'56 Karmann Ghia

[mungo]

I've had this car for a good while while now and now it's a lot easier to upload pic's I thought I'd do a bit of
a build thread .
The story of this car is that I got engaged years ago...( i got married and had a little boy since then) and I'd finish
my bug build (Here) so I justified getting a new project by saying
it was my now wifes engagement present .............she obviously saw right through it but that's by the by !
I've been working on it for the last couple of years right up till we had the aforementioned little boy 18 months ago , now he's not so much of
a baby anymore and I'm hoping (!) to get involved a bit more again...I've also starting building the engine but I'll get onto that a bit later .
On to the car .
It's a 1956 "lowlight" Karmann ghia that I got as a very unfinished project . It was stripped right down (split body and pan) and a couple of boxes of bits .
This is the best I can come up with as before shots




You'll notice I managed to get a rotisserie to use for the body .
As for the chassis .....well...it's needed a bit of work










I'll add some more later.

[djefk]

Holy sh!t! Maximum rust-spect for taking this on!

[daver555]

Ooh, nice lowlight. Looking forward to reading more of the build.

[bpirie1000]

Have a soft spot for these..
Actually wanted (want to...said wanted for wife's sake- habbit of mine)
To build a porsche 356 or kit car based on the bug chassis..

Will stay tuned with this little beauty.. what colour you building it?
Perfection takes time.. hard work rubbing down now makes a better finish...

[mungo]

I spent ages stripping the body by hand .The rotisserie made this possible ,without it it would
have been even more horrible( it was horrible anyway). I did it with all sorts of clean strip discs and wire bushes on drills and whatever I could can into the holes . I sprayed on some sort of rust preventer as I went .
There is a lot more "under side" of a ghia compare to a bug . There are no removable wings and there are some fresh air tubes tucked up under the front wings there which were a pain to strip(and paint)








The body needed very little welding by me as all the tricky bits had already been done by the last owner. It's had a new front wing (not new new but a replacement) and a replacement rear wing as well . I just had to do a few little holes around the mounting points and where it join the chassis . It was all just surface rust which needed a bunch of stripping back ...many brown boogers   .
 I new it was never going to be a concours car but I tried keep the standards as high as I could ...much the same as the bug resto....a real nice street car was the aim.

[geoff115]

Very cool, lowlight ghias are amongst the best looking vw's. We're going down a similar path, I'm restoring an Alfa which I bought as very unfinished project and started by making a rotissiere. Nice work!

[Mercdan68]

Top work only vw I've got a soft spot for, respect to you sir

[neilsdavies]

Nice work. I replaced a pan half and heater channel in my '71 Ghia years ago - did the pan half with the body on the pan to use the original channel to make sure it went in the right place. I got a body cut for the channel from a Californian car which made life easier I did an outer sill on the other side the year before and it was a pain of a job!
My lad is 16 months old so I've not really touched my Cal Look bug since he turned up - kudos to you for taking on this project with a nipper!

[mungo]

I started the project a couple of years before he was born ............I haven't really done anything to the car since !!
Time and money are both a problem ........
Since I got the car I got married , bought a house ,had a baby , and now just in the middle of house extension .........
It's just patiently waiting for me to start back up on it , no rush.

I think the only VW that looks better than a lowlight ghia is probably a type 3 ghia (razor) , for me anyway ....maybe one day.

[mungo]

So you can see from the chassis pics that the pans were completely, and I mean completely shot !
I cut them out and took the spine for blasting. I was hoping the rest would be ok but was prepared for the worst .
The frame head ,nap's hat could have been proper rusty but to my surprise it was all perfect .It only needed a little repair
to the rear outrigger section .

I gave it all a covering of red oxide to help it in by damp workshop and ordered some replacement pan halves. Now anyone who's
had to replace beetle pan halves knows there are a number of different "quality" ones you can get . These days you can get really nice
heavy gauge replacements .When I needed mine no one made nice ghia ones (and if they did they would have ridiculously expensive) and no-one makes
lowlight one even now (they are slightly different to late gha ones). Anyway, I had to get the horrible thin ones made of baked bean tins which are nowhere near the right shape (they're not quite that bad but you know the idea).
With the body on the rotisserie I could bolt up the pan minus the pans to check everything was ok .







then dry fit the pans ,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove,trim, re-fit ,remove,trim ,re-fit,remove...........you get the idea.









