Possums Ratty T-Bucket

Progress

2012-01-30T21:16:00.000+13:00

Yes ... 2012 is off to a good start. I will have the Ratty-T finished this year. First step toward that was to get the LVVT inspector to come and check out the work completed to date. So that happened today. So heres the list of what needs correcting.

Pedal box (Brake pedal needs re-engineering)
Brake push rod (Need to be one machined rod)
Rear suspension needs bump stops
Rear panhard bar needs to be more parallel to diff.
Master brake / booster adapter plate
Front dragbar longer no adapter

So the list is quite long and requires a fair amount of work. But I am pleased that none of that is anything that I have altered changed. All the work I have done passed with flying colours.

So once again Im correcting the bad work carried out previously.

Pretty darn excited to be back at it.

Soon ....

2011-08-11T19:41:00.001+12:00

Site cleared for the renovations to begin

2011-07-26T20:30:00.001+12:00

One step closer to getting a garage back. Spent numerous weekends taking out fences, moving pavers, moving stones, sheds and playhouses to get the site cleared for the builders to start work.

The Build so far

2011-06-08T21:12:00.000+12:00

Exciting news, despite all the recent drama with the Christchurch earthquakes and having no space to work on the RattyT, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

We are building a studio for my wife's stuff that's in my man garage. SO I will be getting a full garage back. I have big plans once I get the full space back and do the compulsory big spring clean.

Its still a 3-4months away to completion ... but there is light at the end of the no progress tunnel .... finally.

Below is a quick slide show of the build to date ... starting with the Bike I sold to start this long drawn out build.
Still miss that little V-Twin... I will get another ... someday.

Heart ripped out

2011-03-02T19:28:00.000+13:00

Christchurch has suffered a massive earthquake on the 22nd Feb 2011. Large loss of life.

Words are not coming easily ...

Thoughts are here ...

Handbrake mounting

2010-11-15T11:44:00.001+13:00

A slow progress weekend. But still one step forward. I started to mount the handbrake mechanism, once I had it where I thought it would be good I drilled and bolted it to the floor, only to find that the wooden ply floor moved when engaging the handbrake. That wont do .... I thought to myself.

So after a little pondering and trying different things I was able to position it so that I was able to drill and bolt it through the floor and down through one of the steel cross members. This made the mount super strong and it also provided another body to chassis mount.

First I drilled the holes out on the current mount to take 10mm bolts. I then cut the plate to remove that first two holes. The aren't needed, but that plate that I did cut off made for a perfect packer underneath the wooden floor between the chassis.

Plate cut, ready for some filing and tidy up

Sliding the newly created packer plate into position. It sits between the cross member and the wooden floor. It also adds strength to the other front mount that is only through the wood ply floor.

All in and bolted down. its very secure now and obviously there is not flex at all.

That is all I had time to do over the weekend.

Drive shaft loop

2010-11-01T08:15:00.000+13:00

Firday night I was tired so did not spend to much time in the garage. But I did manage to get the drive shaft loop bolted in. I "think" that covers all the chassis fabrication work ... besides all the things I have forgotten.

Loop all bolted in.

Next will be learning how to do automotive wiring. Sure its easy if you have done it before. Everything is easy if you have done it before but I haven't, so another learning curve. So to help with that I got the following book. Started reading it ... felt like I was back in school... made the brain hurt.

Clutch hardline mounting

2010-10-29T07:58:00.000+13:00

The hydraulic clutch has moved a little and I wanted to mount the hard line properly. As with everything so far on this rebuild It seems I have completely rebuild new. The old clutch mount was just bolted to the wooden floor and the hard line was held in place with just zip ties.

Now that I have made a proper mount for the clutch master cylinder I had to re-route the hard line. Its thicker than the brake lines, its 1/4inch tube so stronger and hard to bend.

After much scrambling under the RattyT and bending I finally got the rough mock up of where it need to go. But that was late last night so i stopped at that point. Tonight I started the actual mounting of the hard line.

First step was to shorten the existing hard line.

Putting on the new double flange on the end of the shortened tube.

