BUILD-OFF CHALLENGE: Budk – Bumblebee, Rustoration Options

[budk]

This car was found in a garage in Columbus in 2010. A member here, Tornik550 posted in the forum that he found it at a garage sale and that it may be an LE.
He wasn’t interested so I went and looked at it and brought it home. It turned out to be an LE and this is what it looked like when I got it home.





Someone suggested I contact Dr. Evil who was lived about 15 miles from me. Mike came over and we pulled the engine and tranny as well as other parts while he assured me that he knew where everything belonged. Mike rebuilt the tranny and then, long story short, life got in the way for both of us, a couple of years went by and Mike ended up moving to Ohio. Before Mike moved, I realized that he was going to be too busy growing his family and his practice and I didn’t know anything about these engines so I put an ad on the Pittsburgh Craigslist looking for an air cooled engine enthusiast to help me finish put the engine together that Mike and I had torn apart. The ad stated that my preferred choice of payment was beer and that I kept the fridge in the garage full.



I got a couple of replies with suggestions of books/videos to buy but then I heard from a guy who lives a little over an 1.5 hr drive from me. It turns out that he is a 914world member and I believe he has had something like 6 of these cars over the years. His name is Ray (reharvey) but I refer to him as my Mentor. Ray drove down and we developed a list of parts to buy to finish rebuilding the engine. A few months later, after a couple of trips, the case was back together with new bearings, cam and 2056 piston/cylinders but minus the injection, wiring harness, most of the tin and a few other parts. All the original parts that were taken off were kept since this is a numbers matching car.




That was 2 years ago. Nothing else got done in 2014 and now that 2015 is winding down it is time to get back to working on the car… and this challenge is the perfect motivation. The car will need the floor and firewall patched, door sills, longs and a few other pieces including work around the front marker lights. Are new fenders available? One of the PO’s had some work done (poorly) on the sills and the longs so I’m not sure yet what all is going to need replaced. Ray is coming down in a few days to give me his opinion on the body and I expect to be placing an order with Restoration Design soon after.

[budk]

I spent the first two weeks of October removing everything left on the car except the suspension/wheels. I wanted to have the car sitting on the wheels so that I could install some bracing in the floor area. I know that bracing will need to come out at some point but until I know which panels need replaced I want the additional support. I also decided that I want to be able to hang the doors to check the gaps as panels are replaced so I had to change where I attached the door braces so that I can fit a door with the braces in place. And, I wasn’t really happy with the door braces that I had previously made using black pipe. The pipe flexed much more than I expected so I remade the braces with some extra square tubing I had laying around.


The last 2 weeks of October were spent building a rotisserie. I went with Restoration Design’s rotisserie because I think it best fits my particular needs of wanting to be able to move it around a lot and be able roll it onto my lift if need be. $250 worth of steel got the job done but I wasn’t prepared for the amount of time it took to fabricate it and for the amount of dirt created cutting and grinding new steel with the oily mill finish on it. It was however fun welding thick steel and it gave me a reason to buy a better welding helmet. I’ve been using a Harbor Freight helmet and while I haven’t done much welding before, when I did I struggled with being able to see where I was welding. So, I bought a Hobart Pro helmet and the difference is night and day. Much easier to see, lots of adjustments and the head strap assembly works really well. I also bought a better ground clamp as the clamp that came on my Millermatic 180 was practically useless. Once I got the settings on the welder dialed in and my technique correct I was able to lay down some pretty good welds.



Once the rotisserie was attached I removed the remaining suspension and with my wife’s help we removed the entire wire harness .


So, what’s next is to strip the car of paint so I can see all the parts that need cut out. I have a guy coming out next week to soda blast it in my driveway. His business is called Stripper for Hire (Stripper for hire website)…… I’m sure I’ll be the talk of the neighborhood! I still need to put dolly wheels on the rotisserie but I am waiting for a piece of steel so I will use cheap furniture dolly’s from Harbor Freight to get the car off my lift and outside for the stripper.