[Arne]

The weld-through primer I bought is copper-based. Paint supplier offered both copper and zinc to me, I did copper because I'd seen more of that used in other places. It was quite expensive...

 

[zeande]

That's what I got as well at the auto body shop. Previously I had gotten the zinc stuff from the big box store, which didn't seem to work very well. Haven't gotten a chance to try out the copper stuff yet.

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[Willi-The-Red13]

The weld-through primer I bought is copper-based. Paint supplier offered both copper and zinc to me, I did copper because I'd seen more of that used in other places. It was quite expensive...

View attachment 56353
That's the good stuff costs more but according the person who did the welding on FrankenWagen it's the only thing he uses for his personal work.

 

[ToddA1]

I did some light research on copper vs zinc weld through. Seems copper doesn’t spatter and pop as much, as I’d mentioned earlier. This could be one of the reasons it’s popular, including the fume issue. Someone else mentioned zinc is more compatible with steel, than copper, saying copper will cause galvanic corrosion. I’m unsure what to believe, since the brands I’m used to, seem to offer both. I’ve used SEM, Wurth and Eastwood’s zinc stuff and they seemed to work the same. I think I paid $35 for the SEM stuff about 5 years ago.

I know the body shop I use, uses zinc, but since he’s factory certified, meaning he needs to use what the manufacturer specifies. I’ve seen Wurth and SEM cans there, but I didn’t take notice of what the product was. I’ll ask the owner his opinion the next time I’m up there.

-Todd

 

[Arne]

Haven't had a large enough block of time over the past couple of days to do any welding. That will change tomorrow. Really hoping to be able to complete the bed floor tomorrow. But I'm not very fast, so no guarantees.

Another box load of parts arrived yesterday. New round-light grill, front turn signals for the euro-bumpers, pair of repro flag mirrors, some seals, etc. Pretty much all what I expected, except I'm confused on the new door check straps.

Currently neither door has a check strap connected, although the passenger door appears to have one inside the door. The driver's door has no strap at all, but the new ones (171-837-251) don't seem to fit in the driver's door at all. I'm wondering if my left door is perhaps from an earlier Rabbit?

 

[zeande]

Awesome! I got my bed repair panel in on Tuesday, and my welder is supposed to arrive on Saturday from Eastwood. Looking forward to seeing more of your pics.

 

[Arne]

New turn signals.

 

[Arne]

Completed the bulkhead repair yesterday. Not the most attractive repair, but virtually none of it is visible once the bed floor is in. Seems like no matter how clean I ground it down, there was still rust infused in the metal. So welding included a lot of popping and spatter.

The bed floor patch today went much better. Nicer beads, will clean up very well. I've still got to weld the last short side of the patch, but ran out of time today. Will probably finish that tomorrow. Then probably a short break from the rust repair to modify the remaining Mk3 seat to fit. Then floors...

 

[zeande]

Looking good! Bet it feels good to get rid of that rust. This was one of the most intimidating rust repairs for me, so I'm looking forward to getting there too. As for the copper-based primer, I'm finding it to work very well - much better than the can of the other kind that I had purchased at HF.

 

[Arne]

Yeah, feels good to banish some rust. The floor pans are more intimidating for me. But will be even more rewarding.

 

[Arne]

Spent a bit of time on the Mk3 seat conversion this afternoon. Got the passenger seat pan done. Will do the same on the driver's seat soon, then reassemble them all. (Need to leave the completed side apart so I can use it as a guide.)

Converting Mk3 seats for a Mk1 has 2 parts. One is that you need to narrow the rear slider track by about 2⅛" (to 18⅞"). The excess all needs to come off the outboard side. The other thing that's needed is to reverse the side that the slider release operates on. On standard seats it's pretty simple (minor fabrication) to do that by swapping the release levers on the 2 seats. That's what was done to the Passat seats my truck came with.

But on my new seats, the driver's side is height adjustable, which makes it far more difficult to do the lever swap. So I'm going to swap the front mounts on the floor from side to side instead. Should be fairly simple to cut them off and weld them back on the other side, since I'm going to be welding new pans in anyway.

View attachment 55470

View attachment 55471

Finished the seat mods today. Or at least the mods to the seats themselves are complete. Will decide the best way to reverse the front mounts on the truck's crossmembers tomorrow.

I didn't detail the mods in the post above. The passenger side was done by replacing the outboard seat leg with one cut off the Mk2/B3 seat I am replacing. (See pics in the quote above.) That seemed to be the simplest way to get it right.

But I couldn't do that on the driver's seat, the seat frame is completely different due to the height adjuster. After considering several ways to mod the seat frame (much measuring, sketching and figuring), I decided the best way to make this one right was to cut off the leg and relocate it 2⅛" inboard.

