P356 Turn Signal Housing in VW Beetle column 70s

Some folks here have used early VW bus turn signal assembly on the VW bug column.

Here's the turn signal switch I used in my old IM speedster rebuild: 141-953-517F TURN SIGNAL SWITCH T1 & GHIA 1962-67 (BLACK) EMPI 98-9576-B.

I don't know if it would match up with your column.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264533123454

@WOLFGANG posted:

Some folks here have used early VW bus turn signal assembly on the VW bug column.

Thanks

This is “more or less” what I’m looking for

I think it’s the same column steering, so the result should be “identical”

Whether I change for a 50s steering column I should change my hub too (Banjo wheel) and the result would be something like that

I was thinking about it last night… (madness) and if I do that I don’t know how to keep in location the column (bearing is in the ignition) and may be I miss the horn.

Is this the reason fabricators use 50s steering column set?

Comments please

any?

I think we all know what you want, but there may be some confusion (in some of the crowd here) with what you have. You have the later column, with the modern looking turn signal switch and the integrated ignition (on the column), correct? If so, there's not an easy way to get what you are looking for with this column.

@nesta posted:

Is this the reason fabricators use 50s steering column set?

Yes. It doesn't have to be a "50s steering column set", but it does need to be early VW, or some full custom column. Even with an entirely new (old) setup, you'll run into challenges - the crush cage, the number of splines on the shaft, how to make your horn work, etc.

I have no idea of your fabrication skills, or how difficult it is for you to source parts in your part of the world, but getting what you want is not a small undertaking.

@Stan Galat posted:

I think we all know what you want, but there may be some confusion (in some of the crowd here) with what you have. You have the later column, with the modern looking turn signal switch and the integrated ignition (on the column), correct? If so, there's not an easy way to get what you are looking for with this column.

Yes. It doesn't have to be a "50s steering column set", but it does need to be early VW, or some full custom column. Even with an entirely new (old) setup, you'll run into challenges - the crush cage, the number of splines on the shaft, how to make your horn work, etc.

I have no idea of your fabrication skills, or how difficult it is for you to source parts in your part of the world, but getting what you want is not a small undertaking.

Thanks Stant

It´s what I think... :S

CONS:

First I don´t have the answer to how to recolocate my horn.

Secondly I have to build any kind of bearing to support the end of the column in position.

This mod It´s not easy... but not impossible (I´ll go on studying)

My car was built with the square turn signal lever with dimmer in the lever.  I never liked the lever. Aside from the square lever, only a 13 inch steering wheel let me get easily in and out of the car. The OE style lever looked too long but I liked the dimmer in the lever.

This is the point where I lost it.  My goals were a lever that had a knob, round shaft & dimmer in the knob.  I cut off the OE lever at the column.  I milled an aluminum block to support the stainless tube I used for a shaft.  I shaped the knob out of an aluminum round and drilled it for a momentary switch for the dimmer.

The wiring was tedious, but everything works as it should, I didn't burn the car down.

Image ain't that great but shows the result.

@Ewatub posted:

My car was built with the square turn signal lever with dimmer in the lever.  I never liked the lever. Aside from the square lever, only a 13 inch steering wheel let me get easily in and out of the car. The OE style lever looked too long but I liked the dimmer in the lever.

This is the point where I lost it.  My goals were a lever that had a knob, round shaft & dimmer in the knob.  I cut off the OE lever at the column.  I milled an aluminum block to support the stainless tube I used for a shaft.  I shaped the knob out of an aluminum round and drilled it for a momentary switch for the dimmer.

The wiring was tedious, but everything works as it should, I didn't burn the car down.

Image ain't that great but shows the result.

I'm not seeing the image yet. Try again?

Second attempt.

Nice, looks tidy!

@Ewatub posted:

Second attempt.

Nice, is "like a 356C" more or less. I like it

Very nicely done!

