger to clean being flat?

[Gary71]

Didn't you just blow the mortgage on a new dash top?

I trimmed mine but only to cover the cracks. If you are going to stick stuff to it then get your old one back (a bit late now!) and glass fibre it back together.

Having said that a bit of feature across there would look ok and the stretch in basket weave would make it easier to trim. However the basket weave may pull into some odd shapes under tension around the edges.

[jamie]

Gary - the 68 dash is two pieces. I remortgaged my house to buy HALF a dashboard - the bit you can see in the photo above. The top bit is separate. It's another £250, or you can cut one yourself for less than a fiver.

Jonno - I hear you. Practicalities aside?

[Gary71]

I get that it's a two piece by design, makes it much easier to trim. I meant get your broken original half and trim that rather than risk trimming a brand new dash as if it doesn't work out then it will be rather hard to get it looking good again.

From an aesthetic view I think just doing the instrument cowl would look better than the flat area.

[jamie]

I meant just basketweave-trim the top flat area - there's no way I'm experimenting on £700 of new dashboard!

[Gary71]

Ignore everything I said!

Go for it then, just make sure the two parts will still fit together once the additional thickness of the basket weave is included in the joint.

[sladey]

I think it looks cool - the mix of the two material will be echoed elsewhere as well so I think it would work well

[inaglasshouse]

A thought - dashboard reflections. Can be super annoying. Do you think the weave is ok? Any worse than plain vinyl?

[jamie]

Yeah, that crossed my mind, too.

I may chicken out of this - am already covering he upper section of the rear arch covers in basketweave (with the lower in plain black vinyl). Perhaps a weave-overload.

Anyway, onwards with the rest of the car whilst I mull it over...

[yoda]

I've seen a car with a non flat / smooth dash top and thought it looked awful. Very grubby and my immediate reaction was he must be truing to hide something underneath it .... a bit like using think wall paper because the plaster was knackered. Go standard if you ask me.

Great thread and write up by the way.

[jamie]

Thanks. Good point there.

[jamie]

Engine in!

My friend Colin came over and gave me a hand. He's had splitscreen VWs, 356s, a 1970 911S, and so on, so was well-suited to this task. Next time I think a second trolley jack would really help, but even with one, plus some blocks of wood, it went in pretty well without much stress.

I used a CV gaiter as the transmission-to-tunnel rubber boot and it worked fine. It was £3, the original part is £30+vat. I've opted for original Porsche rubber everywhere else, but I'm happy to save £33 here. I'll do the same trick for the inner boot, although now I see it in situ, I'm not that certain it needs one. Plus it would hide my sweet Wevo gear linkage.









I haven't taken any pictures of the engine installed since the right and carb has been removed and it looks a bit shanty up in there. The 7mm thread that holds the return spring, stop, idle adjust etc on the carb throttle spindle just disintegrated - it was worn and torn-apart anyway, but too much on-and-off with the end nut whilst experimenting with the throttle linkage last week finally shagged it for good.

In short, carb aside, the engine area looks ace - The Dude's Clean Bay policy has worked-out - all you can see is blackness and bare aluminium. It's industrial art. Hopefully I can work-out a neat way of installing the spark plug wires. They're Fyrebraid, from my friend John Gray in California. He loves the stuff and keeps boxes of it. The set I chose was in water-damaged packaging - he got it from a place in New Orleans that flooded during Hurricane Katrina and they're kind of off-white from the water ingress. Dude wasn't happy with that decision - said the colour was dirt from dead people and sewage. I don't agree - I mean, perhaps, but it's just mud. The soul of the Big Easy if you will - home of the Blues and every amazing that followed since. The Katrina link, although immensely sad, gave me goosebumps and I just had to have these wires.

When the finally engine runs, they ignition system will hopefully fire to the funky rhythm of New Orleans in 1968 (or I think this may be '69, either way...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_iC0MyIykM

[Robind]

Another milestone point ticked, engine certainly looks clean and free from clutter