Sounds like you have a full plate!
Are you moving there for work or did you just have enough of your current location?
Florida would be a nice sunny change for sure and sounds nice, and I hope you do get Zippy done enough to take with you along with all the extra VW bits we all seem to collect over the years.
Good luck and I hope all goes well when you do the move.
PS: I right clicked to copy some text in this post and I saw a "Read Aloud" option so clicked it...Cool!
Is that something you added to this Forum?
Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Two things, mostly. My daughter is coming of college age and is considering UF Gainsville and my wife has wanted to move back since I moved us from there 15 years ago65VW wrote:Are you moving there for work or did you just have enough of your current location?
We're going to be doing a brutal purge to make the move doable but I'll be doing my best to keep the important stuff. A bunch is in the air right now so I don't have an idea of how much I'll need to get rid of so my fingers are crossed.65VW wrote:Florida would be a nice sunny change for sure and sounds nice, and I hope you do get Zippy done enough to take with you along with all the extra VW bits we all seem to collect over the years.
Thanks a bunch for the well wishes!
That would either be a browser or browser extension deal, I think. I don't see anything like that on mine. What browser are you using?65VW wrote:PS: I right clicked to copy some text in this post and I saw a "Read Aloud" option so clicked it...Cool!
Is that something you added to this Forum?
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Wow! Now this is surprising news...schwim wrote:...The family is considering moving back to Florida...
...My daughter is coming of college age and is considering UF Gainsville and my wife has wanted to move back since I moved us from there 15 years ago...
Thus no barn doors at the basement...
I really hope you'll find a way to keep Zippy.schwim wrote:We're going to be doing a brutal purge to make the move doable but I'll be doing my best to keep the important stuff. A bunch is in the air right now so I don't have an idea of how much I'll need to get rid of so my fingers are crossed
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
The barn door may still happen, I have to get the pan out of there somehow 
I'm going to do my best to keep him. I'd love to drive a rag top down in the sweltering heat and humidity of the Florida summers
I'm going to do my best to keep him. I'd love to drive a rag top down in the sweltering heat and humidity of the Florida summers
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Good luck with everything and for sure get an AC when you setup your workshop there.
Hopefully the house prices in Fla are not thru the roof.
I was using IE at the time and with Chrome I do not have the Audio option and I think you are right that it is a browser setting.
Still kind of cool.
Hopefully the house prices in Fla are not thru the roof.
I was using IE at the time and with Chrome I do not have the Audio option and I think you are right that it is a browser setting.
Still kind of cool.
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Things have occurred. Details soon. 
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Step by step... Nice progress Sir!
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Zippy was transplanted from his home of 4-5 years when the deck on the side of the house got torn down and rebuilt. He found himself back on the driveway, albeit not necessarily in a form that he would have liked. He was currently rocking only two wheels:
My father-in-law was coming for almost a week and the project while he was here was to get Zippy as close to ready to get his two halves mated as possible. Spoiler alert - It ended up not being that close.
First, I ordered all of the rubber bits I'd need to mate the pan to the body. These parts shipped via two day but ended up arriving 3 days after Garry went back home.
Garry refuses to do anything that requires decision-making and likes to do the mindless grunt work so he got tasked with removing the bottoms of the heater channels.
While he was doing that, I decided it was time I tackled the front end. I had been talking myself out of doing it because I was worried that I would mess something up that couldn't be rectified like cutting the leaves too short or something similar.
The front end is a 7 inch narrowed beam with adjusters that I bought on the TS classifieds. It came with an absolutely unusable and super sketchy half-assed set of leaves that could not be reused so I needed to shorten the leaves from my original beam.
I ziptied the end of the leaves so I could feed it through the center adjuster. As you push the leaves through, the zip tie just keeps getting pushed out of the way. It just gets left in there when done.
The beam doesn't utilize end bearings so I needed to use the buggy-type sleeves. Luckily, I had ordered them .... almost exactly 4 years to the day
Which got me to the point at which I had the torsion arms in place. I didn't, however, yet have the new locator indentation drilled in the torsion leaves. This was the part of the job that I had been so scared of. My drill press is designed for wood so it's not designed for the tight tolerances required. My solution was to drill through one of the extra locator screws that I had. I threaded it into a piece of wood to keep it level, welded the capture nut to it so I could keep it from spinning then spent 10 minutes and two drill bits going all the way through it:
With that done, I screwed it into each arm, using it to keep the drill bit from wandering and from destroying the arm's threads. It worked great.
