I'm sure you know what you're doing Mark, but when we used to paint fibreglass many moons ago we put in a flexible additive into the primer and paint - fibreglass can vibrate/bend etc in use and the paint would crack without the additive (that was with the 2k paint).

Nice work though! :thumbup:

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Rob is that the stuff you use when painting plastic bumpers?




Andy W

Thanks for the comments regarding the fibreglass.

What to do with the bodywork and painting has been a bit of a concern to me and I have not been totally sure which way to go.

As the Ascort #005 was pretty much a stripped out shell when I got it, I have had to purchase many of the bits that I need to make it fairly authentic, and unfortunately many of these things are not cheap, such as motometer 3 in 1 gauge, 100mph trip speedo, motometer clock, steering lock, okrasa bits etc etc etc etc. I still have to build the Okrasa replica from all of the parts in storage and still have to scratch build seats, and have the whole car re-trimmed. $$$ Ouch!!

Knowing the sad state the body was in, there is just no way that I can afford to pay what it would cost to have the body professionally restored. The total $ required would far exceed the value of the car. My best hope is to do as much of the work that I can. I just have to learn as I go and hope that I am not stuffing things up too much. :oops:

Up until a last year I had a rough Westfield clubman which I carried out quite a few body repairs on using the same process that I am now using and that seemed to work fine with no resulting issues. It was painted in acrylic rather than 2 pack. I previously worked on my Lotus Europa and I must admit that I learned the hard way on some of the problems that can result. :oops: I have been considering painting the Ascort in Acrylic as well. Although it would not be such a flash finish as 2 pack, it would be closer to the original finish and would have some other benefits such as being able to do more of the work myself at home and it would also be easier to do touch up work in the event of damage or problems.

Once I have done most of the body repairs I may still see about having a fibreglass specialist or painter do the finish. One of the other Queensland Ascorts has recently had an epoxy coat sprayed to treat various problems and I understand that this has worked out well.

Unfortunately where I live is not a big town and there is no local boat repair or fibreglass business here, so it is quite likely that there are some good or better products that I could be using. Informed advice is always welcome.
:unsure: I have heard about the flexible primer and will have to look into this.

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Yep, I believe it was the same.

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If you have some space between you and your neighbours, have a go at painting it in 2k yourself. It's potentially dangerous stuff, so you have to be careful of the fumes & particles - but get yourself an airfed mask and put your compressor outside away from the fumes and you'll be fine. It sprays very easily, you don't need to bake it (baking just speeds up the curing process). Colour sand it and a polish and it will look great and won't cost too much.

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Marvellous thread :beer:

Thanks for that. Sometimes I am not sure how much interest there is for a little known coachbuilt from the other side of the planet.

As there has not been a lot of activity on the web site lately, except for discussion about the site format etc, I do get a little concerned about posting too much Ascort stuff as it is not a pure VW and this site is primarily for them. (The Ascort is VW based and pure to the Pre67 era though.)

I just wish some of the VW restorers would also do a few more blogs about their restoration efforts as I am sure that we would all find it interesting.

On the subject of Ascorts, I was contacted by the owner of this car:



It seems that the Volksworld magazine is going to do an article on it, which is good news, but I have some real concerns about how accurate the article will be. As much as I like the owner of the car, he is not a purist and has been carrying out quite a few mods (inside, outside and underneath) and probably is not up to date on the latest findings about the history of the cars. The owner of the car wants the article to be correct and has asked that I assist with some historic photos, and for me to write some of the history for the article, but the Volksworld does not seem to want anything from me, despite the fact that I maintain a register of the cars, document the history, am in touch with all known owners, the family of the constructor, and hold quite a few previously unpublished photos and documents etc.
:cry: :?

In the Volksworld forum there was a recent photo of the silver car (posted by the person doing the article) with a statement that its is fitted with a 356 engine (true) and that you could also get the cars with a VW engine. The 356 engine was fitted to the car when it was rebuilt and was not fitted from new. In fact the ID plate states an engine no ACA0914, which is the Okrasa number from Ascort Corporation Australasia. It is 2 less than the number of the engine in my blue car. I have seen no evidence that a 356 engine was ever fitted to an Ascort from new, and have not heard of any conversions being done in the era. As the Ascort corporation was an agent for Okrasa kits, I doubt that fitting 356 engines from new would have happened. Although the 356 engine is a conversion which would have been possible in the era, I think that stating that the 356 engine was an option is a myth started by the person who carried out the conversion. :sneaky:

I sincerely hope that there is no re-writing of Ascort history, in this Volksworld article when it comes out.

