CAPTAIN RATBAG (Mk1 #6) Pt6
From the donor car around half of the water hoses were the old standard ones but the rest were silicone. I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to cool my car better, and since I am not running a heater I would have to change some of the pathways. I decided replacing all the old plumbing including the pipe below and designing my own was going to be the best option.
The blue silicone hose is what I had from the other car, all the black silicone hose is new. Along with some aluminium straights and a filter for the cooling system.
I made up a bunch of brackets to mount the two fans. A Davies Craig fan on the left and on the right is a little random one I had. I am not sure what the small fan is from but it just fits underneath the custom air box.
Here is a test fit of the new plumbing layout.
I totally forgot about the oil cooler, this is the banged up old one I had after a clean.
With the longer Peugeot radiator the original oil cooler wouldn't fit anymore. It was in pretty bad condition anyway so I picked up an after market substitute from eBay and got Aero Flow attachments and new oil line.
Some more home made brackets.
The only place I could get the new oil cooler to fit was in front of the radiator, so I had to re-locate the rad' on an angle to allow room. The angled aluminium channel has a rubber insert which the radiators bottom lip sits in.
The angled radiator just clears the cold box... just.
With the leads and a top strut brace that I made a while back in the car, it is starting to look pretty good in there.
Ahh you just have to love a Mk1 man cave. I should explain about the girl in the passenger seat, she is a printed promotional cut out. I had her strapped into Avril for a while, it's pretty funny driving around like this. I had a mate say to me once "I saw you driving the other day, who was the girl?"
Back to the windows, the 3mm poly-carbonate was fine for the side ones but the rear had way too much flex so I decided to brace it with some aluminium strap.
I also put in some rear hatch quick release clips and made some little ally sheet paint protectors. Not sure why given the awesome job I did painting this car haha.
At this stage of the game 4 years have past since I started this build and my car is still in the shed. There is a VW event coming up and even though it is incomplete it is time to show it off. I did a pretty poor job of the checkered bonnet first time around so I decided to mask up and re-do it.
A lot of masking and painting later... much better.
The last of the gauges are in, along with the shift light and new wheel. I have also finally removed the remaining sound deadening from the floor and given both it and the gear stick a lick of paint.
Some random neighbourhood cat came to say hello while I was putting the Velo seat in.
The harness is in and I am all ready for the car show.
Show time. Here are a bunch of pictures from the 2013 Day Of The Volkswagen in Adelaide, South Australia.
Parked next to our little rat Avril.
The full Mk1 line up for the day.
Much fun was had, it was great to get my car out finally and display what I have been slowly doing over the last 4 years. But now it is time to head home and sort out the mess I left preparing for the show.
Sorted!
With my project going quite slow I made the decision to sell the Weitec suspension to a mate. I'm not using them and he wanted to upgrade from his Koni yellows, they are headed to Timmy's car Ariel. So with that, here is one last shot of the Captain lifting a leg.
Back to stock height... ewww. This car is on hold again for a while, I have other projects to work on for a bit but as always I will return to this little monster.
To be continued...