"I didn't burn the car down."   <<THAT always counts for something.   🤣

What is the little black button for on the end of the turn signal stalk?

@Gordon Nichols posted:

Very nicely done!

"I didn't burn the car down."   <<THAT always counts for something.   🤣

What is the little black button for on the end of the turn signal stalk?

That's the hi/low beam switch.

Button at end of signal stalk is the dimmer switch.

Michael, nesta & Gordon, thanx for the replies.  I read this forum pretty much daily.  Years ago I had a grumpy trans, Gordon recommended Rancho, I went for it, good call on Gordon's part.

The stuff SOCers do makes me ask "why not".  Full disclosure, alot falls into "a little knowledge is dangerous" column. But even a broken clock has the right time twice a day and I have a turn signal setup I like.

Keep the shiny side up and between the ditches.

Last Thursday I took my speedster to get inspected for a sticker.  I always go to the same place because (a.) the inspector treats my car with respect and (b.) he is a bicyclist, like me.  He did all of the usual inspector kind of stuff and I drove away happy that she passed another inspection (Whew!) and I got my new sticker.

The very next day I took her out for a ride through the countryside and wouldn't yah know it?  The directionals don't work, period.  How I got through the inspection without this screwing up I don't know.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that I probably have one of a small handful of Speedsters on here still using most of the original VW donor wiring harness and when I look at the VW wiring diagram for 1969, everything is not only there, but the wire colors are correct, too!  (Some guy was really smot to think of that - In a Speedstah, no less!)  

The give-away for solving this was that neither right nor left directional worked at all, AND turning on the 4-way flasher was completely dead, too.  THAT pointed to a bad flasher, so the good news turned bad when I found that used German flashers for the unique year of 1969 START at $150 bucks and New Old Stock start at $350!

So I drag my tired old body under the dash and start messing with the connections to the flasher and as soon as I touched one wire it starts to work again.  Then I messed with all five wire connections and one of them, if flexed just right, would start and stop the flasher.  Ah-HA!

These flashers are little boxes about the size of a pack of Camel cigarettes with a small printed circuit board (pcb) inside holding two relays and a bunch of electronic parts.  The 1/4" wire connection tabs are soldered directly onto the board and after 53 years vibration gets to the soldered connections on the pcb and some become intermittent.  Got out my trusty 45 year old soldering pencil, touched up the tab connections and "Voilá!"  

Semi-instant fix.  

Until something else fails - It's just a matter of time.  

Fortunately, most of the failures are simple.

That's life in the "Madness".

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In a way, this is an alarming story for me, Gordon.

I've always thought of solder as one of the few things in life you can count on.

But I guess if you get old enough...

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Solder is not as benign as you might think - Getting it to flow, wick and bond properly without any impurities can border on an art form.

My flasher box uses 1/4" fast-on tabs to make outside wire connections and each tab has two PCB insertion prongs into the the circuit board.  Just pushing the female end of the fast-on in place may weaken the pcb tabs (normal PCB tabs these days usually have three prongs in a triangle for lots more strength).   Do that a few times over 50+ years and it begins to fracture the solder joint.  Remember, the solder doesn't transfer current as well as copper.  The solder is there mostly to provide a bond between two other conductors.  That bond can weaken over a long time.

I have a good story about Dendritic Growth in soldered joints on computer PCBs but it's kinda long and involves a bunch of Southern Redneck Engineers, several of us "Northern Engineers" and a couple of "Solder Weanies" from MIT.  

Maybe another time....    With a good Irish Stout involved.

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@Gordon Nichols posted:

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...and a couple of "Solder Weanies" from MIT...

Wasn't The Solder Weenies  the name of MIT's football team?

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@Ewatub posted:

Button at end of signal stalk is the dimmer switch.

Michael, nesta & Gordon, thanx for the replies.  I read this forum pretty much daily.  Years ago I had a grumpy trans, Gordon recommended Rancho, I went for it, good call on Gordon's part.

