NOS-partradamus

Mirror mirror on the notch, who's the fairest VW of them all. Well Notch of course! I got this great NOS accessory Blendschutz für Rückblickspiegel - Type3 rearview mirror shade from Wolfgang of WolfParts fame. http://www.wolfparts.com/ Thanks Woffe!

Progress On Variant Project

I've been using about half of the time I spend in the garage on the Variant project and other half on my new hobby single/fixed speed bikes. So Variant has slow but quite steady progress, unfortunately most of it has been dismantling. But I have welded some spots to keep also project moving forward and my spirit high. Right hand side heater channel was in very bad condition, so I made replacement piece of the inner sheet, bolted it to the pan and welded it to thin piece what was usable of the original steel. While scraping the under seal (which I deeply hate) off from the right front wheel housing, I needed to remake a patch under the front bumper mount, as the bumper mount was welded in so badly that almost dropped off only by tweaking it with a screwdriver. So I suspected the patch was not done very well either, but it wasn't actually that bad, but still it had some unpainted excess material left inside the spare wheel dwell, so it had already started rusting between the two sheets of steel. The drivers door had also multiple patches welded on top of each other so I decided to cut out 8 cm from the bottom.

Sand Rail

It's about 4000km to the closest desert from Joensuu, but anyway every man should have one of these. Jari acquired one of the Finlands first sand rails. I remember it was featured in finnish magazine Street&Race back in 1993.

Flash Back, My Ex '54

This was a fun&cool car. I had it around 2007-2009. Dimmed the paint and slammed it. Rolled on chromed 5-spokes and later on CalParts painted gold wiht huge flakes. Had a 30hp engine and polished Porsche 356 A brakes on it.

-3cm "ground clearance"!!!

Progress at a DWL Garage...

...not at my garage though, unfortunately. But Mikko has been busy with his new toy, a Split Screen van. During past month or so, it has changed color from pink and gray(?!?!) to white and orange (Lamborghini arancio atlas). Very nice I must admit. At the same time Jari's '65 custom bug is starting remind about Pascal Meslet's drawings, not a bad thing either. Nice exception to current mainstream VW building Trends, don't you think?

TL Out-> Variant In ->

I traded my '67 TL to '66 Variant. It's a project but I've wanted a Squareback for a long time. So when one popped up for sale about 90km from where I live I had take a look and ended up owning it. The seller was a friend of mine, and he wanted a driver instead, so we traded our typ3's.

Variant is a project but major welding has done, so it's basically ready for paint & assembly. Plan is to build a 2165cc engine for it, paint it original Pearl White L87 and get it on the road for next Summer! 

I started from the front end with some cleaning. 

TL RPM

What do you get when you add 22 year old VDO tach, 50 year old Type3 gas gauge, angle grinder (ofcourse) and duct tape? It's tach for the TL and a bunch of left over parts! I bought used accessory tach for 48 euros and butchered a red needle '62 gas gauge (with hesitation, but it was broken anyway). Now I'm able too see if the TL is running on idle or not at the trafic lights, as that's how quietly stock Type3s roll baby.

LighThing

I have driven whole summer with highbeams on, as low beams didn't work. As the front is lowered and with 6V electrics they don't really bother other drivers. Today I had some time to check what's wrong, and I found out that simply both bulbs had failed. I wondered that should I order some 6V yellow bulbs from DealExtreme, just for the fun of it. 12V unit are readily available on local part store, but 6V I haven't noticed anywhere else. I don't really think piss yellow light are that good looking, just that they would look apart from the usual. I was seeking a bulb holder from my box of electric stuff, as I noticed one was broken and fixed with a cable tie. What do I find, NOS Philips 6V yellow bulbs, what a coincidence. They went in immediately! Looks stupid, but apart form the others! At the same time I also noticed that high beam marker light on the Speedo didn't work as the cable was connected to anything, so now it works too!