The Cal-look Lounge

Let me introduce you, DVF club member Messie's new project.
It's a 68 (or 69) beetle, looks rough but it's actually very solid for a car from Belgium.

Plans are dechroming, porsche wheels,...

Started disassembling it today to look for the weak points.
Was pleasantly surprised to see it only needs welding on front and rear bumper hangers.

Check out the funky shifter in the car  ;D 8)
More soon

sweet!! original carpets!!!
please try and preserve them!!!

68 model year ;)
because it was the last year of the fish gill style heater channel vents
and 1 year only speedo, early looks, but with built in fuel gauge.

Car looks totally original, even paint, carpets,...

Was a good buy, shame I didn't buy it when it was for sale. :o

It'll never work!  :P

Look forward to seeing the evolution.  8)

silver? has it been repainted? was originally diamond blue?

This  garage will be chockfull of wrecks  ::)

But watch out next summer  8)

DVF will (CAL-)LOOK like a car club more and more  ;D

Great to see another late looker.(keep posting the pic's)  ;)

 :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[

i regret the fact that i sold this one.

have fun with it jelle and messie.

Some more pics, mostly boring ones  ;)
Cleaned out the inner wings and heater channels and was very happy with what I found. No real rust there...
For a belgian car this is rather amaziing!

Allready removed the channels for the weather strips front and back as these are rusttraps...

More pics soon!

Jelle

Looks silver, I'm rather sure this part has'nt been repainted

cool!
did belgium cars have different paint options??

Did some more work lately;

rear valence has been removed
rear bumper hangers chopped out

Began sanding down the roof afterwards, it had some severe rust on it.  Not sure what to do with it now...
Sanded it down with a P40, but rust is still slightly visible.  I'll maybe apply some rust inhibitor but not sure how the paint will react to it...

After all that boring work I decided to do something fun and dechromed the left side off the car, also welded up the hole for the antenna.

More next week

Jelle

Rust, if you can't beat it, embrace it. I still think Messie should change his choice in colour, bareskin it and varnish  ;D  If my car were in such a state, that's what I would do. Porsche never had a nice  array of colours anyway  ;)

Color will most probably be something like this (agablue), with some porsche deep 6s in the back and 5.5 in the front.

(http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads6/STargaAgaBlue1127971122.jpg)

Nice, I like that color.

--louis

Niiiiice! i think it's going to be a killer car...

Some updates,

Welding on the rear bumper hangers is finished,
the left side is completely dechromed now too...

Hope to have the welding done soon, only 4 months left for it's debute  :o

Jelle

that could make a nice pic with mine and sal's  ;D

Yes,late lookers with Porsche color.Great  ;)

The welding on the left side is done, right side looks the worst side...
Started on dechroming and cleaning the inner wings.

Hi everyone, let me introduce me: my name is Nicolas 'Messie' Messiaen. The last 10 years I drove and still drive a white sunroof 67 looker with a soft prepped 1600 running 40mm Dellortos. My '67 car is like a soulmate to me if you know what I mean. It was since a special '67 issue in the French VW magazine that I wanted a 67 beetle and 10 years ago I bought one from a friend who owns a VW dealership.
After 10 years of rough streetuse the 67 is degrading fast so that is why I started looking for a second beetle. So when the new car is done I can start redoing the '67.  This time my goal was a '68 1500 model and  I bought the one from loungemember Donder.
Plans for the car are allready explained on former posts by Jelle, and Roland, I must admit that your late looker, the way it is now and the way it looked before, really motivated and inspired me to buy a late beetle.
Later on I will post some pictures from the parts I have for the car and from the plans I have with the interior.

Thanks Jelle for the good work you allready did and see you on friday!

Can't see it catching on really.  ;D

Managed to do some more this weekend even though it was freezing (-7 degrees) cold.
The roof is now rust free and temporary primered.  Front left bumper hanger is welded and cleaned up.
Look at the terrible condition off the repair panel, it was incredibly warped  :-[ ::) so I used as less as possible.

Jelle

It's amazing just how shit some of the parts out there are!  :-[

What is so hard to comprehend is that this is the standard off the pieces sold by most companies.
Not even the cheap version...  ???

In fairness the guys selling parts don't get a lot of choice; if the vast majority of people given the choice go for the cheapest part available then there's no point them stocking anything else. I've had a couple of friends involved in the trade and they've all said the same and I saw it for myself a few times too. I remember someone actually saying a panel was shit to a customer and offering a genuine one for I think something in the order of £20 more (£70 opposed to £50) and they went for the cheap one. The thing was the panel was a pretty big one and it's not like the time or expense involved in the welding was going to be cheap so why waste the effort? In reality bad parts cost a load more in labour as the time taken to put right tends to outweigh the cost difference in a big way.

As for expensive stuff that doesn't fit, there's no excuse for that especially when there are companies / craftsmen about that prove it's possible to make good stuff.

you have to be really rich to buy cheap parts...

Another day off work on the 68, after more investigation we decided the rear channel was too far gone...
So released the body from the pan and cut out the heater channel.  New heater channel isallready waiting to be welded in.
More next week.

Jelle

It's too bad that the rot has come out. And all this extra work is not nice. But it would be stupid not to repair, like it is going now it will be one extra solid lat looker.

After some sweat this weekend the new heater channel has been grafted in.  Repaired the front inner wing too.
Soon the welding will be done and the fun stuff can begin... 8)

Still going with the blue?  8)

Some little stuff got fixed today, welding almost done now...