The Big Rebuild

2003-03-10: The big rebuild officially started with my brother and I fetching the Puma from where I parked it in February 1998 (four years!) and parking it in the driveway at my brother's place.

It's fortunate that this was a trip of a few blocks, since the Puma had no brakes, and I had to use my foot on the tar to slow the car down...

So far, I've been soaking the bolts holding the body to the chassis with penetrating oil -- let's see how easy it is to get the body off.

2004-05-02: OK, the body is off the floorpan, the gearbox is out, and I need to remove the front suspension and miscellaneous bits so that I can have new floor pans welded in.

Pictures: Body off chassis, front axle, very rusty floorpan, more rusty floorpan, interior 1, interior 2, engine bay, rear suspension, and the Puma rims which I won't be able to use since I'm moving to 4 stud wheels and VW Golf disk brakes in front.

2004-09-30: I had new pans welded in, and the whole thing zinc-sprayed. Expensive, but nice.

Pictures: 1, 2.

The good news is that the cracks in the body, which I thought was the gelcoat cracking, is actually the spray-on filler that's cracking, It looks as if the bodywork will be easier than I originally thought.

2005-07-25: Painted the front beam and hung it on the chassis. The stock bolts seem too short (in the pic, the top bolt's touching the threads, which shows how much of the thread will be engaging, and I don't think that's enough) so I bought longer bolts.

I also got new bolts for the linkpins, they're longer because I chose bolts with the same shaft length (because the linkpins have an eccentric cut-out which bears against the bolt shaft to tighten things down).

Disk Brakes

I bought the basic kit from some guy in Johannesburg who advertised in the back of CAR magazine. It consists of a hub, a plate that attaches the caliper to the stub axle, and a new outer wheel bearing (it's a different size than stock (NSK HR32004XJ)). Inner wheel bearings and seals are stock (URB 30206 A, Partquip FW104), from Best Boland Motors, R250.

The calipers are Golf 1 (I got these off a T-boned Fox) and the disks are new, from Goldwagen.

Overhauled king pin / link pin setup from Volksie World in Tokai, R480.

Armand had the following to say about repairing / repainting bodywork:

I am busy sanding the 13 coats of paint and spray filler off my car. I am using an orbital sander and 80 grit paper -- this is extremely tough going especially through the filler. The best advice I have had so far is to remove all paint to the original gelcoat. A huge amount of cracks disappear during this process. Then you have to grind the bigger cracks (where the fiberglass base is damaged) in a v shape and use roving (type of fibreglass rope) to fill those cracks. Once the fibreglass is repaired it is recommended that the whole body be covered with a layer of fibreglass tissue. Apply spray filler only to cover the tissue and flat in the conventional manner. Other sources reccomend not spraying the car at all but adding a new gelcoat and polishing that (the process involves adding styrene which will dissolve the parent fibreglass to some extent. You also have to mix a wax into the new gelcoat. Unfortunately this seems too much like witchcraft to me). I have seen cars done in the tissue manner and 'no cracks' so i will go that way.

From my conversations with some former factory employees and also my own experience the doors are very difficult to get to seal properly and some bending of frames are in order (do this before re-chroming them). The factory people reckoned that the doors alone took a week to fit.

The early Pumas used VW/Audi taillights, the part number on my righthand taillight is 105945241. One of our list members, Armand Botha, tells me that these are the same lights as fitted to Brazilian Type III VWs. I'm planning to fit Hyundai taillights. Pic sometime.