I had to make some mounting brackets, so out with the trusty sheet metal. Cut a 20mm strip and then cut and wrapped around the spare tube to create exact sized mounts.

In the vice getting a good round tight fit.

Three completed brackets

Clutch master bolted in and and the hard line tighten on to it. Then the brackets used to hold the line in place.

The hard line routes from the right side under the gearbox in front of the main gearbox cross member. I routed it up much higher than last time and it now well hidden and protects from any road debris

left side all mounted and the soft line connected.

While I was at it I needed to make a bracket for the left brake line that routed under the gearbox. I was secure enough, but wanted to make sure it was super secure.

So that is all the hard lines mounted, soft lines done. Getting very close to getting the body back on.

Radiator respray and mounting

2010-10-28T11:25:00.000+13:00

My current plan is to slowly work front to back and finish off all the little jobs that I haven't done in fabrication. All those little jobs that I either forgot or didn't realise I hadn't done.

The first part of that was the brake lines and the soft line mounts. Next was the poor old radiator. It was looking very second hand, it needed a good spruce up. I saw my neighbour out water blasting / clean his car so asked if I could use if for a couple of minutes and blasted the radiator down to get is good and clean.

I then left it in the sun to dry.

After I had let it dry for a good couple of hours I gave it a quick spray with high temp paint. Now it said black on the can, true it was black, but it was a brown black and when I put it against the chassis paint it really stood out. So the next day I went and got another brand of high temp paint and resprayed.

Check out the high tech spray booth. the end result was much better and a closer match to my super fantastic brush paint job on the chassis :)

While I was in the painting mood and stinking out the house I gave the front body sub frame a once over with the anti-rust paint.

The next night I mounted the freshly painted radiator. After a bit of a struggle I got it mounted. the issue was that the bottom radiator hose is a close fit against the cross member. I had to put the hose on first and then "encouraged" the radiator to line up with the mount bolt holes.

After I finally got the radiator mounted I then started to look at the clutch line, I spend the better part of two hours trying to figure it where to mount it and then bending the old tube to fit. I will need to make a number of bracket to mount the clutch hard line.

I also tidied up the left brake line and added some extra hard mount points. That concludes last nights progress.

Brake front softline mounts

2010-10-19T06:49:00.000+13:00

With the progress over the weekend I realised that I need to create some mounts for the front soft brake lines. After a quick noodle and hunt for something suitable, a section of 25mm square 2mm box was decided upon.

I cut a section off, then cut into two.

Marked out both the holes, one 6.5mm for mounting to the chassis, and the other 10.5mm for the brake line. After some filing and corner rounding they were ready for a test mount.

I drill in to my nice newly finished paint, a 6.5mm hole drilled to mount the little brackets.

Test fit, the hard lines had to be fiddled with to get a good fit.

Both lines mocked up.

So after the mock up I bolted them in place tight using 6mm hex key bolts and nylon nuts, then I gave them a quick paint.

While I has the paint out i took off the steering stop and gave them a once over as well.

The plan is to work front to back and find and finish the little fab / chassis jobs that I my have missed. Once they are all done it will be onto the body.

Its going back together...

2010-10-18T07:48:00.000+13:00

There was a fair amount of progress over the weekend, a couple of hours each night after the girls were in bed. Friday night was finishing off the painting, It came out OK, Nothing flash ... but good enough to get going if I want to be on the road this summer.

Saturday Night: I spent a couple of hours putting the brake system back in place. All the mounts have been painted and I had all the new nuts & bots ready to go. First up was the rear T joint mounted to the bracket.

Bolted back on to the diff and the hard lines re-plumbed.

Next up was the proportioning valve which goes in line between the master and the rear brakes.

All bolted into its final spot

Next was to mount the brake master / booster to the newly shortened and painted mounting bracket.
Here is is all bolted up. Note the center mounting bolt is on place already, otherwise there is not way to get it in there.

Before putting the Brake master in, I re-plumbed the front right hard line.

Master / Booster all bolted up with new bolts and nylon nuts.

That was it for Saturday Night

Sunday Night: Mounted the steering box. Hopefully for the final time. New high tensile nut and bolts used.