To do this, I made a gusseted bracket from one of the slider feet salvaged from the retired Passat seats. I welded this bracket in place 2⅛" inboard, and then welded the leg to the bracket. This method allowed me to maintain proper side to side height and other geometry. (Pics below.)

Pleased with how this came out.

 

[Arne]

Totally unrelated to the work I've been doing recently, I'm still waiting for the new-to-me air flow meter I bought. Postal Service is obviously backed up due to COVID related staffing, and heavy seasonal shipping, but this box has been stuck in a post office on the East coast for a full 2 weeks now. No movement at all. I've got an inquiry and trace initiated now, but no word yet.

I never did finish re-working the fuel system plumbing, as I'm going to need to drop all the fuel lines down and out of danger while I do the floor pan replacement. Will be doing the passenger side pan first, then put the fuel system together so I can turn the truck around in the garage to do the driver's pan. Might start the pan work this week, if time is available. Over the weekend for sure.

 

[Arne]

Still working on the front-center seat mount swap. Those mounts are more solidly attached to the body than pretty much anything else I've seen on this truck. They are welded with 6 nice fat bead welds and at least 2 spot welds each. Having to really give some thought to how I need to do this and make the end result as stout as the factory did. Much more involved than I expected.

Good news! While I never heard from USPS on my package trace request, tracking suddenly shows that it has magically re-appeared and may actually be on its way.

 

[Arne]

Still working on the front-center seat mount swap. Those mounts are more solidly attached to the body than pretty much anything else I've seen on this truck. They are welded with 6 nice fat bead welds and at least 2 spot welds each. Having to really give some thought to how I need to do this and make the end result as stout as the factory did. Much more involved than I expected.

And finally today, I finished the first side. The driver's side seat mount is now in place and fully functional. Now that I know what I'm doing, I should be able to finish the passenger side tomorrow.

And yet another box of parts from the UK arrived today. (On Sunday? Really?). Mostly parts I won't need until much later in the project. Door cards, flares, stripes and tailgate letters, more window rubber, etc.

Air flow meter still "in transit"...

 

[Arne]

As I had hoped, I finished the second seat mount today.

Note to file - If you think you want to install Mk3 sport seats in a Mk1, find a pair without height adjuster on either seat. The height adjuster on the driver's seat prevented the normal reversal of the release levers and forced me to swap the seat mounts on the crossmember. Ugly job. Try to avoid that if at all possible.

Will begin getting the fuel lines out of the way tomorrow, and then cut out the passenger floor pan later this week.

Side note - The replacement air flow meter has arrived in town, possible delivery tomorrow.

 

[Arne]

Air flow meter finally arrived this evening. Looks good, never tampered with. Needs a bit of cleaning, and will check the basic settings and adjustments tomorrow. Came with the matching fuel distributor and pressure regulator as well. Even though my FD is a fresh rebuild, I will probably start by trying the one that came with the AFM, as the two parts should be still configured to work together. The car that this AFM came from was parted after being rear-ended, and was said to be running fine at the time. If I put my FD on it, I'll need to start all the adjustments from scratch again. Which I will do if this FD doesn't seem to do the job for whatever reason. But maybe I'll get lucky this time...

 

[ValveCoverGasket]

subscribed to see how this turns out, awesome progress so far! and really nice work on your previous projects.
caddys always just looked so right with the single round headlights.

i rescued a 16v swapped caddy a few years ago also, though didnt keep it long after it was running but it went to a good home.

 

[Arne]

Cleaned the 'new' AFM this morning. Had to re-center the venturi plate, and found the control plunger in the attached fuel distributor was stuck. But the plunger was easy to break loose and remove, was not corroded and after a quick rinse of the bore with some carb cleaner slid back in and moved smoothly. So I bolted the AFM/FD assembly into the truck to see if it would start. I let the fuel pump prime 2-3 times, then had to crank it through several false starts while it purged the air out of the injector lines. But once it finally started and caught, it coughed a time or two (still purging the lines), and then settled into a nice, smooth cold idle at 1100-1200 rpm. Shut it off and restarted, it caught instantly. Idles nicely, and revs cleanly without stumbling, something it has never done before. Basically, it seems to run just like a stock 9A 16v should run.

No test drive today, I've got it partially torn apart prepping to replace the passenger side floor pan. But from the initial results today, I think that at most it might need a touch of fine-tuning to the DPR. Maybe not even that. Really pleased at this point.

 

[Butcher]

Just a thought, you may want to to play with the original DPR and not the one that came with the fuel distributor. If anything goes wrong, you can go back to the stock one.

 

[Arne]

Just a thought, you may want to to play with the original DPR and not the one that came with the fuel distributor. If anything goes wrong, you can go back to the stock one.

That's a good idea. I figured I save the original DPR as a spare anyway, so if I decide I need to tune it, I think swapping it out first makes sense. Thanks for the prompt!