ColorGrinder's Goggo

Freeing rusty nuts

admin — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:40:14 +0000

The brake assemblies on my Goggo were is a dreadful state and the adjusters were rusted solid, as were the bolts that secured the brake cylinders and the handbrake cables. I managed to shear one of the bolts off by using too much brute force and, a bolt splitter didn’t really do what it said on the box. I spent some time looking for tips on the internet and made an amazing discovery. Forget the bolt splitters and penetrating oil, all you need is a blowtorch and a candle.

First take a wire brush to the threads of the offending bolt and clear as much of the loose rust off as you can. Then take a blowtorch and apply heat to the nut. Ideally you will just heat the nut and keep the flame away from the bolt itself, this will allow the nut to expand faster than the bold and break the rust seal. With small nuts and bolts it is difficalt to localise the heat like this but, on my brake parts it didnt seem to matter. When you have got the nut good and hot, remove the flame and quickly apply a wax candle to the threads bolt, close to where it leaves the nut. The wax will be drawn allong the threads into the nut AND you will be able to unscrew it with relatively little effort!

Try it for yourself. I was very sceptical at first but it really does work.

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Chassis Repairs

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:05:14 +0000

I had got two new sills from eBay and my plan was to fit these first, then swap out the seat wells, the foot sections, repair the wheel arches and then tidy up anything that still needed work. The problem was that the areas where the wheel arches met the sills were largely missing – rusted away. I first had to reconstruct these pieces from sheet steel before guestimating the point where the sill s attached. Actually, the precise height and position of the sills was pretty important because it would determine whether the body would ever fir on again. I made measurements from whatever datum points I though I could rely on and once again started work with the angle grinder.

I was getting reasonably confident with my MIG welder by this stage. An impartial observer would have described my panel beating skills as rudimentary but I was very proud of them. I had three hammers and a set of dollys, and was able to use them to fabricate simple repair sections! Having reconstructed the inner corners of the wheel arches and welding on the sills, I then cut away the passenger side seat well. It was attached at the factory by spot welds along the central tunnel and to the sill, as well as the section under the rear seats, and the footwell. I wasn’t too worried about the join to the footwell because this was going to be replaced but I was careful when grinding out the welds along the central tunnel and the rear section. The crossmembers above and below the seat well was also cut away and discarded. The lower one was not original anyway and had been ‘improvised’ out of a length of square steel section!

Now I had a nice big hole where my brand new seat well would go and, after a couple of hours work the new panel was in position. It didn’t look bad at all. All I needed to do now was to weld in new crossmembers and the salvaged the seat rails from the old section. I fitted them first to one of the seats before tack welding them in place to make sure that everything would fit later.

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D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:02:09 +0000

Apparently, the stage in the manufacturing process where the body and the chassis were united used to be referred to in the Goggomobil factory as ‘The Wedding’. After more than 30 years of matrimony, my Goggo was about to go through a rather messy divorce.

Removing the body from the chassis was made much easier because I had cut away and replaced most of the body panels. Nevertheless, there were still a couple of areas where I needed to get the angle grinder out and undo some of the more exotic repairs that had been made by the previous owner. I also needed to remove the row of bolts along the front of the car. Access here is difficult and in the end I used the angle grinder again to chop off the heads of the bolts. Eventually everything was freed up and, with the help of my long suffering wife, I was able to lift the body away and attach it onto a temporary frame that I had built.

Now I was able to see the chassis it all it’s glory but, before I started work there, I still had a couple of panels to replace around the body.

Rear panel under the ‘boot’

The front panel under the ‘bonnet’

Both rear corner sections

By the time I had finished I had just about worked through all of the repair sections in the spare parts catalog. The entire lower section of the car was now shiny new metal….. all more or less in the right place. The welds were rather messy in places but I was going to have to grind them all down later anyway. I sprayed everything with zinc spray and moved on to the chassis

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Doctor, remove everything below the waist.

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:24:24 +0000

The bodywork of my car was rotten from the the waist down. Fortunately for me, most repair panels are still available from Goggomobil specialists (Staufenberg & Butschek) at affordable prices. In theory, replacing the body panels while the car body is still mounted on the chassis means that there will be no problem with alignment later. You fit the new panel so that it joins up with all the right places on the chassis and you are done. The problem with my car (and probably most other Goggos) was that corrosion was at it’s worst at the join between body and chassis. This was exactly the area where previous repairs had been attempted and frankly, it was difficult to tell exactly where the original panels had been. Nevertheless, it was better than simply guessing – which is what I would have had to do if I had removed the body at the start so, I took a deep breath and started work.

First I removed the front passenger side wing and cut away as much of the rusty temporary repairs as I could. The bits that I could identify as part of the original wheel arch were left in situ. It soon became clear that the lower half of the A-Post (the bit where the door hinges go) was also seriously corroded and would have to be replaced. I made a replacement section, drilled the holes for the hinges, and attached the bottom to the new outer sill section that I had bought. Doesn’t it make a change to see new shiny metal rather than rust? Here is the new sill & A-Post section welded in place.