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Just a quick update. Ivan form Volksworld has contacted me and is keen for his story to be as accurate as possible, which is a big relief to myself, and will make the Craney family happy as well. :thumbup: I will try to help Ivan with anything that he needs to make his article a good one.

I now feel a bit bad that I wrote my previous post. :oops: It is just a little frustration showing through on my part due to the amount of inaccurate information and myths that seem to be floating about in cyberworld. It would be so fantastic if Volksworld can put a quality article about the Ascort into print.

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I thought that it was about time that I added a quick update. I have been putting a web site together to cover the Ascort cars and it has been taking longer than I had intended. This is probably because I am trying to put too much information into it.

My shed activity has been all about the doors. These are one of the major hurdles as the driver's door is just a stripped out shell, with no catches, window regulator, glass runner etc. The passenger door has the glass and runners, but no window regulator and no working catch. As previously stated, I do not know where the window regulators came from.
:(

Some time back I managed to get a photo of the window regulator in another car (shown earlier on this post). I reverse engineered the design of the regulator from the required lift, the size of the passenger side mounting bracket, and what the regulator looked like.


The quadrant plates were water jet cut from the design and the chassis plate was folded.

I have now been spending many hours fitting the winding gear from another regulator, machining pivot pins, reaming holes in the chassis plates, fine file adjustment of the gears to get smpooth action, making pins for springs, adding captive rivnuts etc.

The mechanism now works nicely, but the lifting arms still have to be added. These will have to be added with the glass fitted to the correct position to ensure correct operation and fit to the door shut line.

The first regulator built will be a driver side unit. As there were no mounts on this door, mounting frames had to be constructed and placed with a temporary fit using clecos.

The diagonal bracing cable was replaced as the original turnbuckle was corroded. I replaced the cable and turnbuckle with stainless materials. The purpose of the cable is to control sag in the door, which causes the bottom of the door to twist outward ruining the fit.

The original handle assembly was fitted in the original holes and a search through my parts bin turned up a very good catch assembly which was fitted. (I note that the drivers door catch does not lock from the inside by pushing the handle forward. Is this normal?)


(Please note that all of the holes in the door are not my doing. I am fairly sure that this car was the first built after the prototype and the first car built using the VW catches etc. You can see where there has been a bit of trial and error with the fitting of the trim and door handles.)

The glass and runners now need to be added. The front one was not too hard as I had a rough item which just needed some repairs and clean up. The rear one is a problem though as I do not have the original, so this will have to be another fabrication job.
:cry:

Once everything fits ok, it will all have to come apart for door fibreglass repairs and for painting of components, adjustments etc.

I then have to do it all over again on the passenger door. :omg:

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The door really looks a similar shape to a KG door. I´m surprised they didn´t use KG winders and hardware.
Great work as usual. I´m in awe of your dedication.

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I have not had the chance to totally compare the doors, but I am, sure that there is a lot of similarity, as I am finding this in a lot of areas on the car.

The Ascort was constructed before the Karmann Ghia was imported into Australia, but the Ascort designer did have some connection to a private import low light which seems to have been used as the basis for the Ascort design. This would explain how the design was completed in relatively short time.

This photo shows the plaster shape of the Ascort being developed and in the background you can see the KG (with doors off).


If you go to an earlier stage of the process before the flares were added to the wheel arches, before the Ascort nose was added, and before air vent scoops were added, you can really see the KG basis in the design. It is like a KG with the side contours filled and the roof extended. The bonnet at this stage looks to be straight KG, but was extended in the final design. The peugeot 403 screen also gave the roofline a slightly more upright roofline than a KG. (The nose of the KG can just be seen in the background)


My guess is that as the KG parts were not available in Australia, and it was easier to source parts from other makes and so another window regulator was used. I would love to know if the glass shape is identical to the KG.

