Sunday, June 15, 2014

V W "PODS", CLOCK AND SPEEDOMETER [1950] RECONDITIONING

 Ancient V W speedometers, clocks and their mount "pods" seem to find me no matter how good I hide. This shows how they look when I get them....UGH! Nasty! But I guess if I'd been sitting around in an old, musty 1950 V W all these years I'd look a lot worse! Time to make 'em look and work good....
 V W did things differently in 1950...above is the flip side of the speedometer pod, and the photo shows the bakelite casting, with the bosses for the three switches and the four warning lights, plus some crusty 1950 wires....
 AHA! All better now! New wires, even. This particular V W obviously had an accessory item of some sort taking power off the input connection [No. 30] of the ignition switch. The old, inline fuse holder was kaput so I installed a new one [the red fuse holder to the left of the speedometer pod]. They're ready to go back into the old VeeDub.
[Drumroll...] And here they are--almost as nice as when they were first installed in Der Beetle back in 1950.  Cool, huh?

ANCIENT 1950 VOLKSWAGEN WIPER MOTOR ASSEMBLY OVERHAUL

 Ancient Volkswagen parts seem to find me. This is a complete V W wiper motor assembly, with its mount, from a 1950 Beetle. Above are the pristine bits, ready for reassembly. Below is what the nasty bugger looked like when I received it. I put in the dial caliper tool to show the scale of the V W parts.
 I never send out any part I recondition without first testing it. This is the test setup for one of these old SWF wiper motors. That is a V W wiper switch and the wiring is exactly as it would be in the car. Here the wiper motor still has its aluminum cover OFF.  See...I want to see the smoke and flames if the sucker self destructs! HA!
Below are all the motor gubbins, cleaned up and ready to be reassembled. The three brushes on this unit indicate it is for a TWO speed unit. The 1950 motor [above] was only a ONE speed unit. I got lazy and didn't shoot a picture of the internals of that one. However, they are the same except that the one speed motor only has two brushes, and the electrical connectors on the '50 model are screw on, not push on connectors. 
A careful look at the big brass gear on the base cover shows you a shallow "U" shaped item riveted to the gear. That "U" shaped thingie is the critter that allows the motor to self park.  As it rotates it actually pushes a little pin that opens and closes a set of contacts behind the electrical contact plate. This self park system is typical of all the SWF wiper motors of this era.