Next step was to spot weld the banana panels to the inside of the front wing. This is the part that will later be bolted to the wheel arches and was one of the few jobs where my spot welder was useful. Then I punched holes around the perimeter of the wing and plug welded it into place.

I tried to follow the original position as closely as possible but, as I would find out later, further adjustments would be necessary! Still, in blissful ignorance I went on and replaced…
Both rear arches and banana panels and the panels behind the doors and their inner sections (both sides). Here is before…

And after…..

Drivers side outer sill & lower portion of A-Post. Here is the home made repair section being fitted to the sill…

Half of the drivers side front wing…

After a bit more work with the angle grinder to remove the bolts along the front or the car, I was now ready to seperate the body from the chassis!

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Repair Panels

admin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:51:20 +0000

Most car restoration guides advise you not to start buying parts before you have discovered the full extent of the work required. The reasoning being that it is better to find out that the car is beyond economic BEFORE you have spent any money on new parts. After my initial pokings with my screwdriver, It was pretty clear to me that the Goggo was going to need a lot of new parts, especially body panels.

So, I ordered up….

A passenger side front wing
A drivers side ‘half front wing’ repair panel
Two outer sills
Two repair panels for paels behind the doors
Two inner sections for the panels behind the doors
Two rear wheel arch repair sections
Four ‘banana panels’ for the inside of the wheel arches
Two rear corner sections
A front panel for below the ‘bonnet’
A rear panel for under the ‘boot’

I now had replacement metal for the entire lower section of the body. Now my challenge was to work out how to attach it all in approximately the right place!

My biggest problem with fitting the replacement panels (apart from learning how to weld) was that the chassis was just as corroded as the body. After cutting away all of the rust and the earlier repair attemps, it was very difficult to work out exactly where the new panels should go.

Anyway, you have to start somewhere so, I got out my tin snips and started to cut away at the front right wing. I removed everything back to the original spot welds and in doing so, discovered that the bottom 20 cm or so of the door pillar was completely coroded. I cut it away and welded in a home made repair section and the new sill section. I thought it looked rather convincing!

Here is another view of the new sill:

Flushed with success, I started work on the front wings. The first thing to do was to weld the ‘banana panels’ in place – these are the bits that are bolted to the wheel wells. This was one of the rare jobs that my spot welder was perfect for. To actually attach the wing I used the Clark MIG welder. Here is the driver’s side front wing

….before:

….and after:

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Buying a welder – Part 2

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:56:08 +0000

About twenty years ago I rented a small MIG welder to patch some holes in my rusty Peugeot 304S Cabriolet. It was not a great success and the main thing I remember was having to replace the tiny disposable argon gas bottles very frequently.

Doing my research on the internet I discovered that MIG technology had moved on. No-gas welders were no available with flux coated wire that made gas bottles redundant! Reading further it seemed that the no-gas system was not perfect. Chief disadvantage apeeared to be smokier arc which obscured the weld pool, and a rather messy welding bead. I knew that my welding was never going to be neat but played safe by buying a machine that could be used with or without gas.

As I was still in England I popped back to Machine Mart and picked up a Clark 90EN. It cost me about About 150 pounds if I remember rightly.

So, now I had two welders. I couldn’t wait to get home and learn how to use them.

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Buying a welder – Part 1

admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:34:22 +0000

I sometimes think that half of the fun of working on cars is buying the tools. I can spend hours looking through equipment catalogs – paper or online. Several times I have come close to buying a chain saw even though I haven’t got a garden. Now I really needed a welder and I was going to enjoy choosing one.

My first idea was to get a spot welder. I imagined clamping my new body panels in position and just running round the joins putting in a spot weld every couple of centimeters. No smoke, no mask required, no consumables. It would be perfect and I would probably be finished in a couple of weeks.

First stop www.ebay.co.uk. For some reason there were many more second hand spot-welders on eBay’s UK site than their German one (I live in Germany). As luck would have it I just about to drive back to the UK for a short holiday so I bid on a couple of machines and bought this fine specimin for just under 100 pounds.

Whilst I was in England I called in at the Twickenham branch of Machine Mart and got an air operated ‘joggler’ for putting flanges along the edge of the repair panels. As soon as I got the machine back home to my garage, I found that it was fantastic for joining test pieces of steel together. The welds were neat and strong and looked just like the ones made in the factory. Unfortunately joining real parts together was much more of a challenge. Most panels are either to large, too curved or just too inacessible to get into the jaws of the spot welder so I decided that I needed a different type of welding machine.