The stuff SOCers do makes me ask "why not".  Full disclosure, alot falls into "a little knowledge is dangerous" column. But even a broken clock has the right time twice a day and I have a turn signal setup I like.

Keep the shiny side up and between the ditches.

   

Looks great. I did a similar stalk, I used stainless tubing and machined a knob and a button from aluminum to cover the microswitch. I used some RC servo wires, they are thin and have many fine strands so are very flexible.

Nesta,  

I wanted the original look with an original wheel and turn signal. The og Porsche wheel does not fit the 69 vw column or shaft, too many splines and the column is smaller diameter. I ended up with an early 356 column and shaft and turn signal stalk. This way they all married happily. Two things though. Some of the early Porsches did not have a signal delete, which mine now does not and no high beam integrated in the signal. So I used the high beam switch my VS came with and I turn my signal off manually. Real basic. But “I” like the way it came out.

@Ewatub @Gordon Nichols

I couldn't find a pic last night, so here:

I cut off the 68-70 stalk, and fashioned an aluminum block to fit the cavity. That was drilled to fit the tubing, then JB Weld and a machine screw hold it in place.

Some 1/2" aluminum rod and a half-hour on my friend's lathe got this done.

The aluminum button is held onto the microswitch with a dot of RTV. The button has a small hole in it to slide over the micro-switch button.

The knob and stainless stalk is left natural, the VW switch and Grant hub cover is painted in hammertone silver.

In my mind, the turn stalk is one of the things that makes a Speedster/Spyder look KIT CAR. The ebrake handle and pedal cluster are the other two biggies. If you remove those three cues most observers can't tell if it's real or Memorex.

The turn signal switch is '67 bus.  The left side of the switch housing is also '67 bus.  The bus tube is smaller in diameter, so I opened it up with a drum sander.  The right side of the switch housing is '50s beetle.  There is a u-shaped piece on the side of the tube to conceal the turn signal switch wires.

Wow....    You guys are pretty clever.  

Talented, too!

NIce job on those the stalk push button is really nice.
I have an Ididit column and it has a push button for hi:lo beam as well but the kit they use is bad in that the button is so hard to push that it is hard to activate.  Let’s just say It works but not as easily as I would like it.

I did try Michael McKelvey's approach, even ordered the bus turn signal setup.  Just couldn't wrap my head around how to get it to fit.  Michael's stuff is always right and tight.

I couldn't remember who did the mod I liked until DannyP posted the picture of his.  Danny's post made me ask "why not" and described a good approach.

Gordon Nichols:  What is "Dendritic Growth"?   

@Ewatub

Ugh…..   Dendritic growth in solder comes from a contaminate called; What else?  Dendrites, that has a crystaline structure that, when exposed to heat and humidity, can grow to the point of distorting the solder joints causing random shorts or open circuits between conductors on circuit boards.  It has the early appearance of a white-ish discoloration on the solder runs of the PCB.  If it occurs, and our experience was with 16” square, wave-soldered computer boards, it cannot be fixed or “cured” on built pcbs.  They have to be scrapped.  The only cure I know of is to remove all solder from the wave machine and discard it, then thoroughly clean the machine to remove any trace of Dendrites.  Usually the machine does a few test runs to make sure the stuff is gone.  All this might cost more than buying a new wave-solder machine, if you include production line down time and and lost revenue and so forth.

My Reader’s Digest Version:
I was working on a product we sold and re-badged as the IBM 3728 Digital Matrix Switch and we shipped several systems to IBM in Raleigh, NC for testing in the summertime, when a typical day temp was over 100F and the humidity was usually around 90%.  After a couple of weeks they informed us of the Dendritic growth on our boards and wanted a complete report on how we were going to fix it.  Our first thought was “WTF is ‘Dendritic Growth”??  Fortunately, the company founder was an MIT professor with a couple of friends over there who were “Solder Weanies” (their term, not mine) who stepped in to help our board assembly and wave-solder vendor solve the problem.  Still, it took a couple of months of hectic sleuthing to get it cleared up and we ate a lot of un-sellable boards.  