Carrier bearing and first part of the steering in place. Next I spent time re-plumbing the left hand hard lines and fuel lines.

I then spend some frustrating time getting the shocks back in place, the left hand side was a complete arse to do as I had to not only line the shock up in the mount, but also the stabilization arm. So after some swearing I finally got the left shock remounted. The right hand side was a breeze..

So, chassis paint 98% finished, will run around with the paint once everything is buttoned down. brake hard lines 90% done, just need a few more mounts for the front soft lines. battery box, Brake master / booster back in.

After all that I really needed to make sure that there was still a big old lump of V8 underneath that plastic cover. Yip shes still there .... waiting to get fired up and go.

Front right corner, Steering box, shock, brake line.

Brake booster / master and the battery box in there final homes.

Rattyt in all her current glory.

Paint ... pep talk ...

2010-10-14T13:23:00.001+13:00

Ok .. F@&k it ..
I'm not going to get a good paint job with no budget or spray kit, fact...!
The car is supposed to be a RattyT .. not professional T..
So brush and rattle can WILL be fine ....

Just get on with it ... its nearly summer ....

So after my little pep talk to myself action has happened.

The RattyT up on jack stands so I can get underneath and brush on some paint.

Most parts painted and ready for some rattle can on the exposed chassis rails.
The paint will be "fine" a blind man on a fast horse wouldn't notice a thing!!

New brake booster linkage..

2010-10-13T06:53:00.003+13:00

Well its been a long time between drinks. But I did finally get out to the workshop and make a little progress on the brake linkage. Since I changed the booster to a smaller one to give more ground clearance I had to change the linkage as the thread on the booster was 3/8s, and before the linkage was 12mm.

So after some hunting in shops for a couplings that may work ... and finding none, the old grey matter finally kicked in and I remembered that the old booster was 3/8s and I still had bits of the old linkage somewhere. After a bit of looking I found what I was looking for.

The 3/8s internal threaded rod. However it was truly stuck on the connecting rod. I cut two tabs so I could use a wrench on it to undo it. Worked a treat.

Here is the internal threaded rod on the new brake booster, Next step was to thread the other end so it would connect to the 12mm connecting rod.

After using my hand lathe, (a hand file, must get a lathe somehow) to thread it I needed to get the rod down from 14mm to 12mm so I could use the 12mm die.

Here's the threaded end all done, the next thing I did was drilled out the coupling about 8mm so when the newly created adapter was screwed in it seated deep with in the coupling. Just to give it extra strength.

The final master piece, I can now focus on finishing the frame painting and I can then start putting things back on the old girl.

EARTHQUAKE .......

2010-09-07T11:30:00.000+12:00

As I'm sure you will be aware that Christchurch was struck by a large 7.1 earthquake on Saturday morning. Luckily we got off with very little damage besides plates and glasses. But the more important news is that the RattyT sitting on jack stands bounced and shook and moved about a foot, bit no damage done.

But with all the damage in Christchurch, clean ups plus the disruption to the whole place... it will mean another delay to the project.

Speedo cable access and another repaint.

2010-08-02T14:49:00.002+12:00

After having to take the brake booster out, I decided that the hole that the speedo cable was slotted through was too small and put the cable on to much of an angle. So I used the trusty angle grinder and a couple of cutting blades to make a larger slot for the cable to go through.

I was a real pain to cut due to the location and with how I had to hold the angle grinder, I was going against the blade rotation, so it kicked a lot.... fun times, but after a lot of frustration I got the two cuts made. Then I bent the tab out allowing for a larger hole for the speedo cable to pass through.

Once I had trimmed and the tab, I then welded over the slots. Once again with the fiddling it took over 2 hours to do this little 5 minute job.

After looking at the paint and wanting to have a really good rust proof finish I decided to use the self leveling satin black paint I used on the brake booster bracket. To allow this everything had to come off, then sanded, washed and whipped with solvent to remove any grease or grim.

Chassis getting naked

Test area.

Another sand, wash, clean.