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Rotten all the way round

admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:03:25 +0000

After a bit more poking around the Goggo with an old screwdriver I realised that I was going to have to replace the entire lower 20 – 30cm of bodywork. Fortunately Goggomobils were put together very simply soI figured that even an amateur like me should be able make a stab at the repairs. Believe it or not, most of the repair panels are available new from either Uwe Staufenberg (a 30 minute car ride from my home) or H. Butschek. I had two problems:

Problem One: Deciding whether to remove the body from the chassis straight to do the repairs, or to leave it in place. After reading several restoration stories on the internet I opted for the latter as that seemed to be the only way of making sure that the new parts were welded into the correct position. Unfortunately for me, the sills and wheel wells were just as badly corroded as the bottom part of the body. The point where they met was a mess of patchwork metal and polyester filler which completely obscured the manufacturers original intentions.

Problem Two: I didn’t yet have a welder and wasn’t entirely sure what sort to buy. In the end I bought two. A second hand spot welder from eBay and a small gas/no gas MIG welder. Now all I needed to do was to learn how to use them! Read about my new toys here.

These photos should give you some idea of the terrible condition of the car’s bodywork:

You can see that the sills were completely rusted away and that the panel in front of the wheel arch just crumbled away as I tried to cut through it.

Cutting away the driver’ side front wing revealed an equally sorry picture. The wheel well had been ’reconstructed’, with various steel offcuts and finished of with a very thick layer of red paint.

When I cut away the opposite wing and saw that this wheel well was no better, I started to wonder whether I might have bitten off more that I could chew!

Read my next post when I start work on replacing the rotten panels.

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A closer look at the bodywork

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:51:32 +0000

The Goggo had had a great deal of work done on it before I got my hands on it. At least one of the previous owners had possesed a welding outfit and had not been shy about using it. They had been imaginative and creative in their work and had felt no compulsion to stick to the old-fashioned construction metods of the car’s original designers. This picture of what I found after cutting away most of one of the front wings is fairly typical:

The wheel wells had been patched with a multitude of different scraps of metal (all now rusted away) and in places the floor was three layers thick:

Unfortunately for me, the aforementioned previous owner had taken so much pleasure in his work that he had welded the body shell firmly to the chassis instead of trusting to the system of nuts and bolts that the car’s designers had originally equipped it with.

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This is where it all started

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:42:05 +0000

I have always liked odd cars and a Goggomobil is odd by anyone’s standards. Built by the Glas company in Bavaria, these cars were part of the microcar phenomenon of the 1950s and 60s. There were two popular body styles – Coupe or Limo, as well as several commercial versions. Standard motors were two stroke, 250cc units but 300cc and even massive 400cc engines could be specified as an option. Unlike ‘bubble cars’ contemporaries such as Messerschmitts and Isettas, prices for Goggos are pretty reasonable.

One evening wasting time on eBay I came across the following item (roughly translated)….

Goggomobil T250/01, unregistered since 1993 and stored in a garage. According to the registration document the Goggo has had two previous owners. The keys are present. The motor is not installed but is fully functional and in good condition. The Goggo itself is pretty good for it’s age . It has got a bump on the front wing and some minor damage to the side but nothing too serious. The windscreen is cracked but I have already bought a replacement – it just needs installing. Many other spare parts are included but I’ll come to them later. All of the welding on the underside of the Goggo has been completed except the front and rear! The brakes need fixing and the motor needs installin. No real problem for someone who knows what they are doing! Now the spares: There are two doors, two exhaust systems, a dismantled motor (gearbox, clutch etc. but no cylinders), 3 bumpers, spare lamps and a few other small parts.

A couple of days, and a few difficult conversations with my wife later I had bought the car for €520.15, sight unseen.

The car was located in Egglham in Bavaria, exactly 300km from my Stuttgart home, and less than 50km from the Dingolfing factory where it was built. The car was definitely not driveable (the engine wasn’t installed for a start) so the only way to get it home was to fit a towbar to my wife’s car (approx €200.00) and rent a trailer (€70.00 for the day). Sam, my youngest son came along with me on the 600km round trip to pick up the car

The registration papers did indeed list two previous owners. The first, Ferdinand Hasler from Noerdlingen, had acquired the car in March 1979 – over 14 years after the car was manufactured. Presumably this was not the original registration document! The second entry shows that the car changed hands again in October 1983 and Maria Graf from Ulbering (near Pfarrkirchen) drove it for ten years before ‘deregistering’ it.

Once the car was home and I had a chance to take a proper look at what I had bought, it was clear that it would be years before my Goggo was back on the road. It would need completely dismantling and rebuilding from the ground up. Something that would be difficult in the shared underground garage of the appartment building that I lived in!

For the next six months I scoured the internet for Goggo links and read all of the parts catalogs that I could get my hands on. Whilst I was doing this my wife was equally busy reading the propoerty section of the local papers. Fortunately she found something with a double garage so we moved. Our neighbors breathed a massive sigh of relief as we loaded the Goggo onto another rented car trailer.

Safely installed in the new garage at last. David, my other son wonders whether I will finish the car before he is old enough to drive.

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