Rebuilding my first Beetle!

[Neil Davies]

I've not got any digital photos of the car when I first bought it, but I'll give you a bit of history before the most recent pics.

I passed my driving test in January 1995, and didn't really know what sort of car I wanted. As long as I could modify it easily and it wasn't going to stick me on the insurance (like the Mk2 Escort I saw - £1200 for the car, £2000 for the insurance!) I'd be interested! A mate got a '70 bug and I decided that I'd like one too!
So in March 1995 I bought a completely stock pale blue 1968 1300 Beetle, and so began my involvement with VWs! I joined Half A Brain VW club, my local club, and made some good friends, many of them of a similar age and also slowly being influenced by the cars we'd seen in the magazines.
An accident led to a bent front beam (13 days after buying the car!) which got replaced with a lowered one, and some rust repair meant a rolling resto. Combined with my desire for a both a US spec '67 and the iconic Aronson '63, I bought a long bonnet and a '67 engine lid, and my Dad painted the car (the brightest white we could find) in his garage at home. I was very proud of my budget cal looker, even though the 1600 single port spat the flywheel off and started using more oil than petrol!

In late '96 I went away to university, and my brother took over ownership of the car. He drove it for a couple of years, adding a set of polished Empi 5 copies with 145/165 tyres, until it failed the MOT on a rotten framehead. My dad and my brother decided to do a bit more work, but ended up doing an 18-month long, full pan off resto, with new front quarters, channels, pan halves and lots of other panels. Just as the welding was nearing completion, we found a  proper '67 (which ironically would have bean an easier resto!) and broke it for the '67 only parts to make our car more "correct"!

Meanwhile I'd bought a '61 bug that ended up getting hit by a company car and written off, so I sold my brother the American Eagle wide-5 Fuch-alikes and he fitted them to the bug, which again Dad painted at home, in dark red this time. A strong 1600 went in, and Dunk was driving his own cal looker. Well, for three weeks, when a stolen Transit van hit him in the side in a virtual carbon copy of the accident that had written off my '61. As we'd lost that car to the insurance company, the decision was made to repair the pseudo-'67 ourselves. However, the car was never really the same and Duncan lost interest after a couple of engine failures, eventually parking it on my parents drive in the early 2000's. I revived it in 2004, driving it until late 2006 or so, even giving my brother some money for the car but never even changing the log book!
Here's a photo of it at Shakespeare County Raceway at an early Outlaw Flat Four meeting in 2006.
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Fast forward to April 2010. I'd had enough of not having my own Cal looker so decided to get the pseudo '67 going again. This is the sight that greeted me when I dragged it back up the drive.
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As you can see, the front wings were toast, as was the valance, so a pair of late fibreglass wings were obtained off ebay, and the valance was gaffa-taped up for the MOT. It failed on the front beam, so another one was put on, and while I was at it, some welding was done on the front bulkhead and heater channels. A week later it passed but I just couldn't face driving it with the orange front wings!
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[Neil Davies]

I'd bought some lightweight rear wings so decided to fit them, but after a few days of trying to get them to fit, gave up and realised that I'd be better off with the old repro steel ones that were already there.
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I also decided that a quick paintjob would be in order! This was June 2010! So I got a litre of 2 pack primer and a roller, and started priming and sanding!
By December I'd given up with the idea of painting it myself and had it primed by a friend with a bodyshop.
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More tomorrow - laptop battery is going flat!

[fredy66]

first love cool

[Matt Tobias]

Looking forward to the progress.  The ol' girl's probably loving the attention!

[Neil Davies]

Back again! I don't know what the primer was that the painter used, but it was great! The roof had microblistered all over, and there were several welding repairs done since the MOT that had been ground down and filled,such as the front valance and some more work on the quarters and channels, but we were told to go over the whole car with 180 grit paper and leave it at that, so we did! Ian put the primer on, then guide coated it, and then gave us the car back to flat down. The high build primer allowed us to hide all the imperfections left from the repairs and previous paint, and after two floods inside my unit over the Christmas break, plus the painter getting called for jury service, the car was eventually top coated in January this year, just on the outside.
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I'd always liked the fact that under the arches were finished in body colour, but this time round I realised that it wasn't doing the car any favours, so I decided to use Shutz to give the panels a degree of protection. Notice in this photo that we'd finally got the BRMs on the front, and also notice the NOS 145 XZXs! Ignore the overspray on the beam though - that should be satin black...
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We originally decided to have the car painted in the same colour as before, so we hadn't had the inside painted but the paint we bought turned out to be much brighter than expected! So after getting the car back, we flatted down the inside metalwork and had some rattlecans made to match - the bonus of using a standard RAL colour! Another bonus was that the trim being blacked out would look so much better too - it's something that I'd wanted to do for a while but never really got around to, until Roland offered up his blacked out popouts in swap for a pair of polished ones - so thats what kickstarted me moving the car froward from the Feb '75 look to somewhere around 1978...
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[Neil Davies]

And that kind of brings it up to date - with it already being MOT'd I didn't have to worry about that, and insurance turned out to be cheap enough too. Pre'73 meant tax exempt so I sorted that out last week and put the tax disk in the window just after the window itself went in...
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Thursday night I fired it up and drove it legally for the first time in several years, uncovered a few niggly little problems but nothing major, drove it to school on Friday to get some miles on it, and then to my wedding on Saturday!

Future (as in soon!) plans are to get the chrome T-bars stripped and painted black, swap the turbo muffler for dual quiet packs, fit a mirror to the drivers door and just work through the little problems.
Longer term, I'm hunting for some more fibreglass rear wings as the repro steels rub the tyres slightly, even though they didn't before (!?), delete the rear seat, recover the 912 front seats, fit the new headliner I've got somewhere, fit the 12-second 2007cc motor and strat breaking gearboxes!

More pics later!

[Neil Davies]

first love cool

I think that's why I bought it back - I couldn't let anyone else own it!

Looking forward to the progress.  The ol' girl's probably loving the attention!

I'm sure it is! Progress is one of those wierd words, meaning that you work really hard and semingly achieve nothing for ages, then it all comes together at the very last minute!

[JamieL]

Nice one Neil - well done mate

[volkskris]

nice rebuilt! any more pics? are you going to paint all the chrome?

[wolfswest]

first love, GREAT!  nice story Neil and I love the new look.  thumbs up!

Dem

[jamiep_jamiep]

MORE PICS. 

[Neil Davies]

A selection taken this morning!
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[Glauco]

the chrome rings in the same color as the car is such a cool detail
love it!

[jamiep_jamiep]

Now that looks just fantastic Neil, nice work.

[butterskotch]

Nice work dude, looks as tho you've been busy this year so far.
I remember when those BRMs were in my loft for about a year 

It's good to see the old girl back on the road.
Mine coming together very slowly, I should start a thread on here when I get a moment or two 


Oh Congrates as well on getting married, you kept that quiet.

[butterskotch]

Forgotten to mention dude,if u want some ali t bars i still have the jig at home so cud knock u up a set quite easily. Would need to get some more material, or if u supply the ali I'd weld em up for free and then you can paint em black or even get them anodised black.

[autohausdolby]

It's weird seeing my old wheels

[dielinde]

Great job   That reminds me on my old Beetle... but he sleeping on a junk yard...

[Lee.C]

nice 

[Neil Davies]

It's currently sat on my front garden awaiting the 2007cc Berg motor that I'm doing a top end overhaul on. Then it'll be off for MOT and a bit of autumn fun!