We last left off in the saga of the Wartburg with me in stitches, quite literally. Get a partner who will drive you to the emergency room on her birthday instead of having a special dinner because you attempted to amputate your thumb with an angle grinder. After the doctor laced me back together like a football, I took almost 2 weeks off the car. It was bad enough that I had to go to work as a carpenter a couple days later, and every post-work evening after the ibuprofen wore off, my thumb hurt like it was being put in a vise. Fun fact – if you bump your freshly stitched thumb with a pry bar, you’ll probably drop your hammer and break the customer’s floor tile.
I got back at it and exercised the demons of the piece that tried to claim my finger by finishing the cut on the bandsaw and welding it in place. That was the final piece of the frame bracing in the back, so I moved on to filling in the firewall and floor where I had hastily cut out way too much material. Once that was done, with the assistance of cardboard to make templates, I moved on to building the steering system around a manual 67 Camaro box. At that point, I had a car that rolled and steered, and I could not resist putting the front sheetmetal together to get an idea of just how crazy things were going to look! It was crazy enough that I was immediately contacted by David S. Wallens, editor of Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, for a high res picture for print.
And then….bodywork time. Bodywork sucks. Bodywork on a mangled 60+ year old East German car sucks even worse. Adding in the fact that it had already been bondoed and painted by someone else, and then been chopped into what it was when I got it sucked so hardcore it could have been an adult film star. I’ve got hundreds of pictures of the process, and I’ll not be sharing them all, but rest assured there was a lot of mangled sheetmetal to work with, a lot of fiberglass and plastic filler hiding under the paint, and even quite a bit of lead from a previous bout with a rear end collision. In the midst of all that, I also had to narrow and finish weld the rear axle so it could be installed a 3rd and 4th time prior to actually going in for the last time.
I love learning new skills and buying new tools, so learning how to narrow a ford rear axle on my own made all the sense in the world. For half the price of a housing from a catalog, I bought the tools to do it myself. I pride myself on being able to build something start to finish without sending much of anything out for labor that I can’t do, and this was one of my last hurdles. It was a fun experience, and I just did it again this week for my 57 Chevy, so owning the tools and knowledge is paying for itself.
You know that part of Batman where Michael Keaton grabs the fireplace poker and smashes something and says to Joker “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!” Well, that’s what I did. I welded all the front outer sheetmetal together, removed the inner structure, and built a hinge assembly and chopped the fenders to make a tilting full front clip. What’s the point of building a nutty car if you’re not all in with the crazy? Own it, embrace insanity. Life is more fun when you’re a little off your rocker, and if you don’t think that about me by now then you’re probably nuttier than I am.
Until next time, when we get this ship moving along much faster because I have officially obtained my title, insurance, and license plates, we need to play catch up!
Patrick
