Progress
My pop came up yesterday to help me pull the engine and trans. Work obligations and weather have prevented me from doing anything on the Ghia for many months, but I have a week of vacation to tinker. We got the engine out in pretty short order, and the trans soon after. I was told that removing the fan shroud, carburetor, and generator before removing the engine would make things much easier, since we wouldn’t have to jack the car as high to clear the rear apron. They sure were right about that.
We were making such great progress that we decided to get the new trans mounted up. Until… disaster struck! The new trans is from a later model year, and doesn’t take the same throwout bearing (and was missing it’s own). And the VW shop is closed until Monday.
Today, I went out to see about transplanting the clutch operating lever spring, but to no avail - it’s rusted in place. I’m letting it soak with some carcinogenic rust breaker, and I’ll try again tomorrow. I got the clutch out, and it was (as I suspected) utterly shot. Flywheel looks good, but I may need to swap to a later pressure plate to get the new trans to fit. I also started looking at the alternator swap. It looked like I’d need to remove the intake manifold to get at the nuts that held the generator pedestal on, so I started removing that. Only problem is that one of the bolts mounting the preheat pipe to the heater boxes was mangled and rusted, and wouldn’t come out. These bolts are notorious for rusting in place and breaking when you try to remove them. I decided to check if the alternator would work with the old pedestal, but to no avail. The alternator is shorter, and needs to be moved back for the belt to reach the crankshaft pulley.
It seemed that I might have enough room to get at the pedestal nuts with a wrench if I removed the fuel pump, and possibly enough clearance to get the pedestal off with the manifold in place. I tried, and was rewarded when it came right off. Now I need to read up and figure out how to get the oil filler/breather transplanted, and bolt everything back together. I should have a fully functional charging/electric system when things go back together!