Quick Update

I know it's been quite some time since I have posted on this blog, but I wanted to give you an idea on where I am with this project.

Over the winter, I completely rebuilt the engine which I will post pictures of soon. Also, in the past few weeks, I have purchased most of the body rubber and seals, windshield, body mounting hardware, fenders, paint and a wiring harness. This took a while because I needed to save money for all of the purchases. Most of this money comes from my other hobby, which is freelance writing on Hubpages.com. Please check out some of my work while waiting for updates here. I always appreciate the feedback!

http://eric2112.hubpages.com/hub/Beetle-Purchase
http://eric2112.hubpages.com/hub/AirCooled-Volkswagen-Links
http://eric2112.hubpages.com/

See ya soon with more updates I hope. Need to get this thing back together by August as we have another child on the way!!!

Last night I pulled the doors out of the corner of the garage to start preping them. I started with the passanger side. I noticed that the window would not roll down and realized that I needed to take a look at the regulator. Getting the regulator out was no fun job. It took me about 4 hours to figure out how to get it loose. I finally found a how-to on TheSamba forums. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=335018&highlight=window+regulator

This was one of the best tutorials I have seen. It was amazingly helpful. I only wish I would have found it a few hours earlier.

Anyway, after getting the regulator out, it was evident that it was rusted solid. I ended up drilling out the rivets that held the crank mechanism together to free it up. I wire wheeled all of the parts and applied grease to everything. It moves freely now. A little noisy, but functional. I will either rivet the unit back together or tack weld where I drilled the unit out.

I have no pictures as of yet, but will post some a little later.

ALSO,

I noticed in my settings for the blog, that comments were set to be accepted from Blogger.com members only. This has been changed to allow for anyone to comment. So if you were trying to comment at one point and couldn't, you should be able to now. Thanks.

Nose Job and new trunk lid

Today I took some time to address the roughness of the front apron of the car. It wasn't horrible, but there were a plentiful abount of dents and dings. Also, the previous owner layered body filler over surface rust and many places that just plain didn't need it. After stripping down the whole apron, I DA sanded it to bare metal and cleaned off any surface rust that was left. A thin skim of glaze and some primer, and the apron looks like new. I also repaired the back of the apron plug since it was a bit rusted and not very strong. While I was working on the front of the car, I dry fit a new trunk lid that I recently purchased from a kind gentleman on craigslist (thanks Roy!). Here are some photos of the finished apron and new hood:

Aside from the apron and the trunk lid, I welded in a few captive nuts in to the fender mounting area. With the exception of the hood needing sanded and primered, all body work on the front of the car is done. I have one remaining wheel housing to primer and the rear louvers. Almost time for paint!!! WoooHoo!!

See ya soon!

Trunk Area and More Primer

This is a bit of an odds and ends post but still warrants it being here. I got the rest of the trunk area cleaned up, stripped of its surface rust and primered. All in all it wasn't very bad. It just looked ugly with all the layers of overspray and surface rust. Here is a picture of it how it looks now:

I also got the passenger side rear quarter finished and in primer. There are no before pictures, but it was full of large dents, as if someone kicked it in at one point, and the bottom was rotted out where it meets the heater channel. This turned out nicely as well:

The car is mostly in primer as of now. I will post it's current state in my next post. But right now, it's freezing...so I'll get those pictures another day!

See ya soon!

Spare Tire Well Replacement

The spare tire well of the car initially looked pretty decent. But as with the rest of the car, a little poking and prodding proved me wrong. This was really no surprise. I had looked at replacement panels for this application, but being that I am on a very tight budget, I opted to make one and spend mostly my time instead of money.

Here is a picture of the old panel. Much rust. After cutting it out, it was bout as strong as cereal box cardboard.

Cutting it out was the easy part. fabricating the new insert, proved itself to be a very trying task. There were indentations that needed to be put into the new panel to provide strength, rigidity and to keep the spare tire from sitting too much on the bottom and allowing water to be trapped under it.

It took me roughly 3 hours of pounding and smoothing with various tools that were clearly not designed for the job. I accomplished this by laying the cut piece of sheet metal on a 2 inch thick piece of roofing foam and pounding away with different pieces of heavy steel blocks until I achieved the proper indents. Note that the two outer indents are towards the bottom of the car, and the middle one is towards the top. This picture was during the fitting of the panel and before welding.

The panel turned out very nice and is alot stronger than I thought it would be. This will last a very long time. This next picture is after welding and seam sealer.

Now that this is done, I can clean up and primer the trunk area. That will be on the next post.

Bye for now!

The Gas Filler Neck Area.

This will be a pretty short post, but I didn't want to leave it out.

The gas filler area was pretty rotted out on the front quarter and badly needed replaced. Also, since I am ommiting the fuel injection from this car, the fuel setup would need to be appropriately modified.

The gentleman I bought the rear apron from also sold me a gass filler panel from a '72 beetle. It fit my application to a tee. I searched high and low for the before pictures but couldn't find them anywhere. However, here are pictures of the new filler neck welded in.

This filler setup had the assembly for the locking gas flap that was released from the glovebox. While I really liked this setup, it did not seem to fit as well as my standard door, and it was also kind of loose. I left myself the option of putting it back in later if desired. Over all it turned out pretty nice.

On to the BUBBLE-BUTT!!! (It's gotta go!!!)

That rear apron had been bothering me for quite some time. I couldn't stand the look of it protruding from behind the car. I much preferred the sleek look of a standard apron with two exhaust cutouts. And since this car will never again be fuel injected...this was perfect. Here is a shot of the old fuel injected apron. Quite beat up as you can see...

I acquired a new apron from a gentleman in California as well as a gas filler neck area to replace my badly damaged parts. Both replacements needed a little tlc to look good, but it really paid off!

Here is a look at the rear of the car after drilling out all of the spot welds and removing the apron:

Next I fitted the new apron to the body and tack welded the outer wings. It fit really well and took minimal adjustments from the hammer.

Still a little rough looking, but at least it is original german metal. No aftermarket crap here! You can see that when the panel was cut from the doner car, the top ears were hacked off. I was able to piece these in using metal from my old apron. Also notice that someone drilled two holes in the center of the apron. It appears that this was done to make use of a pre-67 decklid. I welded these shut and did the remaining body work before primering.

This is a look at the semi-finished product. Sure looks alot better than the previous apron. This will look awesome when finished!!!

Well, that's it for this post. More to come, very soon!!!