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]

Adding a January update.

Not much progress this month. I had hopes of working on it all winter by heating my garage with a combination of kerosene and propane heaters but then I read the posts of the problems causes by using combustion type heaters in a sealed space. I am mostly concerned about rust so I have decided to only use electric heat in the garage but given some of the low temps we had even that wasn't possible. I'll only be able to work on it on mild weather days - I just don't have enough electric heat to make it comfortable nor do I want a ridiculous electric bill.

I did start cleaning some of the contacts on my wiring harness. I'm trying a few different methods, mostly vinegar and salt to clean and water/baking soda to neutralize afterwards. I had some success with although I think I wtill try the vinegar/salt solution in an ultrasonic cleaner. That should give the same results only more quickly. All in all the harness isn't that bad. There are a few pieces that will need to be replaced and a lot of it will need to be re-wrapped but it's not as bad as I had thought.

I did get some more metal pieces to add to the to-do pile. Other than that, no real progress this month.

Pics will be added <here> soon.

[JeffBowlsby]

I did start cleaning some of the contacts on my wiring harness.

Get some DeOxit spray Bud...its the cats meow for electrical contacts.