DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Hi Jamie,

Just looking through your thread, great work so far...love the job Enviro have done. Is your car still in bare metal?

Loz

Yep - still bare, but in my nice dry garage, smothered in some oily phosphate wash stuff with a dehumidifier running underneath. No signs of any problems. Enviro-Strip said you could leave a phosphated shell outside for weeks and it wouldn't rust, but I'm not going to try it.

The bonnet, doors, decklid and rear panel are in the house.

Looks great in the metal. Glad you've got it protected though. Looking forward to following your rebuild.

Cheers
Loz

Bought an RSR 0012 distributor of a fellow DDKer. The 0012 gets good reviews, although engine dude was a little disappointed since he told me to buy a 022. In my head they were the same thing. This is the last time I disobey the dude (intentionally or not).

Anyway, the RSR arrived and it at least looks nice enough. Dude is waiting for me to be disappointed and buy a 022.



The other night I started picking through the oily pile of drivetrain crap that I had heaped into the corner of my nice clean, white, garage. I split the boots off, removed the grease (amazingly still present) and stuck everything in a tub of Jizer. Cleaning filthy crap is one of my favourite things.



Oh yeah, daaas right!



This needs some sprucing...

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Then I ran out of Jizer.

Back before time began, primitive man had snapped a bolt in one of the CV joints. I drilled it and tried to wind it out with a stud extractor, but it wasn't going to move. So I centre-punched it, then drilled it to the very edge of the threads, and tapped it out with a little screwdriver. If you look carefully, you can see light through the thread edges. That's freehand, muthafucka. That made me feel like my granddad.

Last weekend, metal medicine-man Barry Carter came over to have a look at the shell. His overall synopsis was that it was sound, unmolested, some big holes to sort out but nothing too fiddly, and not big stuff like wings off, C-pillars or any of that hardcore stuff that you will find in other resto threads on here (Paul Madden, hello). Worst bit, I think is the starboard rear chassis leg, just inside the engine bay from the firewall, and the front end (all of it).

I also had a quote from Nick Moss at Early 911. Having seen many cars from both these guys, I would be happy to put the mine with either. In the end, I decided on Barry - I've been a big fan of his work since I did one of his metalwork courses back in 2005 or so, and I love his approach of saving as much original metal as possible. I originally thought I wouldn't care about that, but I do. With that said, he recommended completely replacing the front end, and also the floors The floors are a bit thin to bother saving, and the front has been shunted and rebuilt by an idiot.

Good to see you rattling through things Jamie.

Sounds like a nice result with the shell.....Barry seems well on top of things and the Carter production line is in full flow, hopefully your slot will come around soon....certainly worth the wait!

Cheers,

jamie wrote: If you look carefully, you can see light through the thread edges. That's freehand, muthafucka. That made me feel like my granddad.]

Nice job Jamie, working with your hands is the best

And so it begins. I reacquainted myself with Pelican (I love you Pelican)...





(engine dude told me I should have got sprung reusable ones so we can turbo the motor in the future).

Proper stuff:



I bought these because they had my first two initials on them (and engine dude told me I had to).





Also got some brown pyramidal ceramic media for my tumbler. It has been running non-stop for the last week. Almost have all the hardware cleaned-up now.



The stuff I cleaned at the beginning of this thread was done in a friend's tumbler using green ceramic media. Brown is coarser, and leaves a duller finish, but works faster. I figured it didn't matter as it will be re-plated anyway.



Age-old swing-arm bush-removal trick:





To be replaced with SuperPro bushes. I had them on my last car and they were great, so doing it again.

I had been trying to dismantle my pedal cluster since before Christmas with absolutely no luck. As with most people who attempt this task, my efforts stalled at the clutch lever roll pin - all the hitting, WD40-ing, swearing and drilling in the world would not budge it. That thing was in there good and proper. It had eaten every sub-6mm drill bit in my box, and I had lost an eggcup's worth of blood in the process.

So I mail-ordered the proper tool for the job - a set of proper flat punches. Punches arrive, walk into garage, grab hammer, bang bang bang, pin falls out. What the f***.

Success maybe, but still the clutch lever arm did not want to separate from the shaft...



I smacked the living f*** out of it with a bigger flat-ended punch and a mallet for 20 minutes, then resorted to this...



Finally it started to move...



Then came apart. WHOOOOOOAAAA!