This pic sort of show how "well" they fitted.... and well "nice" the pressing is!!

[mungo]

So,once i got them to fit I cleaned up the flange on the chassis and drilled a million holes in the pan edges ready for plug welding .
Then I bolted it all to the body and tacked the pans in (no pic's of that). Then pulled it all off and plug welded all the holes.
Having done that I stone chipped the bottom and primed it all with good old 2 pack high build .This is only pic of it in primer.

A few months(!) later I set to flatting it back, muttering to myself the whole time about no one ever seeing it ......the top will be covered
in soundproofing and the bottom will be covered in curse word from the road !!! ....couldn't help myself though.
One sunny summers day (remember those?) I got in my mate wayne's paint booth and fired on a bit of chassis black ....turned out ok .

















Ok , so I went a bit over the top with the chassis pic .....look good though.
You really can see how bad the pan pressings are when they are super shiney.

[Deleted]

Nice work so far.
Bookmarked.

[bpirie1000]

Busy day that... well done looks awesome..

[knobstar]

Massive respect for taken on this - they're rusty at the best of times but if the chassis is anything to go by yours is on course to be a stunner. Probably my biggest car-related regret was parting with this over 10 yrs ago:

[mungo]

Although the pans were completely rusted out the chassis mechanicals were is really good condition. It looked like it had been serviced
to death when in use . There are are a few grease nipples on an early vw chassis,couple on the king pins, a couple on the beam and even the track rod ends !when you grease them a bit always squirts out. The beam was about 1 inch thick in ancient grease as were the spindles,steering box and the track rods.



I had poured a bit of petrol over the steering box to loosen it,a lot of it peeled of in chunks..under all that curse word everything was in real good nick .Even the track rods will be usable !!

Here's the beam with the mess peeled off.


trailing arms


The brakes were a bit brown .




but ended up like this




I had new link and link pins reamed and fitted at a local machine shop and welded in some adjusters in the beam .
No beam narrowing on this one , stock wheels on a ghia look quite tucked anyway .

When it all went back together it looked quite good (new stock shocks fitted), it was already getting dusty by the time I took
 the pics.

[07lilredwagon]

wow...

respect. you are doing a wonderful job to save a very nice early example of ghia....what year did VW come out with these cars? I didnt know they went so far back.

JP

[mungo]

Production started in late 55 and ran till 59.
There are a few differences between an "early" lowlight 55,56
and a "late" lowlight (57,58,59).
Early cars had thin back seats, body coloured fuel tank ..a couple of other bits....
Good for a bit of aircooled snobbery and elitism with the beard strokers

[mungo]

Whilst all that was going on I was thinking about paint colours.
There were only a couple of colours available in 56'
Antelope brown
Black
Trout blue
Pelican Red
Lizard Green
gazelle-beige
deep brown

I would have probably gone for Antelope brown but wife said no,she also said no the Gazelle beige ,my body work skills are not good enough for black , don't like Pelican red.
At the time I'd never seen a trout blue or lizard green ghia.
Looking online I came across this pic (same year as mine ):

Trout blue FTW!  
It took ages to find anyone who could mix it ......and eventually my mate wayne (WP refinishing) found someone who could make "Forelle Blau"
. I got a little tester.
Earlier I mentioned that 1956 ghia came with a body coloured fuel tank (changed to black in 57) so I prep'ed up the tank and got it painted .









It's an awesome colour ,in different lights it goes from a real greeny colour in the shade to a real sparkly silvery blue in the sun .........errrrr like a trout I guess !!

[BellyBuilder]

Well done with the work so far and don't feel sad, that trout blue is the best colour for KGs!

Can't wait to see more.

[logicaluk]

Thats a nice colour.
Great work too.
Dan