Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

[Leatherneck]

Glad the eyes are getting better Lee. Yep time to get back to work huh?

[kyle_pc_75]

Whoo-Hoo, I can see again. After almost two years of battle, I got most of my vision back (it doesn’t help my typing though). I picked up my contact lens today and it is a miracle. My vision is slightly worse than it was before the problem but better than anyone thought it would be. The surgery fixed most of the problem but there are still a few wrinkles in the retina from the two tears’ in the center of my retina. They eye surgeon smoothed out the wrinkles as best he could before he welded the retina back to the eyeball with a laser.

Congrats, Lee, that's awesome! Pretty soon you'll be ready to "Get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the entire planet!"



Can't wait to see how the build goes!

Kyle

[Ol'fogasaurus]

kyle_pc_75 wrote "Pretty soon you'll be ready to "Get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the entire planet!"

I'm too old and tired for that. That is for politicians and hunks, us old guys just watch and laugh.

Actually going from leagally blind (20/200 is legally blind, [I was worse than that. Closer to 20/2000] and get to 20/30+3 or maybe better when things finally settle down, is so exciting it hurts.

Lee

[bajaherbie]

glad to hear the good news lee......


now tell me how many fingers i am holding up.

[Hedrock]

Congrats Lee. That's GREAT news

[Lotrat]

That IS great news. Lets get this buggy done by the end of summer.

[CentralWAbaja]

Love hearing that kinda news Lee,

Bet you are happier than a pig in shi*?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

20/2000 is not a measurable reading. It is something the eye vets use to indicate:

'Please read the lowest line you can see on the wall.'

'What wall!'

'Hmmm... Ooooooooooo Kaaaaaaaaaaay.'

It is used to say that your eyes are really bad and unless you have another usable eye, you should be carrying, and using a white cane. Just too clear things up.

I get to up the time to wear my contact an hour each day. Today 6 hours. When I can do 8 hours I will try some welding and other close work as time goes real fast when you are doing something you like. It is too easy to run over your time limit and maybe have to start over after having to give things a rest. Trying to be ready for the dune trip in late June or early July.

I am not sure, right now, if I will keep this buggy. It is a combination of; I have been working on it off and on since '93 and my other buggy is just about what I want and meets my current needs. While I have learned a lot of things while working on this one, it has become a task/drudge, not a fun thing anymore. I am almost to the point of getting it to a certain point then selling it. I could continue on but, if I continue on I have to set the rear cross-piece of the body lift up to allow the 091 nose cone to go through before welding the whole body lift together and gusseting it. Done it before, fun the first time, but now...

I don't remember if I mentioned it but the body I have has a different arc where the Napoleon’s hat is. It took me from '93 to December 2009 to really notice this (pretty observant ain't I). I will have to re-set the arc on the front cross-piece of the body lift (no real big deal) and, locally, notch the mounting flange on the body where the new bracket for the pedal assembly is. It is not a big notch but just another thing that was planned on when I started the project the second time. This is the third start.

I’ve had to pass on a couple of sand rail projects as the wife-poo will not allow another car on the property until this one is gone. I think I am ready for another rail build; this time mine. I have another engine built, soft box, and 9 inch, not a VW project though. All part of an over all garage and shed clean-up.

(I am still buzzed about the unexpected results of the surgery. Sorry about running on)
Lee

[turbobaja]

Well, as your vision returns, mine has gone south . I picked up a rusty chunk of VW in my left eye a couple days ago and had to have some meat carved off my left eyeball to get most of the rust out yesterday. Now I'm wearing a temporary contact "bandage" untill it heals up a bit. Really wierd trying to focus or read. It's hard to imagine all these years of metal flying past my face this is the first time I haven't been able to rinse my eyes clean. This should just be a temporary problem for me, and I'm sure it's nothing like the frustration you've had to deal with with your recent vision problems. Really happy to hear your able to see much better Lee! And I have an idea of how you feel about your buggy build feeling more like a job sometimes. You have my permission to sell it and start a sweet rail build .

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Ah, a "T-lens” aka; a bandage lens. Good luck with it Karl, I've worn one of those too. They're used to keep meds in the eye longer than just adding the drops and letting the meds just train out, among other things. They are soft lenses but I have worn hard lenses for so long (almost 50 years) to hold the shape of my corneas (I have keratoconus) that my eyelids have become very strong and wrinkle up the soft lenses. A wrinkled up soft lens can be very painful/uncomfortable when they do; like a loader buck full of sand or a log in the eye. This round off surgery started from three tiny rusty spears in the eye too (not sure if they caused the final problem). I've lost track of the eye surgeries but I think this was #12 . Among others, I've had 5 cornea transplants and a host of other, fairly major, eye surgeries, mostly as a result of the transplants, over the years trying to save my vision.