The moral of the story is “Know what the heck is in your solder down to the molecular level or you might be sorry”.

”Cleanliness is next to - Not having Dendritic Growth!”

A side story to that was also at IBM in NC:  Another part of their testing is to see how much radio interference our system emitted and to do that they put it into an Anechoic chamber which is a huge room (think high school gymnasium) that has hundreds of conductive, pyramid-like structures lining all the walls and ceiling to absorb all sound frequencies as well as all radio frequencies.  Locals call it the “Dead Room”.  Anything in there is shielded from any radio waves or sounds from the outside world (it’s wicked dark, too).  

Turn on a computer in there and you can easily detect how much radio noise it makes and plot all of the frequencies and signal strengths, and then you go back and shield the system to get that radio interference noise to acceptable outside levels.

The guys working with me HATED that room because once inside and the door was closed your sense of hearing was damped and your brain no longer heard all of the subtle noise that it expected, to the point of giving you a panic attack.  

Ever since Hot Rod Ron and I built that Howitzer-like, 4th of July cannon in our teens I have had significant Tinnitus.  My ears never stop ringing, but after many years you’re brain just ignores it.  When I went inside the chamber it was a little weird at first, like something was missing but you didn’t know quite what (turns out it is the lack of any sound echo that your brain constantly expects), but then I could still hear the subtle noise of my Tinnitus and everything seemed OK, just softer.  The other guys were good for maybe 30-45 minutes til they freaked out, while I was good for a 2-3 hour test and patch cycle.

@Gotno356 posted:

Nesta,  

I wanted the original look with an original wheel and turn signal. The og Porsche wheel does not fit the 69 vw column or shaft, too many splines and the column is smaller diameter. I ended up with an early 356 column and shaft and turn signal stalk. This way they all married happily. Two things though. Some of the early Porsches did not have a signal delete, which mine now does not and no high beam integrated in the signal. So I used the high beam switch my VS came with and I turn my signal off manually. Real basic. But “I” like the way it came out.

Really like it.

It´s really hard to find column and wheel in good shape for a reasonable price.

You can get the wheel refinished there is someone in Kaulifornia that use to refurb them.

Nesta,

Your so right. This is from three or for different cars. The wheel, turn signal, column, shaft, the brushes half way down the column and rag joint. So many parts look the same as Porsche but are not. The turn signal housing is what I bought first. Didn’t fit because Porsches are larger diameter. And it just went from there. But I was going for a particular patina’d look and as original as I could afford also. The wheel came from a great guy in Connecticut that we now have become great friends on emails. And you are so right, if it says Porsche on it, especially steering wheels, it’s really expensive. Good luck my friend and happy hunting.😂
IaM-ray, thanks, but I just love the patina on this wheel. Not everyone’s cup of tea but I think it’s perfect.

The patina is great stuff on older stuff, but some prefer to redo everything.. choices choices.

I love that worn-in look especially because it means you don't have to re-polish the car every time you take it out or put it back in the garage.

edsnova

im a little like pig pen. I can’t keep anything nice. So the patina thing is right up my alley.😂

Many builders use the up to '67 Bug column so that the starter switch fits separate on the dash like on 356s. I installed a MSW replica 356 steering wheel and ended up swapping the whole column and turn signal switch for an oval window Bug ('57 and earlier) unit. Those early columns use a brush system on it for the horn and we wired that in as well. Basically you will need a turn signal unit (new replacements can be found but not OEM quality) a column and tube, the plastic bushing that goes before the steering wheel as well as the horn brushes (new replacements can also be found for these). Everything works fine. If you can't find an old column MSW also offers new repros of the old column to fit the coarses splines of the old Porsche/VW steering wheels. Remember the splines are also different; the newer columns have fine splines.