With that done, I removed the stock spindles, taking them and my dropped spindles to a local machine shop to get the king pin pressed out so they could be swapped. 2 days and $80 later, I got them back.
With that done, I started prepping the heater channel bottoms to get them ready to be welded on. The captured nuts at the front were long gone so I welded on some 10mm nuts to use:
With the two bottoms welded on, Garry's time at the house drew to a close and I was left to my own devices. I've tried to continue working on it and I've been knocking out little spots as time permits. I'll update the thread as soon as I've got something of substance to share.
'Till next time!
My father-in-law was coming for almost a week and the project while he was here was to get Zippy as close to ready to get his two halves mated as possible. Spoiler alert - It ended up not being that close.
First, I ordered all of the rubber bits I'd need to mate the pan to the body. These parts shipped via two day but ended up arriving 3 days after Garry went back home.
Garry refuses to do anything that requires decision-making and likes to do the mindless grunt work so he got tasked with removing the bottoms of the heater channels.
While he was doing that, I decided it was time I tackled the front end. I had been talking myself out of doing it because I was worried that I would mess something up that couldn't be rectified like cutting the leaves too short or something similar.
The front end is a 7 inch narrowed beam with adjusters that I bought on the TS classifieds. It came with an absolutely unusable and super sketchy half-assed set of leaves that could not be reused so I needed to shorten the leaves from my original beam.
I ziptied the end of the leaves so I could feed it through the center adjuster. As you push the leaves through, the zip tie just keeps getting pushed out of the way. It just gets left in there when done.
The beam doesn't utilize end bearings so I needed to use the buggy-type sleeves. Luckily, I had ordered them .... almost exactly 4 years to the day
Which got me to the point at which I had the torsion arms in place. I didn't, however, yet have the new locator indentation drilled in the torsion leaves. This was the part of the job that I had been so scared of. My drill press is designed for wood so it's not designed for the tight tolerances required. My solution was to drill through one of the extra locator screws that I had. I threaded it into a piece of wood to keep it level, welded the capture nut to it so I could keep it from spinning then spent 10 minutes and two drill bits going all the way through it:
With that done, I screwed it into each arm, using it to keep the drill bit from wandering and from destroying the arm's threads. It worked great.
With that done, I removed the stock spindles, taking them and my dropped spindles to a local machine shop to get the king pin pressed out so they could be swapped. 2 days and $80 later, I got them back.
With that done, I started prepping the heater channel bottoms to get them ready to be welded on. The captured nuts at the front were long gone so I welded on some 10mm nuts to use:
With the two bottoms welded on, Garry's time at the house drew to a close and I was left to my own devices. I've tried to continue working on it and I've been knocking out little spots as time permits. I'll update the thread as soon as I've got something of substance to share.
'Till next time!
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
Wow - you really achieved a great deal in a little while!
Especially considering that there are some other "incidental" projects under progress.
Great accomplishments on the house and Bög! You're hard-working Sir!
To be honest I was a bit concerned whether Zippy would make it to Florida.
But I have to admit it seems you're hell-bent on making it happen. Awesome!
Keep up the great work.
Especially considering that there are some other "incidental" projects under progress.
Great accomplishments on the house and Bög! You're hard-working Sir!
To be honest I was a bit concerned whether Zippy would make it to Florida.
But I have to admit it seems you're hell-bent on making it happen. Awesome!
Keep up the great work.
Re: Build: Zippy the Wonderbug
It's been crazy lately. The house and the bug is enough to keep me busy until we move but Bög is just crushing my spirit. It seems I've angered some ancient God and he's staying one step ahead of me, breaking things as I fix the previous issue. The A/C install precipitated an ungodly expensive chain of fixes and upgrades that I just seem incapable of getting out of . I hope tomorrow's work on him appeases the Gods and allows me to just drive him for a bit. I love Bög but I don't want to work on him right now and I really can't spend any more money on him.Maddel wrote:Especially considering that there are some other "incidental" projects under progress.
I worried the same. It seemed insurmountable but my goal has shifted from that of a restoration-type effort to just getting him together and mechanically sound which makes it seem more achievable. I figure the next guy that gets Zippy after I die can foot the bill for a full concourse restoration... if i don have myself buried in him.Maddel wrote:To be honest I was a bit concerned whether Zippy would make it to Florida.
But I have to admit it seems you're hell-bent on making it happen. Awesome!