The Official 356Talk Forum

Awesome Tom, I’m stoked for you!

First restored parts attached to my 356 this week.

There was a haunting issue that needed to be addressed before the front suspension could go back together.

Almost every factory tool was used to check the components of my suspension rebuild.

The most problematic one was non parallel torsion tubes!

Here are the other other things I found:

1) A bent suspension arm
2) Severely worn link and king pin bushings
3) Worn C link carrier
4) Torsion tube/chassis out of alignment
5) Damaged torsion grub screws
6) Cracked backing plate Most of my updates are on YouTube now, but I check here too from time to time.

This video link below is how I corrected the torsion tube problem with VW256a. Thanks John for your help!
https://youtu.be/KKOrsoStbyY

Cheers,
Tom

Hi Tom, been following your youtube channel and I wonder if you would go through the trouble of taking off the entire roof and outside rear end to get at the inner cavities in the rear of that unibody construction (to the left and right of the rear bulkhead for instance) if you had to do it again? I see nice panels on offer but where should one cut to get inside so as best to use readymade panels in case the surprise continues in magnitude of what you discovered in your A pillars ?

Hi, I would not take the roof off unless absolutely necessary. Today we can use boroscopes and fiber optic type cameras to see exactly what is inside.

In my experience rust attacks certain areas and leaves others alone.

Also remember that these cars will live a charmed life and if taken care of correctly, they shouldn't rust again.

I treat hidden cavities with cavity once a year and inspect with a boroscope to make sure all is well.

Good question, and as always you're results may vary, ha ha.

While this project below is for my 912 engine, I thought of it as a precursor to my 356 engine. There are so many small German bits need for these engines.

I opted for traditional "wet" paint, but added a hardener for durability and more chemical resistance. Time will tell how good it is.

One thing that was troublesome for me is the fan torque nut in the 356 workshop manual says 72 ft-lbs. That seems like too much for this. I checked VW's online forums and they say 43 ft-lbs.

Is this a mistake in the manual pictured above?

Here's the link to the cooling tin install video.
https://youtu.be/s5ZH3CbXZEk

Tom I also thought that 72 ft lbs was more than needed. Here’s what I did I mounted the fan with gen.in a vise with the front nut attached. I tightened the rear nut down fairly snug then used my torque wrench to a final torque of 70 ft lbs. ,once removed from the vice youll have to use an impact wrench to loosen the front nut.

Some use an impact wrench to tighten the rear fan nut by holding the fan with a heavy towel on a flat surface, you have to use caution here as you can easily stretch the threads on the rear pulley shaft by overdoing it. If your squeamish with this they make an attachment which mounts on the impact wrench which will calibrate the torque in lbs to the nut being tightened.




O

Thanks Max for the reply. Just a few minutes ago I looked at my little spec book which says 10mkp which is indeed 72 ft-lbs. Probably not a typo.

It felt squishy to me when torqueing, so I stopped at 50 ft-lbs.

I used a big wrench on the pulley hub instead of using the nut there.

Tom the last one I did I torqued to 70 ft lbs. the one before that I did what you did and only torqued to 45 ft lbs and it’s held up just fine. We certainly don’t want that fan coming loose , hopefully it won’t, probably should have used some blue lock tight .

Tom be sure and mount the generator & fan on its housing with the ( 4 ) 10mm bolts installed and spin by hand to ensure no interference between the fan and the shroud. The fan instruction say you can use between 2 and 5 spacers to get the correct space for your particular application. Also sometimes I’ve seen no cardboard spacer on the front fan tin to also help if needed. I really don’t remember when that front cardboard spacer came into play as I don’t remember having them on my earlier engines pre 1960

Anyone know ?

A few, perhaps helpful, comments. VW used a massive wavy washer and lower torque to hold it all together. Porsche uses massive (72 lb-ft) to that end. I purchased "torque sticks" (https://www.harborfreight.com/search?q=torque%20sticks) to get this torque with an air impact gun. I did many test trials on my car's lug nuts and found that with the air pressure set at minimum for the gun (90 psi) and the 75 lb-ft torque stick I routinely got 70 lb-ft. With the air gun all it takes is a towel over the fan to hold it.

Hey thanks Paul.
Good to know what others have done. I got nervous about the impact gun as there isn't a great way besides a towel to hold the fan assembly.
It's likely the towel affects the calibration of the impact torque sticks as the fan shutters a bit.

A car wheel has enough inertia or the ground to make it solid. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction force, well torque in this case.

Also not sure how the wavy washer changes the pre-load in the shaft???

Don't mean to be critical here, just sharing some more comments out loud, ha ha.

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I have a '64 SC cabriolet, that I'm restoring myself. Does anybody have, or know where I can find plans for the octagonal/hexagonal Rotisserie? I would like to weld one together, and would appreciate not having to suffer the trial and error of proper dimensions and connection points.

thank you

Hi Jonathan, welcome!
I am sure you will receive some answers soon.

Jonathan - here is the plan for the Emory octagonal rack. I built one years ago and currently have it adapted to a 912 project. This used to be on their website but I don't think it is any more - fortunately I downloaded it long ago.
Good luck!

Thank you Greg. Sorry it took me so long to answer, but I had not looked back at this thread in a while. This is exactly what I was looking for! So much appreciated.