The prototype has door catches which I think may have been KG. (Very roughly fitted)

These were changed to VW in subsequent cars, but early cars still have the recess at the bottom of the door, showing the KG heritage. This was omitted on later cars.


The last few cars were sold incomplete and a copy of the parts list was given to one of the purchasers and it states that the window regulators were "most trucks" or Ghia. I was just fool enough to try to get something as close as possible to what was originally fitted to my early car. (Which would probably fit "most trucks") :cry:

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The stainless steel castings arrived back from the investment casting process, but a lot of work is required to clean them up to get a shine.

Today I must have spent about 5 hours with needle files, wet and dry sandpaper, dremel and metal polish. The final result may not be perfect, but I will still attach the item to the front of the car with pride. It has been an interesting process starting with a series of fuzzy photos and ending up with a nice shiny stainless casting. When I started this, I had done nothing similar and had to learn about moulding, resin casting, investment casting etc.

I now just have to add mounting screws and then do a re-polish. .... and then do it all again for the second car.


The emblem on the left is a raw casting, and the one on the right is the polished up item. The stainless item has a much nicer feel and look than the "chromed" resin item.

There is a problem though. Of the 12 casting that I received, about half have significant flaws and I am not sure if I can ever use them. This is a problem as they were to be for other Ascort owners and the money from them was to help cover the significant cost of creating the tooling and casting. :cry:

I am not sure if the company who did the casting will replace the duds, as I did pay the money with the expectation that the results would be useable. I think that I have just made some extremely expensive items for my own cars.

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I've only just read this thread from beginning to end and I must say, Mark, you are a man possessed.
That sounds bad......I meant a perfectionist.
Ascorts are without doubt one of the most stylish and attractive of any of the coachbuilts.
I've seen these at the VW Nationals in Sydney a couple of times and always been taken by their classy lines and wonderful stance.
Keep up the good work.
These marques deserve the attention.
Based on KGs as they may've been, IMO they are much more sophisticated.
In fact the remind me of Aston Martins.

Andy

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Thanks Andy. The biggest problem I have is time to work on the cars. There are so many work and home issues that keep requiring my attention lately.

One of enjoyments that I have had with the Ascort is doing the background research. With other cars that I have played with you find out about the make by reading books and articles by others. There was just not much available for the Ascort, so I have searched for every article that I could find, treated the car like an archaeological dig, spoke to all the people that I knew could help with bits of information and also compared photos of the various cars in minute detail, looking for variations and unique features.

Although I am obviously biased, I agree that the Ascort was a quality car. Have you ever heard the lovely solid "thunk" when an Ascort door is shut?

Welcome to Pre67Vw. I think that it is a great VW site .... and they even allow/encourage Ascort stuff. If you have a liking for Ascorts, you can friend "Ascort TSV 1300" on Facebook and I am also currently building the web site www.ascort-tsv-1300.com

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Things have been very quiet on the shed front for a while, thanks to work restructures and a house purchase.

I was recently sent some scans of negatives, which include photos of my #005 car being repaired in 1959/60 after it was involved in an accident.

At the time of the crash, the car had been repainted a number of time (probably for publicity purposes. I had thought that the car was silver at the time of the crash and was painted white after that. In the side profile it looks like the car may have been white already.  img046_corrected (640x413).jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.  img045_corrected (640x413).jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.  img037_correct (640x407).jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

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From doing quite a bit of detective work I had come to the conclusion that my car originally had the number plate BXL-022 and was probably the first car built after the prototype. This had been based on variations that my car has compared to other Ascorts, the number the sequence of registration plates and also a photo of BXL-022 with a trailer towbar. My car had one fitted too.

Recently a pile of old photo negatives were found by the family of the car's designer and they are now being scanned. The photos included positive identification as it is the crash damage, with the registration plate still attached. Also included were photos of my car prior to the accident, which must have occurred in 1959 or 1960.  BXL_022 Crashed - Copy (640x416).jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.  img225_corrected (640x407).jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

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The photo above is interesting when looked at close up as my car is fitted with a 4 tip exhaust system. Production cars seem to have only been fitted with a 2 tip system.

