Cool Stuff – Page 10 – VW Semi Auto 1968 rebuild.

The best way to clean parts (just dont tell the misses)

One morning i woke up with an idea. I have been thinking of ways to turn my greasy old motor parts into nice clean motor parts without me needing to get to dirty or smell like petrol for another month 😛

Oh yes the wondrous Dish washer, doing some research i found that the best tablets to clean the motor parts with are the Coles home-brand ones (like 15 in a packet). Supposedly these don’t have anything but soap in them and don’t harm metal stuff.

Trial 1, These parts. In short this didn’t work too well 🙁 But i decided to try it on something else..

Yes its a disgusting (yet beautiful) 1600 dual port case.

After 20 minutes of being in the wash.

All clean,

I plan on giving the other side of the case a wash in petrol to try and compare the results.

Using wire brush to get some more dirt off the case.

Now what i must quickly explain is if your going to do this make sure you have some WD40 handy for the distributor gears (ideally you should take them out but i couldn’t get mine out). I left it for a Day before putting WD40 on it and it almost seized up, but all in all i am now on a look out for a decent free washing machine to wash the various parts. (after finding out that the oil in the motor can normally be carcenagenic).

I also put the washing machine through with a clensing tablet after. Its also great for when the misses comes home she hears the dishwasher on and thinks your doign house work.. just dont let her open it to get a knife out.

To be continued.

Okies so i had the motor out and i was stumped on how to get it into pieces (another post with the solution to come), so i decided to keep going on the car. I told my father about taking the body off the pan and he wanted to do it so i thought why the hell not.

Built a jig to hold the body off the ground (may need to build a better one at one stage with wheels.)

Car on the jig about to drop, There are 2 bolts on the back near the shockers, 4 inside above where the battery sits, another 18 or so bolts under the heater channels along each side (make sure you check i didnt and alomost ended up foo-bared). and 2 at the front under the tank.