The Fake Jaguar Thread

[Ulu]

Fellows, I rebuilt my first car as a junior in high school, and before that I had helped my dad swap engines, and build custom bumpers, and do similar things at home.

But this is the first time I’ve ever taken a car completely off the chassis and flipped it upside down. This is the first time I’ve ever done a major frame re-welding and redesign.

That white Scout you keep seeing photographs of was the first car I ever pulled off the chassis, and the body on it now is not the one it was born with. That’s how the frame ended up being painted white instead of black. I sand blasted the entire chassis and shot it in 1973.

Over the years I’ve done major restoration work on an MG midget, a Mustang, a VW type 3, a Ford pick up truck, and others. I have rebuilt cars and rewired cars and repainted cars. But all that has stopped for the immediate future.

Hurricane Hillary has hit California, and she/her/they is dumping a lot of rain here in Clovis right now. I went out and fogged all that shiny metal with anticorrosion oil before it got wet, but work in the boatyard is stopped for now.
;(

It already had a little oil on it, because I never degreased this chassis before I started wire brushing. I just spread it all around and everything stayed pretty shiny as I was working on it over the weeks.

But I knew when it started pouring rain that I had better protect that metal I had worked so hard to strip.

 

[Ulu]

. . . I gave up thongs in the workshop a while ago, my toes love me for it he he he !

I have to mention this because I bought a brand-new pair a while back and almost immediately my wife’s cat started chewing them up.

I don’t know what it was. They must put some special cat attractive on them in China. Anyhow my wife said she would buy me a new pair and over a month went bye-bye. No joy…

But we had to go to a garden party yesterday and so Friday I went out and bought myself a brand-new pair to match my clothing, and took them home and put them on my nightstand.

That furry little beast jumped up on my nightstand, stole them, and chewed through one in two places.

And the worst part is she seems proud about the whole ordeal, as if it were expected of her.

But she may have had a partner in crime. There were no known witnesses.

Yet I found this midnight congregation unusually suspicious.

 

[Son of Kradus]

I have to mention this because I bought a brand-new pair a while back and almost immediately my wife’s cat started chewing them up.

I don’t know what it was. They must put some special cat attractive on them in China. Anyhow my wife said she would buy me a new pair and over a month went bye-bye. No joy…

But we had to go to a garden party yesterday and so Friday I went out and bought myself a brand-new pair to match my clothing, and took them home and put them on my nightstand.

That furry little beast jumped up on my nightstand, stole them, and chewed through one in two places.

And the worst part is she seems proud about the whole ordeal, as if it were expected of her.

But she may have had a partner in crime. There were no known witnesses.

View attachment 246080
Yet I found this midnight congregation unusually suspicious.

I started reading and though your wifes cat could possibly be a mountain lion, but then I see the partner in crime there ha ha ha ! Gold mate!

 

[Ulu]

I started reading and though your wifes cat could possibly be a mountain lion, but then I see the partner in crime there ha ha ha ! Gold mate!

That little cat looks innocent but she is a vicious killer and legendary shredder of fine furniture.

 

[Ulu]

and how clean is it, he's at the stage where he can use white gloves and at the end of the day they're still clean LOL! im enjoying watching this, ive always wanted to rebuild a car but its just too much work for me.....and im not a mechanic LOL

I am trying very hard to get this thing in a condition I would consider worthy of painting. It had quite a bit a bit of paint on the bottom of it, some over dirt and rust, and some applied with a brush.

Most of it is now history except for the pans.

This is where I left off last night, but I have put in another three hours this morning already.

I have to keep telling myself what Jay Leno said. If you’re restoring cars and you’re making a profit you’re doing it wrong.

 

[Ulu]

If you look at the suspension arms in the photos above you can see there still some bad rust pits on the suspension arms, both front and rear. Here’s a little zoomed in shot.

I’m burnishing these things down pretty good so everything is going to be lightened when I’m done.

 

[Son of Kradus]

ive seen this a lot on australian utes n trucks.
Some peeps roughly paint under their cars for rust protection, where we live its quite harsh on cars near the coast, our fishing group done 4x4 trips up the coast.30km along a beach till you hit a campground, salt spray all over n under the ute, the guru's told me around the campfire that night when i get home wash it down 2 or 3 times, buy a couple cans of inox, spray everywhere on every single part under the ute....then buy a few cans of cheap rattler black and coat over the whole lot (underneath the car) , everything gets covered, wires, joints uni joints etc, they said its the cheapest rust protection and most of them done this every year! there was even a couple blokes that paid $450 once a year to get a husband and wife team to coat the undersides of their 4x4, they had brand new trucks too! after a year or two it does chip and come off coz you use the inox first, the paint just coats a hard layer over the top!
Jeeeeez your doing well on this!

 

[Kevin B]

There used to be some kit car periodicals on the new stands, if those still exist they would do well to document this build/restoration. It could really help To encourage people to do it right the first time.

 

[Ulu]

There used to be some kit car periodicals on the new stands, if those still exist they would do well to document this build/restoration. It could really help To encourage people to do it right the first time.

