Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Removing a Super Beetle big dash

I am planning on scoring a nice Super Beetle dash from a local salvage yard for around $20 but I have to go pull it myself. I found this great tutorial on "Super Beetles Only!" with photos on how to do it. I printed it off to add to the documentation binder I am compiling.

http://www.superbeetlesonly.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6982

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Old seat covers

Somehow I never noticed the fact that the front seats had snaps on the back of them. I assumed they were the original seats. When I pulled out the back seat and had it upside down, I noticed tan vinyl. Turns out the seats have had black covers put on them. I haven't fully removed them to see what sort of condition the original vinyl is in but there may be a reason other than a color change that they were installed.



Heater channel woes

I guess this is normal for classic Beetles... finding worst rust rot than you thought there was. I started working on it yesterday by removing the front passenger seat and running board.. and what I found isn't very pretty. It looks like this thing is going to need heater channels... or at least one on the right for sure and a patch on the left one. The left one seems only to be rotten at the very back of it at the wheel well area.

I knew the right floor pan was rotten out when I bought it, that was a given since I see through to the ground. Someone did some crappy patching attempts with some thin pieces of aluminum and a piece of rubber or something. Maybe they wanted to have the Flintstones braking system.

Photos of the right heater channel:








Here's some underside photos of the left heater channel. Doesn't look rusted at all toward the front and seems very solid, but I haven't removed the running board yet to see what the side looks like:




Some shots of under the back seat where the body meets the heater channels. Needs patching:




Here is a pic of my helper, Benny:

Welcome to my blog!

I have created this blog to document restoration work on my 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle with Autostick transmission. I bought it from a fellow north of Jonesboro, AR back around the middle of July 2011. The car was last registered in Arkansas around 1991 and I suspect it may have always been in Arkansas. I live in Southwest Arkansas near Texarkana so it's still here! Here are some photos of it once I got it home. It currently has no engine and the condition of the transmission is unknown.