New Brake Booster

A very fine day so decided to do a split shift at work so I could spend the afternoon working on the RattyT. Now I thought I did enough work previously on the brake booster and the height in the car and how low it hung in the frame. But the more I looked at it I was too bloody low. So after much debate I decided to see if a brand new small one would do the trick.

 

So here is it, in its brand new shiny self. The next test was to see if it would fit and work on my master cylinder. With a little bit of fiddling with the mounting hole on the master cylinder it fitted and after doing some adjusting on the booster it worked perfectly. Well as much as I could test on the work bench.

Below is it all together. There is a slight gap between the backing plate on the master cylinder and the booster, but the center flange full seated and everything is lined up.

 

Now it was time to remove the old booster and mount

 

Here you can see the size difference.

 

After drilling the new mounting holes in the mounting bracket it was time to do a test fit.

 

 

As you can see from the below photo the small booster will move the bottom of the mount to be above the existing transmission mount. It will no longer be the lowest hanging part of the under carriage.

 

Here's the top view, you can see the gap between the backing plate and the booster. Ill make a spacer to fill that gap. There is also a O ring missing from the master cylinder flange.

 

The next job was to shorten the mounting bracket and weld on a new protection base plate. The plate is there to stop the booster from getting hit directly if it was to come into contact with anything.

The finished altered mounting bracket. As you can see even with the bottom plate on it still higher that the transmission mounting sub frame.

 

Once again the RattyT is completely in bits again.

After a grind and clean up the bracket is painted.

 

A successful afternoons work.

Weekend work : Body and Exhaust

Well it was a fine but cold day on Saturday. So after a lazy breakfast I ventured out into the cold morning and got started working on the RattyT. I had a head cold so wasn't moving hyper fast.

The first job was to get the body out and in prep for making hole / recesses for where the bolts are on the frame for the battery box and the newly installed rear brake proportioning valve.

So it was a matter of lifting the body on, hitting it with a rubber hammer so that the bolt heads marked the wooden floor so I knew where to drill.

Before I could do that I had to remove the front sub frame and packers.

After getting the body on, and off. No easy feat by myself as its pretty darn heavy now with the new wood and ribbing. Below you can see the bolt head mark made. I now know where to drill.

This is a shot of the holes drilled and also the hole for the hand brake cables. I think the body was on and off over 10 time during the day.

After those holes were drilled it was time to make the firewall hole for the steering the right size. This turned out to be a drama.

It took about 4 goes to get it the right size. its now much bigger that I though it would be so I have to come up with some way to stop the rain from getting in.

That wasn't the drama. The drama was that the carrier bearing and the steering shaft and surfaced rusted themselves together. The only way I was able to get it free was to take out the steering box so I could whack it with the hammer. I was a real pain and it took about an hour all said and done.

After discovering that I need to take out the steering box it was time for a break and what better way than to have cold Hells pizza...... yummmy ......

Steering box out and steering shaft freed up, I could focus on what I wanted to do

Body off again, then on, The hand brake and the steering hole all done and finished.

Hand brake location and the cables up through the floor.

Gave the area around the carrier bearing given a quick paint after welding in the nut.

Saturday was also a very sad day. I was the day that the VWRatty project was sold to a good home. I was never going to get it finished or find time to do it. Hell I cant even find time to do this project. And this project has a lot more $$ invested in it.

The empty space that used to be Montys home. :(

Farewell old friend.

Right back to matters at hand. Fitting the radiator. Since the installing the steering box I have had to push the radiator 30 over to the right. I was worried that it would be really noticeable. Once I got it on there... naaa its not really. The plan is once its done I can find time to made a surround.

Interior shot of all the bits in place so I could have a wee sit and make broom broom noises teasing myself that it wont be long before in driving it for real.

Sunday

Another gloomy day. Started out by mounting the radiator, Not that you can see the holes in the picture but there are now 4 bolt holes to mount the radiator. I had to do some mucking about to get it to fit with the electric fan and still have clearance for the bottom hose that's really close to the new cross member. 

Next job for the day was to tidy up the .. I don't what you call it, complete stuff up of a fix it job on the right hand side header pipes. Not sure what had happened but the fix was bloody horrible.

It took a lot of time on the end of the angle grinder with a cutting blade to get rid of the offended fix-it job. My neighbors must hate me. It took about 3 blades and an hour.

Now my plan was to get rid of the front facing plates, and tidy up the front. As my plan is that I will be wrapping the headers in black exhaust wrap. Cleaning this up was to make sure that the wrap would look the same as the other side with a big bump where the hash job was.

After grinding and welding, and 3 hours later the head was to a point I was happy with since I was going to be wrapping them. Phew ... one more job off the list.

Weekend work done...

Never enough hours in the day. But progress none the less.

Speedo sender install

Next job was to install the speedo sender (not sure if that's the correct name) There is a mechanical drive from the gear box to the sender which then sends a electrical feed to the speedo. This is what my unit looks like.

Now of course this was a simple task as where it goes into the gearbox is hidden behind the gearbox mount and the hole there was there was now behind the new master brake cylinder mount.

I had to disconnect all the brake lines and drop the mount out.

Here you can see where the hole is for the cable through the gearbox mount. I have to thread the cable through there and then route it around the new booster mount.

 

Removed the booster from the mount so I could cut a slot out to allow the routing of the cable.

Using the trusty hacksaw I cut the slot out.

Next was to twist the existing speedo thingy mount 90degrees so I will be able to bolt it to the brake booster mount. I did this with brute force. While the flat was held in the vice I got a large crescent  and just wrenched it around.

After putting everything back together again here it is back in place.

Here you can see the twisted mount bolted to the brake booster mount, the speedo cable routed through the new slot and connected to the gearbox.

Seemed a simple job, but it took three hours ....
Next big task is to work out how I want the front to look. light location, and how I'm going to visually center it as the steering box has pushed the radiator about 30mm to the right. So time to sit and draw and think what will look cool and fit with the "RattyT" look.

Some new progress

Ok, at last some progress, hard to believe I know, I have almost forgot that I had a hotrod project. The girls are away visiting family so Im left home to my own devices. So as the saying goes while the boss is away the boys will play .... or something like that.

So with the weather forcast for wet weather, for at least 5-6day, well it is winter. I needed to gain some space back so that I could work in the garage a little easier. So a bit of a tidy up and the moving of Trudys leotard glitter station I gained enough room to make it possiale to work on the car.

That was todays mission and it took over three hours .... but I now have space and more importantly TIME to spend on the RattyT. I hope I can make some progress.

 

 

The current state of the RattyT