I have a couple of those old books, and I might post some photos from one. I have several old Volkswagen manuals and a user manual. It’s all historical now!

What I am going through is being documented on a Volkswagen forum called the Samba. (A samba is a Volkswagen bus built in Brazil.)

There’s a lot of photographs there that I did not post here, from the earliest work. Also some other photographs from the documents.

I am only working on a 50 year old car. This is kind of a practice run.

I have a 62 year old car and a 76 year old car. This all should keep me out of trouble for a long time.

 

[Ulu]

I had to move that transaxle up out of my way and it is a beast to pick up by hand. Afterwards I rewarded myself with a Mexican fizzy lemonade.

There’s all my worn out wire brushes. The ones that look usable are all lopsided.

 

[Ulu]

Today was quite lovely, and I took my bicycle out for the first ride in a couple weeks. Shortly after I screwed up my left knee, I stubbed my middle right toe badly, so I’ve mostly been limping. I just had not felt up to riding until today, but it went pretty well and I made 3 miles without hurting myself.

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.

 

[Ulu]

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.

 

[Son of Kradus]

Looks brand new

 

[Ulu]

Thank you SOK,
Things always look better in photographs, but it did come out pretty good. I wasn’t trying to polish out all the defects in the casting but I did knock off a lot of the rough flash from the molding process.

Today I had to go out and buy a replacement for my Bosch drill which I burned out. I was really lucky to find one almost as obsolete as mine, on closeout, in a two for one package deal, with two batteries a charger and a case. Here’s the two new ones plus my old one without the battery in it.

$139 Tax included, Which was a terrific price. Here it is next to my old Bosch drill which had carbon brushes. It did however have the more advanced batteries, and they fit the new drills! I now have four good batteries, and two chargers.

Anyhow those batteries and charger would have been worthless, had I not found this last box hiding behind the display in Lowe’s. The newer Bosch drills take a completely different battery.

 

[Ulu]

I started reading and though your wifes cat could possibly be a mountain lion, but then I see the partner in crime there ha ha ha ! Gold mate!

The little demon is back at it again…

 

[Ulu]

Absolutely zero work has been going on with the car over the past week. I have been repainting garden ornaments for my wife, and I stripped down this bench and repainted it.

I did some torch brazing on her broken “replica” astrolabe. It got new hardware and was repainted, and I cleaned up all the corroded bronze and clearcoated it.

Here the OEM brazing is cracked, and also in another place where I had to repair it.

After repair:

I did some TIG welding on Mr. Happy Sun, which was made of very very thin sheet metal. Like 30 gauge. I added a circle of 1/8 inch steel rod to reinforce it, and secure it into a new steel stake, from 1/2” square tube.

I also built a 24 V DC power supply from parts of other power supplies. I was going to use it to power my aquarium pump, because the power supply died when we had a brown out here.

It puts out 24 V DC at 2 A no problem, but evidently the waveform isn’t smooth enough to operate the DC Stepper that runs the brushless DC pump motor.
So far it is a failure but, I’ve got a bunch of big capacitors to smooth it out, so we’ll see where this goes eventually.

Meanwhile, today I will actually get back on the Volkswagen.

 

[Ulu]

Well that was a big lie. Instead of doing that I went shopping, and I washed my truck and changed the oil.

 

[Ulu]

I spent some time diddling around with garden ornaments and my fish.

I mounted the fake astrolabe on a piece of granite (that was once the cutout from some bathroom sink.) I had to drill three holes with masonry bits, and then I staked it down with brass wire.

There it is on my crusty old workbench.

Now it needs a pedestal out in the garden somewhere.

 

[Ulu]

I finally got back to the car yesterday. Rumor has it that the weathers going to start changing so I made a big effort to get some paint on the bare steel.

We had a lot of dirt and leaves blow in, so before I could paint I had to clean up the boat yard with a broom and a vacuum and an air hose.

Then I finished up cleaning the last little corners of the rear suspension, by hand, with a wire brush. It was not possible to burnish every bit of metal affected but it’s all clean enough.

I had oiled all the bare steel to prevent rust, so I stripped that off with acetone. Then I acid etched it all again, washed it with water 3 times, blew it dry, rubbed it off, and degreased it one more time.

I buffed it off by hand again, and shot it with a self etching black paint. I rolled the chassis up so I could paint both sides.

I did not paint the parts of the chassis I will have to weld on, but everything that is painted will not need welding.

 

[Ulu]

When I went out to look at the chassis after I painted it, I realized I had missed a spot. The paint was thin there, and I wanted to touch it up.

Unfortunately I should’ve waited an extra day for the paint to cure, because it caused some lifting and wrinkled where the paint was glossy. Of course the thin spot came out beautiful.

Fortunately it was only a small area, so I will let it cure for a couple days, sand, and reshoot that spot.

My next task is to remove some offending bits of metal inside the end of the tunnel that I have cut off, I need to fabricate a patch to go inside it, and clean up the bits of rusted metal that still remain.