First few months with the new toy

[Rocket Ron]

this and last year haven’t been the best personally for me so to cheer myself up I took the impulsive decision to buy another beetle earlier in the year. Being my first proper US spec 67 it’s a bit of a tick on the bucket list.

It been a mostly positive choice but there was a few minor bits to sort and I’ve really enjoyed driving a nice beetle again.

As the car only had 100 or so miles on a new engine when I bought it I gave it a few hundred miles running in before giving it some gentle encouragement on the throttle which resulted in the manifold working loose on any extended high rev runs. This problem is now sorted with some friendly advice from fellow loungers.

I’ve also spent a while tracking down an annoying flat spot. Firstly I changed the springs in the MSD for one light sliver and a blue one and removing an old style 6la control box with two rev limiters for a spare 6la-2. Although slightly better it started to get worse after a few more miles. I finally tracked it down to one of the needle valves that had worked loose. I removed both idas and found that the other needle valve was only finger tight. The carbs were purchased rebuilt but the needle valves hadn’t been tightened up correctly.  As I had both the idas apart I reset the float heights and a pair of new gaskets had them running good as new.

I’ve done a few other small jobs, removing the berg shifter and replacing it for DDS I had, putting bumpers back on, removing the cage, replacing the aerial for a button and getting all the locks to work on one key. Nothing big but fun just tinkering with the small stuff.

Nearly time to put the car away for winter but hoping to put a few more miles on it before the weather turns. Plans for next year are vented deck lid, putting the rev counter under the dash and possibly swapping the close ratio box for a pro street I have spare so longer journeys will be more tolerable. I’m still not 100% on the white interior so that may get changed if funds allow.

Hopefully see you all at a few more shows next year.

[Jos]

WOW Ron! that's beautiful. More pics please. Looks like a great score

[Glauco]

car looks great, beautiful color!

[baz]

Beautiful

[DaveN]

Nice car Ron, a usable cal looker you can drive anywhere 👍

[andrewlandon67]

WOW Ron! that's beautiful. More pics please. Looks like a great score

Yeah, I definitely need to see more of this car... what are the engine specs?

[Neil Davies]

Nice car Ron, looks great. Number plate looks familiar though - is it an ex-Greenhearts car by any chance?

[Rocket Ron]

Thanks for the nice comments guys. It was an ex green hearts car and won an award for best old school at ebi a few years ago and a top twenty at volksworld this year.

It’s the usual 82x94 wedgeport headed engine with a web cam. It made 184hp on the dyno earlier this year and the engine was built by rawspeed here in the uk. It has a fully built gearbox in a rhino case.

I believe the car was put together in the USA before being shipped to the uk and was running mag torque thrusts but these were long gone before I got the car. Now has deep six and 4 1/2 on the fronts.

If anyone has any photos of the car in the USA I’d love to see them.

Few more photos.

[Sam K]

That's a beautiful car!