  In this article we investigate $^{40,48}$Ca+$^{40,48}$Ca peripheral and
semi-peripheral reactions at 35 MeV/nucleon. Data were obtained using the
unique coupling of the VAMOS high acceptance spectrometer and the INDRA charged
particle multidetector.The spectrometer allowed high resolution measurement of
charge, mass and velocity of the cold projectile-like fragment (PLF), while the
INDRA detector recorded coincident charged particles with nearly $4\pi$
acceptance.The measured isotopic composition of the PLF identified in VAMOS and
the average light charged particle (LCP) multiplicities are promising
observables to study the isospin diffusion.The detection of the PLF in
coincidence with LCP allows the reconstruction of the mass, charge and
excitation energy of the associated initial quasi-projectile nuclei (QP), as
well as the extraction of apparent temperatures.We investigate the suitability
of the isoscaling method with the PLF and the experimental reconstructed QP.The
extracted $\alpha$ and $\Delta$ isoscaling parameters present a dependence on
the considered system combination that could justify their use as a surrogate
for isospin asymmetry in isospin transport studies.The reconstruction of the QP
allows to observe an evolution of the $\alpha/\Delta$ with the size of the QP,
the latter being consistent with a strong surface contribution to the symmetry
energy term in finite nuclei. This leads to the conclusion that the
reconstruction of the primary source is mandatory for the study of the symmetry
energy term based on the isoscaling method for such reactions.
