Onward!

With both the holiday season and my faithful assistant's prostatectomy now in the past (as he puts it, "I used to have prostate cancer; now I have neither"), let's make some headway with this project!

Today's work goes like this. After more hours than I care to relate--generally trying to wrestle a 45-year-old chunk of magnesium alloy into submission--the Bug now has has two new, bright red, polyurethane transmission mounts. And don't they look gorgeous?Basically, this was prep work for what comes first in the conversion: installing the electric motor. The new motor and the old engine don't resemble each other in the least, so to mount the electric motor to the transmission you've got to use an adapter plate. And because the old rubber transmission mounts would have kept the adapter plate from fitting flush against the transmission--they'd squished out past the edge of the bell like little love handles--they had to go.

Coming up: aligning that adapter plate on the input shaft to mark and bore it for mounting; assembling a repurposed clutch to the motor with adapter plate and spacer sandwiched between; then bolting it all onto the old gearbox. The date: a week from Sunday.