I’ve been steadily (and slowly) making progress on the VW. Over the past month or so I worked on installing the headliner – task that is still in progress – rebuilt the seats, and rebuilt the vent wings.
I have never had a VW vent wing assembly apart before, so I had no idea how they worked, what the components were supposed to look like, etc. but hey, it’s a vent wing. How complicated can it get? I started on the driver’s side vent and had all manner of trouble getting the glass and its frame to properly fit the rubber seal. I was stymied.
I decided to take a break from the vent wing and turned to the passenger side seat. I rewelded and painted the broken frame, cleaned up the springs, and attempted to put the seat covers on. I had ordered really nice looking molded seat padding and seat coverings from two different companies. Big mistake. In a nutshell they weren’t compatible, so I had to order different padding. I struggled with installing the covers for a bit until I learned that you really must have a good heat gun to work with vinyl upholstery. After putting the heat to it, the seat coverings went on without much drama.
A few weeks of reflection brought me to the conclusion that I ought to look at the passenger side vent assembly, because it was working perfectly. I discovered there was good reason I couldn’t get the driver’s side to fit together. Apparently someone had tried to break into the car through the vent. The frame was bent out of shape and some of the working mechanism was broken.
A close look would have told me that this frame was bent.
Straightening it was an iterative process of tweaking the frame a little and then assembling it (with screws instead of rivets), checking the fit, and bending some more.
I had no idea these pieces were supposed to be one part. As you can tell, I'm not a great welder, but it ought to hold.
I bypassed the hassle of driving all over Western Ohio looking for the correct glass setting tape and chose a different path. I put some RTV on the edge of the glass before slipping it into the frame and used toothpicks to center the glass in the frame. Then I used a razor blade to pack RTV into the crack. I basically set the glass with RTV instead of tape. This worked great except I failed to get all of the RTV off of the chrome before it cured. Acetone will take of RTV if is hasn’t set too hard, but once it is fully cured it is a bear to remove. Paint brush restorer has a formidable list of ingredients including acetone, tolulene, methyl ethyl ketone, xylene, ethyl benzine, and probably fentanyl and rat poison, but it does soften RTV it to some degree.
Once I got all the pieces together and the wing was moving smoothly and sealing, I finished it off with a factory-style rivet in the hinge. I set the rivet with a grommet setting die and it looks like it just came out of the factory.
As with most of this project, once I hit the top of the learning curve it was a smooth slide to success.