SS100 “replica” Project Car

[CaddmannQ]

After stripping the body off I rolled the chassis outdoors and finished removing the gas tank, rear body supports, engine, transaxle, wheels, front axle assembly, etc.

I spent a lot of time cleaning up crappy old welding and straightening up the floor pan. Eventually I needed to turn the chassis over.

I cobbled together this simple rollover trunion from some random junk and chain link fence tubing.

[CaddmannQ]

I’m skipping a whole lot of stuff that you will see later when I start welding the chassis together. I spent a lot of time welding patches and plugging holes on parts that I’m going to use for the new frame arrangement. I don’t have those photographs available right now.

Currently I have the chassis upside down, it sits on nine steel legs, and I am burnishing off the rust, paint and grease. Last night I burnished off most of the tunnel bottom and gave it a coat of rust converting oil.

I have to be careful because of the recent increase in humidity due to hurricane Hillary. Things that normally won’t rust in the desert for three months are now rusting in one day.

[CaddmannQ]

Today, I removed the transaxle forward isolator, and continued cleaning the trans.

The isolator disassembled. I scrubbed this all down in the sink with washing soda before I did anything else.


The steel cup was Very rusty and so I gave it in an electrolytic rust bath. This knocked off the worst of the lumpy rust, but I did have to chip in a little bit with the scraper to get some flakes off. Evidently this thing caught a good bit of water.


After burnishing everything, I primed it with Smart Seal (acid wash) and gave it a good coat of self etching black paint.

[GWIZ]

Originally Posted by CaddmannQ

After burnishing everything, I primed it with Smart Seal (acid wash) and gave it a good coat of self etching black paint.

Can you post a picture of the Smart Seal bottle.

[CaddmannQ]

I am afraid it wouldn’t do any good, because the label fell off years ago. Smart seal is the name of the company but what I bought is a phosphoric acid wash with detergent, that is used for cleaning swimming pools.

It etches just fine but I always clean with acetone afterwards, in case there’s any residue from the detergent.

Anyhow, the name would lead you to believe that this is a primer-sealer and it is not. It’s an etching primer.

[mccutter]

Originally Posted by GWIZ

Can you post a picture of the Smart Seal bottle.

Originally Posted by CaddmannQ

It’s an etching primer.

Would it compare to OsPho?

[CaddmannQ]

I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. Normally I would use Jasco Metal Prep (which is now called Jasco Prep and Prime.)

Now that Jasco stuff is phosphoric acid wash with alcohol instead of a detergent, so you really need to degrease first, and then this is both your etch and final degreaser.

I think that smart seal is actually stronger acid than Jasco, but both of them should be diluted with water. In any event I bought a gallon of the Smart Seal for the price of 3 pints of Jasco. Finally ended up using a pint of it and now I’ve got a whole bunch left of it for cleaning parts.

[CaddmannQ]

I stood this upon it’s tail, and now I am cleaning the transaxle case on the bottom.

[CaddmannQ]

After two days with too much wind and humidity, it finally dried up and calmed down today, and I got my transmission painted.

I had to do the last little bit of cleanup on the bench and then I put it on the hoist.

I washed the whole thing down with acetone, and blew it off.
There it is with several coats of self etching black paint.

[CaddmannQ]

After talking about it for a month, I finally actually shot some paint on the VW chassis yesterday. First I had to spend a couple hours cleaning up the boat yard, which was a total mess of dirt and leaves and spare parts lying everywhere.

I cleaned up the last little bits that I had to get to with a scraper and brush by hand. I had shot it with a preservative oil so I cleaned that off with acetone.

Then I acid washed it, rinsed it three times, blew it off dry, degreased it again, buffed it off with a rag and shot the paint. I’m using a self etching paint, so there’s no way this is gonna fall off.


I had to roll it over in order to paint both sides.


I painted everything that was basically finished in terms of welding and modifications.

I did not paint where I need to weld, and there’s a lot of that still. I may be able to get to some of it today. But I have to do some hand cutting inside the end of the tunnel, which will be tedious. I’ve got to cleanup that area and add an internal patch to the tunnel, where an external patch has been applied already.

The weatherman had predicted rain by 4 AM but it never materialized, and when I went out this morning my paint is well dried.