Chassis jacked up so I can grovel underneath to paint.

First coat going on.

New Brake Booster

2010-07-26T18:30:00.000+12:00

A very fine day so decided to do a split shift at work so I could spend the afternoon working on the RattyT. Now I thought I did enough work previously on the brake booster and the height in the car and how low it hung in the frame. But the more I looked at it I was too bloody low. So after much debate I decided to see if a brand new small one would do the trick.

So here is it, in its brand new shiny self. The next test was to see if it would fit and work on my master cylinder. With a little bit of fiddling with the mounting hole on the master cylinder it fitted and after doing some adjusting on the booster it worked perfectly. Well as much as I could test on the work bench.

Below is it all together. There is a slight gap between the backing plate on the master cylinder and the booster, but the center flange full seated and everything is lined up.

Now it was time to remove the old booster and mount

Here you can see the size difference.

After drilling the new mounting holes in the mounting bracket it was time to do a test fit.

As you can see from the below photo the small booster will move the bottom of the mount to be above the existing transmission mount. It will no longer be the lowest hanging part of the under carriage.

Here's the top view, you can see the gap between the backing plate and the booster. Ill make a spacer to fill that gap. There is also a O ring missing from the master cylinder flange.

The next job was to shorten the mounting bracket and weld on a new protection base plate. The plate is there to stop the booster from getting hit directly if it was to come into contact with anything.

The finished altered mounting bracket. As you can see even with the bottom plate on it still higher that the transmission mounting sub frame.

Once again the RattyT is completely in bits again.

After a grind and clean up the bracket is painted.

A successful afternoons work.

Weekend work : Body and Exhaust

2010-07-26T13:12:00.002+12:00

Well it was a fine but cold day on Saturday. So after a lazy breakfast I ventured out into the cold morning and got started working on the RattyT. I had a head cold so wasn't moving hyper fast.

The first job was to get the body out and in prep for making hole / recesses for where the bolts are on the frame for the battery box and the newly installed rear brake proportioning valve.

So it was a matter of lifting the body on, hitting it with a rubber hammer so that the bolt heads marked the wooden floor so I knew where to drill.

Before I could do that I had to remove the front sub frame and packers.

After getting the body on, and off. No easy feat by myself as its pretty darn heavy now with the new wood and ribbing. Below you can see the bolt head mark made. I now know where to drill.

This is a shot of the holes drilled and also the hole for the hand brake cables. I think the body was on and off over 10 time during the day.

After those holes were drilled it was time to make the firewall hole for the steering the right size. This turned out to be a drama.

It took about 4 goes to get it the right size. its now much bigger that I though it would be so I have to come up with some way to stop the rain from getting in.

That wasn't the drama. The drama was that the carrier bearing and the steering shaft and surfaced rusted themselves together. The only way I was able to get it free was to take out the steering box so I could whack it with the hammer. I was a real pain and it took about an hour all said and done.

After discovering that I need to take out the steering box it was time for a break and what better way than to have cold Hells pizza...... yummmy ......

Steering box out and steering shaft freed up, I could focus on what I wanted to do

Body off again, then on, The hand brake and the steering hole all done and finished.

Hand brake location and the cables up through the floor.

Gave the area around the carrier bearing given a quick paint after welding in the nut.

Saturday was also a very sad day. I was the day that the VWRatty project was sold to a good home. I was never going to get it finished or find time to do it. Hell I cant even find time to do this project. And this project has a lot more $$ invested in it.

The empty space that used to be Montys home. :(

Farewell old friend.

Right back to matters at hand. Fitting the radiator. Since the installing the steering box I have had to push the radiator 30 over to the right. I was worried that it would be really noticeable. Once I got it on there... naaa its not really. The plan is once its done I can find time to made a surround.

Interior shot of all the bits in place so I could have a wee sit and make broom broom noises teasing myself that it wont be long before in driving it for real.

Sunday

Another gloomy day. Started out by mounting the radiator, Not that you can see the holes in the picture but there are now 4 bolt holes to mount the radiator. I had to do some mucking about to get it to fit with the electric fan and still have clearance for the bottom hose that's really close to the new cross member.

