Time Flies....

Can't believe it's been 10 months since my last post. Shows how lazy I am I guess.

I was finally able to bribe Tyler to come over and weld in the new pans. He's a talented welder and I'm glad to have him as a friend (gonna need his welding help again when I work on restoring the front seat frames).

Other newly installed items of note: new front-end, sway bar, new brakes all the way around, pedal cluster (rebuilt by yours truly!), shifter linkage, axle boots, lots of new grommets, rust protectant on the pans, engine lid spring (pain to install), new rubber everywhere, shocks, stronger clips for the throw-out bearing, etc., etc., etc..

Also had to drill out all the driver side pan bolts, as they all snapped when we initially removed the body. That was no fun. First tried an easy-out to get one of the bolts out and that snapped, making it very difficult, well, impossible, to drill that one out. I had to drill a new hole just off to the side. Ultimately I had to drill out all the bolts and rethread all the holes. I feel better now. That was a big hurdle.

There are only 5 more things I want/need to do before I put the body back on: replace the starter motor, install a new throttle cable and gas line (at the rear), lay down the new pan gasket, fill the new tranny with oil.

Once I get the body back on, I'll be installing whatever is necessary to get the bug in shape for towing back over to the body shop for a couple of things they missed.

Ginger will be happy that she can park in the garage again.

Still alive...

It's been a while, but we're still actively working on the 63. Ok, so it's a little slow, but we did get all the body work done and the car painted a sweet anthracite. Got a new tranny installed, working on the new front-end. Still need to get the pans installed. Once I get the car rolling again, we'll take it down to Tyler's to have the pans welded in. Enjoy the picture (had to make room in the garage for our other vehicle :).

Blasted

We finally got around to getting the bug sandblasted and into the body shop today. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find someone in town who would "media blast" the car but nobody around here does blasting with plastic media. I kept reading that using "sand" or other coarse media is bad. We ended up taking the car to a shop down the road from here and they use copper slag. Worked great! And it was cheap - $127 to blast the whole car, inside and out.

Here's what it looked like when I picked it up from the blaster and was towing it to the body shop:
















We didn't find any more rust than we already knew about, but we did find that the car had some previous minor body work done on it.

It will probably be in the body shop for a few months while they clear out some other projects they are currently working on. That is perfect for us because we need to strip the chassis, install new pans, new front-end, new tranny, etc. At least we have more room in the garage now :).

We have liftoff!

Well, after a long pause, we took some time today to ready the bug for media blasting. The body is now off and and every necessary part has been removed (I think :)). Here's what it looks like today:

















and...
















Next week we'll connect with the media blasters and body shop to get a semi-final bid on what it's going to cost to make this thing look factory. We're excited to get moving on it again.

The Pomona Swap-meet in California was great. We picked up quite a few parts and enjoyed the VW scene there. That was a fun trip.

Update...

The car show at Thanksgiving Point last weekend was fun. Unfortunately, the swap meet was pretty thin on VW parts. There were some nice VW's at the show, though, from the local VW club (I believe), which got us enthused and motivated. The guy who we've planned on doing our body work was there with his Herbie bug. We gave him a heads up that we were getting close.

I also called the media blasters yesterday to get an idea of how much it's going to cost us to blast the body. They charge about $85 an hour and say it'll take about 3 hours. Once we have the body off and ready for blasting we'll take it down and get a real quote.

We spent this evening removing quite a few more parts. Here are a couple of pictures showing where we're at:






























I'm a little worried about the wiring and headliner. I think we can replace the wiring and get it all hooked up right with the proper schematic, but the headliner... there's got to be a trick to removing that thing. It's a mess.

Almost there...

Justin and I spent this morning taking off the rest of the items that needed to be removed before we could actually remove the body from the pan. Those things were: gas tank, gas line from the rear and front, brake line, the 2 bolts under the gas tank, the two bolts from under the rear seat, fuel gauge wire, engine wires, solenoid, accelerator cable, etc.

Once we were confident we had removed all the necessary items, we jacked up the body and it popped right off! We have yet to actually remove the body from the pan, since it was just the two of us weaklings (ok, I'm the weakling, Justin is all muscle).

Here's a picture of where we're at:















With most of the interior out, we're discovering a little more rust than we originally thought was there. It's not too discouraging since we knew we were going to have to do some rust repair.

Check out the picture below to see the Flintstone floor pan. Nasty, eh? Once we have the body off and the interior completely removed (including the windows and chrome exterior parts), we'll wheel it down to the body shop and get a real estimate on repairs. He's already seen the bug and given us an idea of what we're looking at, cost-wise. But now with everything out of it we can get real.

The parts list is growing. We're getting excited for the upcoming UVSC car show/swap meet to see if we can snag some needed parts. We're also heading to the Pomona Swap Meet in Southern California in a couple of weeks as part of a family vacation and can hopefully get some deals there as well.

Wheels, Bumpers, Fenders, Etc.

We've spent the last couple of days removing wheels, bumpers, fenders, etc. Here's a shot of Justin removing the rear passenger fender...


Jake had fun with the impact wrench removing the wheels and gettin' the car up on jacks.

Once we had the fenders and bumpers out of the way, we removed the steering column. That was a bit tricky. Luckily we had an extra steering column laying around to use as a reference to know how to remove the thing.

Speedometer cable was next. (For next time, remember to remove the cable from the brake drum first).

We attacked the pan bolts maybe a little too hard. All of the driver side bolts broke. Only one broke on the passenger side. Go figure. But, I think we're about ready to remove the body from the pan. We will probably remove much of the interior before we actually seperate the two.

We're also keeping a list of needed parts (we're at about a page and a half already) and bagging/boxing everything. I'm keeping a parts wish list at wolfsburgwest.com and the price is climbing (ouch!). We may be able to pick up some parts at the upcoming UVSC car show/swap meet next weekend at Thanksgiving Point.