I had a batch of parts sandblasted by Bill Lewis, a local guy that does sandblasting and TIG welding for me.

Fro came over to borrow my vise and heat gun to do some work on his shotgun.

I went to Harbor Freight and bought some junk.  My "junker" 1/2' torque wrench broke a few months ago so I bought a new one to replace it.  These things work well for lug nuts and less critical fasteners, it was $20 with a Supercoupon!  The gasket punch set got good reviews online, and I have gone without a transfer punch set for too long.

I modified a few of the brackets I had sandblasted.  This is a weight for the clutch arm.
Before:

After some welding and grinding:

I modified the clutch actuator arm too.  This is the before:

I cut a tube in half and hammered it to match the shape of the arm.

Metal work finished:

I modified a few of the shift linkage parts too.  It's likely that nobody will notice these little details, but they will contribute to the overall look.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Chip Clip

Tonight I worked on the front engine mounting bracket.  I planned on leaving this part alone... but I couldn't.

Here is what it looked like before:

I built a crude fixture to get the location right, then I cut the stock tab off.

I bent a piece of 3/8" round bar into an arc and turned a counterbored sleeve on my lathe.

Test fit

All welded.  This tab supports the coolant pipe that runs across the front of the motor.

Tonight I replaced all the transmission bolts with ARP stainless steel 12-point fasteners.  Standard stainless steel bolts (18-8 or 316) aren't very strong, they don't meet SAE Grade 5 (Metric 8.8) or Grade 8 (10.9).  These ARP bolts are a little stronger than grade 8, and they look awesome!

Before paint, I removed all the OEM bolts and replaced them with flat head screws, designed for countersunk holes.  This lets the paint build up under the normal bolt head so you don't see a paint edge from the old bolts.

When you remove the bolt, the paint goes almost all the way to the hole with a nice clean edge.  Note: this picture is the end cap of the trans, which was still textured before paint.  The right side of the picture was sanded smooth, and the left side had the casting texture.  This gives a good idea of how it would have looked if I didn't sand everything. 

Here is a blurry pic of the new bolt.  These come in highly polished, I knocked down the gloss level with some scotch brite.

I had to use a torque adapter to properly torque some of the case bolts.

Here are some more "finished" trans pics

I still have to paint the vent, vehicle speed sensor, and reverse detent then it will be totally done.

The last two days were pretty intense.  I took a vacation day Friday, and the contents of this post happened in two consecutive 13+ hour days at the shop.  After seeing the results - it was totally worth it!

I finally opened my can of bondo!!  For now I'm using Evercoat Rage Extreme.  It's amazing what a difference it makes using good putty with 3M sandpaper, it sands so easy and the results are that much better.  This is a transmission mounting bracket.

All that mud sands down to this - just enough to fill the low spots.

After a quick coat of high-build primer to fill the sanding scratches.

I needed to rotate the trans during paint, so I needed to mount the trans to my rotating engine stand.  I cut up some plywood to turn my transmission table into an engine block table.  Norm Abrams would be proud!

I spent all day Friday cleaning the cast iron block with wire wheels and sanding discs.  I'm pretty sure my entire body is magnetic now.  My contact lenses turned orange.

Back to the trans, I pushed it outside for some final cleaning.  It was a beautiful day Friday.

I cleaned a couple more random engine parts.  I intended to paint these too, but ran out of time.

I intend to replace the driveshaft flanges after paint, so I sawed the originals so they wouldn't block the flow of paint.

I did the same with the clutch arm.  The arm and seal are getting replaced, so I'm basically using the OEM parts as masking tape.

Woody put his Beetle up on the lift to get it ready for springtime cruising.  Everything looked better than he expected underneath, no loose bolts!

Gunner supervised from his perch.

I got everything cleaned up and masked.

I mounted the trans to the engine stand and masked it up.

I pushed everything over to the paint booth.  Spoiled fucking rotten.

Here is a closeup of the masking on the block.  I masked the mating surface so the visible areas are painted, but the precision mounting surfaces are still bare steel.  I did the edging with 1/8" 3M Fineline vinyl tape.

Here is a shot when it was still wet, before the paint turned flat.

I'm so happy with how well it turned out!  The gloss level turned out perfect, and the paint turned out better than I expected.  I couldn't be happier with the results.  It was worth every painful minute of sanding.

I really like this picture for some reason.

The block is still textured.  I'm happy with it, but it doesn't look nearly as good as the trans!

Next step: cylinder head.