Next job for the day was to tidy up the .. I don't what you call it, complete stuff up of a fix it job on the right hand side header pipes. Not sure what had happened but the fix was bloody horrible.

It took a lot of time on the end of the angle grinder with a cutting blade to get rid of the offended fix-it job. My neighbors must hate me. It took about 3 blades and an hour.

Now my plan was to get rid of the front facing plates, and tidy up the front. As my plan is that I will be wrapping the headers in black exhaust wrap. Cleaning this up was to make sure that the wrap would look the same as the other side with a big bump where the hash job was.

After grinding and welding, and 3 hours later the head was to a point I was happy with since I was going to be wrapping them. Phew ... one more job off the list.

Weekend work done...

Never enough hours in the day. But progress none the less.

Speedo sender install

2010-07-21T20:03:00.002+12:00

Next job was to install the speedo sender (not sure if that's the correct name) There is a mechanical drive from the gear box to the sender which then sends a electrical feed to the speedo. This is what my unit looks like.

Now of course this was a simple task as where it goes into the gearbox is hidden behind the gearbox mount and the hole there was there was now behind the new master brake cylinder mount.

I had to disconnect all the brake lines and drop the mount out.

Here you can see where the hole is for the cable through the gearbox mount. I have to thread the cable through there and then route it around the new booster mount.

Removed the booster from the mount so I could cut a slot out to allow the routing of the cable.

Using the trusty hacksaw I cut the slot out.

Next was to twist the existing speedo thingy mount 90degrees so I will be able to bolt it to the brake booster mount. I did this with brute force. While the flat was held in the vice I got a large crescent and just wrenched it around.

After putting everything back together again here it is back in place.

Here you can see the twisted mount bolted to the brake booster mount, the speedo cable routed through the new slot and connected to the gearbox.

Seemed a simple job, but it took three hours ....
Next big task is to work out how I want the front to look. light location, and how I'm going to visually center it as the steering box has pushed the radiator about 30mm to the right. So time to sit and draw and think what will look cool and fit with the "RattyT" look.

Some new progress

2010-07-20T18:32:00.000+12:00

Ok, at last some progress, hard to believe I know, I have almost forgot that I had a hotrod project. The girls are away visiting family so Im left home to my own devices. So as the saying goes while the boss is away the boys will play .... or something like that.

So with the weather forcast for wet weather, for at least 5-6day, well it is winter. I needed to gain some space back so that I could work in the garage a little easier. So a bit of a tidy up and the moving of Trudys leotard glitter station I gained enough room to make it possiale to work on the car.

That was todays mission and it took over three hours .... but I now have space and more importantly TIME to spend on the RattyT. I hope I can make some progress.

The current state of the RattyT

Slow to No progress.....sigh

2010-06-07T11:08:00.000+12:00

As the title outlines there has been no progress since the last up date in March. This is not due to lack of wanting too. But as mentioned in an ealier post I become a Dad for the second time. Now those who have had kids know the first 3-4months is hard work and trying to get a routine sorted and just helping out. So I have been in the time vortex that only new borns / kids can generate and time and just vanished.

The other thing that isn't helping is that winter is here with vengeance. In the last three weeks I think its only stopped raining for 2-3days. And since i have to roll the RattyT out to do work on it, this also really puts a dampener on any progress.

However there could be good news ... long term away. We are looking at getting another garage built. This would allow my wife to have the full use of the current one as her studio and I would get a full double garage. Which would mean that I could work all year around and at anytime ..... so fingers crossed that it all works out and we can proceed.

So please do stay tuned... there will be a lot of activity on something soon.

Another typical wet weekend.

The RattyT all tucked up ... sitting out the wet weather.

If only it was that easy ...

2010-04-14T19:36:00.001+12:00

Great Videos from the RedShift Crew

2010-04-13T19:29:00.002+12:00

Pre49 hotrod show in Chirstchurch April 2010

2010-04-13T12:43:00.002+12:00

On a wonderful fine autumn morning I dragged Molly along to the Pre49 Hotrod show and shine held at the Addington race course in Christchurch, there were well over a hundred cars. I thing I took photos of most. Lots of TBuckets, So was goo to get ideas.