The only other photo that I have seen showing a 4 tip system on an Ascort is a photo of the prototype during testing when it had been stopped by motorcycle police.

I am thinking that this probably gives me a good excuse to fit an Arbath system to my car. I am a bit worried that the Wolfburg West systems seem to hang lower than desirable though. Has anybody had any experience with them?  BXL with sonic.jpg You have insufficient rights to see the content.

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A very long shot but any up dates ???

Ok.  I guess it is a long time since I put anything on this forum.
I still have my 2 Ascorts, but a lot has happened in my life since I was last here.  I have moved house and built a new shed and was making some good progress for a while.
In 2019 plans were made to have a gathering of Ascort owners in Canberra to celebrate their 60th birthday.  I thought that I would trailer my unrestored blue car there as the car that I was working on had no glass in it, was not bolted to the floor and had no interior at the time. 
I thought that it would be fun to get the blue car running and mobile, even if it was not registered.  I started doing some work on the car but then discovered that the body was in much worse condition than I had thought.  I knew that the car had been rolled back in the late 1970s, but I had thought that it had been repaired ok.
When I started looking closely I found lots of very serious nasties in the body that made it unfit to be towed about 1600km without doing further damage.
I spoke to a local fibreglass repairer if he could help and he said yes, but I would need to take the body of the pan and put it on a rotisserie. I worked to do this and got the body off and mounted on a new rotisserie, but then COVID came along and so the Ascort gathering did not occur.
As the body was on the rotisserie now, I made the decision to do the repairs myself as I thought that the repairer's quote was way to low to do the work properly. Somehow I was now working on the blue car and not the white one.
I rebuilt the rear body mounts, repaired the rips and detachment of the inner rear wheel arches, repaired the rips in the LH sill, repaired the rip in the C Pillar, repaired the tear in the engine bay and the tear in the rear window aperture.  The rear skirt under the rear bumper was rebuilt,  and then a more major repair was undertaken.
The RH rear fender was a mass of stress cracks and had been poorly repaired. A mold was available to use in South Australia, which had been made to repair one of the other cars.  I was lucky that Barry, who had the mold was travelling to Queensland at Christmas 2020 and he brought it up and spent several days with me working together making and fitting the new rear corner to the body.  It was a big job, but I am very happy with the end result.
The next undertaken was the area around one of the driving lights.  It turned out that this had a poor repair, so I made a mold from my second car and made a new section and cut it into the body. I am happy with that repair too.
The nose of the car was ripped across underneath.  I have got it back into alignment and have it re-attached, but more work is required to get it back to full strength. I also have to repair a front guard as this has been damaged due to the nose dropping onto the inner wheel arches. It will take a little work, but should not be too bad.
Once that work is completed, the body should be back to full strength and just needing minor stress cracks to be repaired etc.  I am sick of glass fibre and dust going all through my new shed.
After doing much of this body work, I was contacted by a lady who I had been trying to locate for years.  Her father had owned the blue car since the late 1960s, and then she had taken ownership sometime in the 1970s.  She explained how she had lost control of the car and rolled down the side of a mountain.  It is amazing that both she and the car survived.
Unfortunately I have done almost no work in the past 12 months as I had surgery on both hand, plus injured a shoulder.  I am ok now, but have not got back into the Ascort work again yet.

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Other happenings:
Work has been carried out on a few of the other cars.
The red car has completed a full professional restoration and looks fantastic.  This car has been in the same family since 1962 and was restored by the 3rd generation owner. (grandson of the man who bought it in 1962 from a well known Australian female TV personality.).
The silver car in Adelaide, which used to have orange stripes, has now completed a rebuild and now looks much more standard and has been advertised for sale at quite a significant price.  I have not heard if there have been any takers.
In some of the earlier posts I mentioned the Ascort Sonic boat that was also built.  One of these boats was located in Sydney, and it currently is the only one known of. I had contacted the owner and gave him information on the boat that he had.  He was most grateful for this.  He has recently contacted me and offered to sell me the sonic.  I have arranged to pick it up in the following weeks.  This is very exciting as many of the photos of the Sonic has it being towed by my white Ascort (before it was white.  They should be re-united soon.
 

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