2015

JANUARY-FEBRUARY

The weather is cold, so not much luck working outside or in the garage. Instead, I began to figure out how to get 3D dimensions and contours off of the Chevy Jr. go-kart body. The nose, tail, and sides look to be a close match to the original.

My first thought is Hugin, but it is very cumbersome and time consuming to first find the sweet spot where one can go between the front/left/top views. And then to plot a point from one view to the other is incredibly tedious. What's more, the variance from photo to photo only allows me to hope for a 95% accuracy at best. Time for another approach - a quicker one.
So I set up the go-kart body in the drive on a pedastal of boxes and took a series of walk-around photos - high, medium, and low. I ran a set thru the free site run by Autodesk, Autodesk 123D (no longer available), and did indeed get a 3D file of the mesh of points with surfacing texturing. But the result was way less accurate than Hugin.
There has got to be a better answer!

MARCH 28-MAY 30

The weather has warmed up and time to plan what to add to the chassis. But in trying out the seat position, I find that my feet are RESTING on the front crossbar. Where will the pedals go? There is no room for pedal-play!! This is serious.
My neighbor, the welder, is good-natured and easy-going about it. If I want to cut out the front floor and redo it, that's okay. I do, and he does. Well, I cut, he welds. The biggest issue is working with the front suspension arms that protrude back under the car, which take the stabilizer bar attachment points. They would actually protrude into the floor space. We decide to cut them as close as we can and then angle the floor up over them. It appears to work.

JUNE 21

Back to the go-kart body. I decide to try as best an orthographic side view as I can photograph. I set up the body across the yard about 170 feet away and use my digital camera to make a telephoto shot. It gives me something, but even at 170 feet, there is stil depth distortion from the side to the middle to the far side of the body.
There has got to be a better answer!!

JULY-DECEMBER

I decide to spend the money and buy Photomodeler to create accurate 3D points based on photographs. There is a learning curve of course, but it begins to work early on and just gets better. I have contacted the GM Heritage Center and they provided me with a set of high res photos from various angles. These were the bedrock of the recreation. By November I had moved into the interior and seats and dash. By December, although the interior was having distortion issues, it was good enough to work with.

JULY 11

I begin derusting (again) and cleaning up the chassis. I even paint it with a deep shade of red and am amazed how much better it looks.

JULY 25

I contacted a man on TheSamba website who has lots of experience rebuilding the VW 411/412s and shares that with others. He has rebuilt the transaxle about eight times so far and knows what the problems and solutions are. I made contact with him and discussed the countershaft, which is the primary culprit to fail. I will need to replace the counter shaft or replace the bearings with torlon bearings, custom-made. I will have new bearings made. Now to find torlon and a machinist.

SEPTEMBER 13

I REALLY put something back ON the chassis!!! Today I replaced the shocks. Thanks to my TheSamba contacts, I have an alternative to the no-longer-produced originals. The 1982 Ford 1/2 ton Econoline truck front shocks will closely match. That's what I put on. Note the maximum extension with them on. I discovered that the sectional painting I have been using actually showed the wheels NOT in the neutral postion, but in the MAXIMUM compression position. I had to edit my master Photoshop file of overlays to correct that one. It does change where things fall vertically.

OCTOBER 5

"We" clean up the welds on the chassis and then flip it over to begin working on the underside.

OCTOBER 10

I begin derusting the underside, especially the engine compartment using a wire brush wheel. I then spray it with a rust encapsulator.

OCTOBER 14-20

I apply body seam caulk everywhere I think water and road salt will get to so it won't get to it. It needs pretty heavy application around the ends of the pickup bed floorpan, but so do all the nooks and crannies of the front end.

OCTOBER 24

And finally I apply engine red paint and engine gloss black paint to the engine compartment underside, primer to the pan, and engine gloss black to the front suspension member. And it sure looks purty!

Check out 2016 for more progress!