Clementine: The Little Things

Since getting Clementine back with her much improved Kaddie Shack motor, the balance of the work now has been sorting out a few things just to make her a pleasant driver.

VW’s come stock with steering wheels that are huge to overcome the “Armstrong” steering with no power assist. This is great for a stock granny mobile but a thin rimmed whopper did not work for what I had in mind and it also pinched my legs a bit.

So, with a quick click at Summit Racing, I sourced a new Grant GT wheel along with a shift light to remind me when I needed to bang the next gear. Both were easy to install and made a big difference in the cabin comfort level.

 

The next step was to add some new Wolfsburg West repop floor mats to replace the ripped originals along with some cleaning and greasing of the seat rails.

One trait old VW’s are known for is their propensity to catch on fire so I decided to add in a nice 2.5 pound fire extinguisher with a trick aluminum bracket that my neighbor fabbed up for me (Thanks Mike!).

 

With that done, the next big project was to add some pop-out rear windows to improve ventilation a bit since the car has “2-50” air conditioning (2 windows down at 50 mph). I had found some glass on craigslist but it was missing a bunch of hardware and no one seemed to sell the parts that I needed independent of a full $400 kit.

Thankfully, I managed to score two decent sets at the Bugorama show swap meet for just $80. This was an even more smoking deal than I initially thought as the sets included not only the latches which can fetch $50 a pair on their own but also the pinch welting which sells for around $15 a pair for new pieces.

I took the best components from both sets, replaced the window seals, and then got the rest of the hardware needed to install the windows. It was a great deal of work to carefully polish the chrome bits and then work the seals into place but for around $150, I had one really nice set of windows with all the goods to build another set that would be just fine for daily driver duty.

 With all of this done, the car is ready to enjoy for the Summer with just a few little projects left until the big repaint which most likely won’t happen for a couple of years. Guess it’s time to start looking for that Baja Bug project...

Dirty 930: Safety First

 

One thing that is often neglected in older cars is the seat belt assembly. Over time, the belts can become crusty and as they age they lose a significant amount of their strength and can snap in a big wreck. The retractor mechanisms also can wear out which could also be a disaster if the belt failed to tension as designed in a big impact.

When I first got my Targa (“Sally”) I notice the belts in the car were very faded and sun damaged. This made sense as the car spent its entire life in the desert between Scottsdale and Palm Springs. I found that the best supplier for new belts was Professionally Engineered Products which is also known as Go Westy since their main business is offering parts for older VW Westfalia camper vans.

Since then, the belts Go Westy offers have changed a bit and no longer can be used with the factory belt latches so to refit Dirty properly I was going to have to remove and replace the belt latches along with the belts and retractor assembly.

The retractor lives just under the trim panel for the rear quarter panels and is held in place with one 17mm bolt. I found both sides to be monstrously overtorqued and I needed a breaker bar to get them loose. They let loose with a mighty squeal so the torque value was way up there. Since these were the original factory belts I can only assume the factory set them that way but with old cars you just never know who has been in there. Since every bolt on this car has been seriously over tightened, I can only assume that Herr Overtorker may have monkeyed with the seat belts too.

 

Once the bolts are all removed, the assembly comes out fairly easily once the belt is threaded through the quarter panel trim. As they say in the book, installation is the reverse of removal  but a pro tip is to make sure you don’t have the belt twisted the wrong way before you snug everything down. I had to flip the mounting on the floor as I did initially install it in the wrong orientation.

 

Now that the retractors and belts were done it was time to tackle the latches. This should have been easy with just a single bolt holding the latch to the seat frame but as sometimes can happen , the driver’s side was a bear to get done because the wiring harness for the belt alert light was zip tied to the seat coils with the world’s tiniest and least accessible ties. I ended up having to completely remove the seat to get this done which ended up being a good thing as I was able to fix some wiring under there and also lube up the seat tracks.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the new receivers lack the proper wiring to have the warning light work but thankfully with the wiring unplugged the light stays off because of the design of the latch assembly that turns off the light by breaking the circuit when the belt is latched.

 

 

 

With the driver’s side done, I moved on to the passenger side which luckily lacked the wiring for the warning light so I was done in a quarter of the time that it took me to do the driver’s side because I did not have to remove the seat or fumble around with the wiring.

Dirty is now ready for the summer driving season and we can wheel confidently knowing that our safety belts are now in good order.