Arse...



So I need to get a new pedal shaft, or make one.

I also ruined the accelerator bushing tube whilst removing the old bushings. Luckily I had exactly the same diameter tube in my stock of metal treasure, so drilled the old one out, and welded a new one in.

On a side note, if you've been thinking about getting a welder but keep putting it off, just buy one - they open up a whole dimension of DIY solutions. Yesterday I made a drain unblocking tool using 6mm threaded rod bent-back on itself and welded into a three-pronged grappling hook. The hook was attached to the end of a stiff, steel-reinforced hose, which was used to pull blocks of concrete-hard solidified shitcake from the pipe. It worked a treat. Without that welder, my toilet would still be backing up into my shower, which is absolute horror.

I thought the pedal mounting looked pointlessly heavy, so I added lightness. I thought it wouldn't make much difference, but it did. I hope it doesn't flex now.







Then I did the clutch arm. I stopped short of the brake pedal though.



All these bits off to the blast cabinet...

Great stuff Jamie would love to know what tumbler you use? We have an otec at work and use light grey pyramids and blue cones when we are tumbling silver castings, hadn't thought it might work for steel? Drilling looks very accurate, I think if I want to make my car lighter it would be easier for me to lose a few pounds, Christmas excess ....

Hi Jos. There's a photo of the tumbler on page 10 of this thread. It's a vibratory one, sold with corn cob media for cleaning brass ammo cases, but works great with ceramic media for steel.

I agree about the weight loss on the pedal bracket. I'll come clean - I was bored and I wanted to use my centre-punch.

Fairly suck day today. Weather was beautiful, which is usually a great excuse for a fun excursion in the aeroplane. Instead, I chose decided it was time to try plating some of the hardware that I have been cleaning-up over the past couple of weeks. I have a fairly big box of bits now - perhaps 5kg or so - so plenty to get on with.

I figured there would be a learning curve with this, so I had already ordered a cheap brush plating kit from eBay. This is a system whereby the electrolyte is brushed onto the substrate (part to be plated) using a brush that contains the anode, rather than the usual method of suspending everything in a tank.

I cleaned my tumbled parts again in a solution of dry acid salts. This removes any flash rust which may have developed on the parts since they came out of the tumbler.



Then they went into a foul-smelling alkaline degreaser, then back into another acid bath. Then a rinse, and then into the electrolyte:



The difficult part here was keeping the brush moving as not to discolour the plate. As you can see in the shot above, I wasn't very good at it. Nothing I plated really came out looking as good as I'd hoped.

Compare plated vs bare:



My best result was the heater box flaps, which came out of the tumbler looking pretty good, and took the plate quite well, too. Shame you will never see them once reinstalled.



Ho hum. Anyway, I think I want my plated bits yellow passivate like the factory did.



After all this, and before cleaning up the kitchen, I decided to have a look inside my steering rack, which kind of felt OK, but not as silken as I would expect. On opening it up, I found the grease inside was jet-black, and very liquid - something akin to the horror that comes out of the sump of my diesel Passat every 10000-miles (or sooner, if I bang it on the road / speedbump / cattle grid, as I have five times since buying it three years ago).

I dug though the mess and pulled out the pinion mechanism. The bearings were a touch notchy, so I ordered some new ones, and a new oil seal, and also some new boots and a turbo tie rod kit from Pelican

The mess it created was absolutely disgusting, so no picking up the camera whilst this was going on.

shite day. Goodnight!

Hang in there Jamie. We all experience moments like this. In your mind you've outcome and when it ends up not quite as you expected it can be disapointing.

I am also debating the plating questions at the moment. Do I send all the parts away for plating knowing I may be risking parts going missing or do I buy a DIY plating kit. Leaning towards the former at the moment.

As I said keep the faith. I am sure there are better days ahead for you in the Mancave.

I've never done plating like this before, so I may be way off the mark. In my day job though I do plate most days in 18ct yellow gold and rhodium. I have learnt the hard way the secret to plating is absolute cleanliness and making sure the piece has no dirt or grease to create a good finish. This might be where you are going wrong. Hope that helps.

Just had a couple of page catch up Jamie.

Great work....

Those pistons & especially rods are pure porn, carrillo rods always remind me building and racing dragsters in the 80's on a shoestring budget with two friends.

Keep e'm coming

Garry