The working on a project too long is why I try to counsel people to work on a project but keep it usable as much as possible, especially on a first project; so you don't get tired of just working on it. If I do actually sell it, it will be on wheels when it leaves. Lee

Edited to correct spelling of eye desease.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Well, the body lift is still trying to drive me crazy. I welded the doublers in over the kerfing on the driver's side tube and guess what; (really no guess involved) yep, it warped back again to exactly the same place it did before I cut and re-welded the first kerf. I tried bolting it to the pan then heating it at the forward kerf location but I only got a very little permanent movement. I then clamped and bent the end into place (over bend) but not much more movement but it wants to twist now. It is where I can use it but not where I want it.

I don’t know where this steel came from (surplus/recycled steel but new, never used steel) but it sure does not like to be welded in the seam side of the tube. My logic was that since welded areas do not like to be bent, kerf on the welded seam side and bend on the opposite side. The other body lift worked that way quite well but this stuff… Sheesh!

Anyway, one side done and maybe tomorrow after my wife’s doctor visit, I should rotate the pan rotisserie and start bending the doublers for the other side. Once that is done, then I have to make some changes in the front cross-piece to match the shape of the body.

Once the lift is done then suspension front and rear (to get it as a rolling piece), bolt the body down and; “Haste lavista (miss spelled word) you piece of ( ! )!!! (hopefully no one who might be interested in it reading this. )

(sorry, frustrated) Lee

[bajaherbie]

smack it with a BIG hammer?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I just this minute got in from doing that very thing! It is less than a quarter of an inch out at the front of the tube and the forward most bolt in the side is about 1/8th of an inch out so will not drop though with out some sideways encouragement. I think when I weld the all the pieces together and gusset everything, I might be able to get it to fit without the lift wanting to change into a parallelogram when you take the bolts out of it and the pan. It is more irritating than anything else.

We finally got some sun (it was sunny and hot here while we were at the dunes in Oregon where it was cool, overcast, some rain and a lot of wind) so I am heading back out to the garage to roll the pan outside; to turn it around so I can start fooling around with the other side. The good thing is that I can weld some now. Got my last fitting on Contact lenses today and if it weren’t for the wrinkles in the center of the retina (from the two tears in the center of the retina), I would have almost 20/20 vision out of it. The wrinkles make “fine” (small and tiny stuff) vision a bit off, but not enough to notice most of the time.

Herbie, besides beating up on the grapes, what is gnu with your stuff?

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I finally got the the front cross-piece of the body lift re-contoured to some what match the shape of the body. I even went ahead and tacked the body lift all together to do a fit check. Went to find a neighbor to see if I could get some help moving the body off the dolly and onto the pan but no luck there, so this morning I jockeyed the body and pan outside and fanoogled the body onto the pan with out damaging anything. That was the easy part, pitching the fit was the hard part!

If there has ever been a time that I wanted to give someone and over the head and hands in the air, terminal wedgies’, this is the time; the guy who owned the company and who made my body obviously did not have a jig pan around when he set the firewall piece.



That is to say, once I cooled off enough to look at things objectively; and I got looking at the fitment, or lack of there of; it looks like the firewall sits about an inch and a half forward of where it should be. Because of that, the front firewall and the mounting flanges of the body sits on the side rails and the body lift’s Napoleons’ hat high enough to keep the side body mounts off the lift all the way to the rear of the pan.



Driver’s side.



Passenger’s side

I knew that there were problems in the rear because the mounting flange is wavy like some of the other bodies I have seen or been told about.



I knew that there would be some work there and also to remove the cutout I had made for the 091 nose cone to fit though. I did not expect all this crap. To be fair; I must confess that while I did not pay a lot of attention while I was doing the cutout in the rear (in ’94 or ’95 I think), I did notice something not being correct but I never paid attention to just what it was. I had too many other things at that time to worry about that were more important.

The question is; do I try to move the firewall or slide the body back and maybe go to one inch longer trailing arms. I think I am going to have to put the suspension on the pan, drop it down onto jack stands, put the body back on and run the suspension though its travel with 30 inch tires on to see how the tires fit into the wheel openings. I was going to have to do that anyway.

I was trying to get this into salable condition but I can pass this crap off onto someone else. This is past embarrassing! I try to do the best I can learning from each positive or negative thing, but this….

Thanks for listening to my rant. Lee

[RyanB]

Dang Lee. That bites. I've had a number of those bodies now (Glass buggies) and not a one of them fit exactly. Yours is probably a bit more on the extreme side. I honestly don't know what to say to resolve the issue, and getting another body is a crapshoot at best to get something that fits properly. I suppose if you are good with Glass you could raise (lower? lol) the area's in question.