1967 Covin Nein12

i took a half day from work yesterday to get the covin low loaded from its storage in birmingham down to home in warwick. john turned up at 2pm to drag it on the beaver tail and by 3pm was dragged back to its new home.







i can highly recommend john. He's based in Birmingham, reliable, insured but still is keenly priced and always happy to help pushing cars etc.

Later in the evening, instead of dozing off on the sofa, i got myself into the garage to do a brief 1/2 hour of tinkering...ended up in their for 2hours, getting all the junk out of the car and stripping out the carpets and insulation.

the floorpans are really good but still require stripping back and repainting. the paint is bubbly in places with minor surface rust under the paint. not bad for original pans. i think i'll be running the covin without carpets initially so will paint the floorpan white to match the white gelcoat.





the fruits of my labour:

Have you considered using rhino liner for the floors(bed liner) I used rhino liner on the top and the bottom of the floor pan for my beetle and found it worked like a bomb. Protected the underneath of the floor pan against rust and chips,and worked as sound insulation in the car. Worked so well used in my astras kadetts and monzas. And I was very surprised to find it now available in colours

had a good session in the garage last night (with a few beers too). the plan was to get the electrics going....and there was light! everthing works - lights, hazards, wipers, water squirter, indicators, horn, radio!, dash lights. the electric windows work but are not fully wired up so jumped them straight off the battery.



whilst cleaning out under the bonnet, i found the fuel sender, but its kippered....bits rattling in side

the last thing i did was to strip out the radiator and coolant expansion tank, so i can remove the exhaust manifold on sunday night. then i can get a drill in there to redrill the starter motor bolt holes. then i can get the starter in and tuning the engine over on the ignition switch.


Matt

Hats off!

I looked at a Covin (which was actually based on a fastback as apposed to a Beetle) earlier this year.

Unfortunately, considering everything else I had on my plate at the time I just couldn't justify it. Shame really as I love this style.

I do believe it is still for sale in the Biggin Hill area if anyone is interested I'm sure I have his number somewhere.

All the best with the project.

Yes, it was on the road as a Covin, I cant seem to remember the date on the last tax disc though, I think it was either 2002 or 2004.

At the time I looked at it, which must have been around about May/June he was asking £1000. It was fitted with a rebuild CVH at the time. The car was also full of spares although some of the costly parts were damaged which once again, racks the costs up.

I guess it depends what you want from a project really, its different for everyone. However for me, at the time it wasn't overly feasible.

its been off the road since about 2007. the car is known to the covin club back in about 2002. other than that, no history at all.

Looking good.

I'd been mucking about with the starter motor and ultimately had a gut feeling it was kippered. Previously, i fitted a new ignition switch and had wired the starter up, but 50% of the time it would engage and 50% it would just spin up. Had a browse on ebay and got a recondition bosch cvh unit delivered for a reasonable price. this confirmed my suspicions as its engages every time now.

with that sorted i could refit the exhaust manifold which i bolted in using some new bzp m8 socket heads.


..and because i was getting fed up tripping over the exhaust pipes, i chopped those off....
before:

after:

Certainly not elegant but i will tidy up the tips later. i weighed the discarded chrome tips and was surprised they weighed 2kg- more weight saving on top of the 12kg saved from ditching the whale tail.

moving to the front of the car, a goody box arrived on saturday morning



i had planned to do a light service of the brakes to get it through the mot but the front discs, whilst clearly "new" and unused were quite rusty. So, i took the plunge and ordered the dropped spindles, new bearing kits, new outer tie rods and new balljoints, topped off with new solid discs drilled to 5x130 stud pattern. discs were from machine 7 and the rest from Veewee with 10% off for my first order

This week, the plan is to clean up/paint the N/S channel where the floorpan bolts to the body is so i can run my 8mm and 6mm fuel lines in there. I'm fitting new stainless m8 floorpan nuts/bolts/washers whilst that is happening. As the paint dries I'll be building up the front hubs on the bench - the spindles need degreasing and painting. then these can be fitted - 165/70/15 kumho's fitted yesterday

I really like the vaguely knackered look of your car.