Header modification, after stuff up!

2010-03-28T20:22:00.001+13:00

So after finally getting the steering shafts sorted I trial fitted the headers again. .... and the steering shaft was rubbing on the header ...arrrgghhhhhh !!!

I had trial fitted everything before I finished off the steering shafts and everything appeared that is was all good. So some where I made a mistake and now the steering shaft doesn't have enough clearance.

So after some fiddling with the steering shafts it become apparent the only fix besides new headers was to notch the rear header pipe. From the reading I did this wont effect the performance. Hell its an old V8 and I wont be able to tell the difference anyway.

But when I start chasing horse power a new set of headers will be required anyway.

So on a blustery Sunday I set about notching the rear header. Of course I had my helpers for a while until it got to boring.

Molly testing the new steering, "yip it works dadda, what is it, why are you always working on your car. Can we play now ..... " So after some heavy negotiations I was allowed to continue as along as we could draw and make cards later in the afternoon. A fair deal I thought.

Milo siding with Molly, " What ya doing .... what ever it is its boring"

So after sorting out my helpers I was able to get started. First step was to cut a hole / notch in the rear right header pipe.

A quick test fit to make sure I had gained enough clearance, Looking good 10mm all around.

Next task was to cut a piece of tube and shape to the hole and weld it in. I forgot to take a photo of the piece before I welded it in. Suffice to say it took a fair amount of grinding and fiddling to get it to fit. I had it fit flush from the inside of the header so I wouldn't lose any clearance space.

All done and tidied up.

So that was a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon gone. Not happy I had to do it, but happy with the results.

Steering 95% finished .... yippy

2010-03-23T19:07:00.061+13:00

So after the arrival of Poppy (see previous post) there has been little progress made on the RattyT. However today I did get a couple of hours to work in the car, and made some really good progress on the steering, in fact nearly got it 100% complete.

I finally found a place to get my shafts and spline cut. Talk about a long process, but I did find a man to do the job at what I thought was a reasonable price. I ended up the the 2 shafts shown below, one 500mm long with the spline and the other 300mm long with the Double D for the two new (expensive) Borgeson steering universals, 3/4 double D to 3/4 double D. But they are awesome quality.

So I finally have all the pieces to put it all together. You have to remember this whole steering thing started the whole rebuild. One "Little" job lead to the complete rebuild update.

Spline that fits the universal that mates to the steering box. The shafts are all made out of high tensile 4140 steel. So super strong.

Rough mock up of where I wanted the shaft to be placed. I never wanted to hid it. I really like see all the mechanical parts

The biggest issue I had was how was I going to mount the carrier bearing, and where. I wanted to get away form having to drill into the chassis. But after going through the options and how each would function and look. The only decent looking one was going to be a hole in the chassis. So I the spot chose was where the motor mount is welded to the chassis. As its got a 5mm backing plate on the inside of the chassis that would help with strength.

3/4 inch carrier bearing and the larger nut that I got. This was going to be welded to that chassis.

So after drilling the hole, I needed to do a little filing as I didn't have a larger enough drill bit. But finally got it big enough to allow the carrier bearing shaft to fit through.

Here is the carrier bearing with the larger nut in position ready for welding.

Welded in to place ready for clean up. I welded it with the arc welder to get good heat and penetration.

The welds with the slag chipped away and wire brushed. I was pretty happy with the result.

My first daughter (4.5yrs old) decided to come and help Daddy on his "Coldrod" (since is has no roof it will be cold) I gave her the camera to get some action shots of the mad scientist at work.

So with the carrier bearing mount welded, it was time to shorten the 300mm shaft to fit. I got it longer than needed with the intend to shorten to length once every thing was buttoned down.

Action shot from Molly as I mark the length of the shaft required.

Shaft shortened and the Double D recreated and it all done up.

I am super happy with the results, I love the final look. and most of this will be hidden behind the headers, which is a shame.

So after all this time I have finally got the steering nearly complete.