1974 VW Beetle 1303

I have been either very brave, or very stupid, and taken on an exceedingly rotten bug as a family project. We shall see how it goes, what I can say for sure is that there is a huge amount of work involved and I am doing this down to every nut and bolt. As I have stripped the car down it has become more and more obvious that nut and bolt restoration is the only way to go with this car.

To give a little bit of history the car was bought for a lady 18 years ago by her parent as a first car, however the lady in question only learnt to drive a few months ago. As a result the car sat outside under a tarp for 18 years without turning a wheel and has, not surprisingly, deteriorated a lot. I went over to collect the car yesterday after spending hours trying to free up the brakes. I did manage to get both rear wheels turning but unfortunately was unable to free the fronts. I honestly think drastic measures may be called for to get those to turn. As a result the car was dragged onto trailer using two garage jacks and a winch, which was still very difficult as the car had been stored on gravel. It also had the unwanted side effect of making the structurally weakened frame head give way completely.





All loaded up and ready to go.



Home at last. You can see in this photo just how bad the rot in the front subframe is from the fact that the front wheels have shifted forward within the arch until they are fouling the arch lip.



Work starts on the strip down. Carpets out, seats out, oh dear floor pan is monkeyed and the heater channel is not looking to clever either, although I think that may be repairable but wont know for sure until I blast all the paint and loose rust off. You may also notice the bars across the footwells? Well those were to fit a pair of recaro seats. They will not be staying! With them fitted you can't use the back seat and there is no fore and aft adjustment available.



Driver side looks a lot more solid but I can't say I am happy with it. The previous owner told me that they paid £1000, and showed me the invoice, to have the floor pans replaced about 10 years ago. Well as you can see the drivers side was done, I do not think the passenger side was touched, but it was done very shoddily. A floorpan for one of these is not expensive I can't see any reason for using several sections of flat sheet. It wont have the structural strength needed as there are no strengthening ribs. The worst part is that the original rotten floor pan is still there underneath rotting away the replacement so the whole lot will have to cut away, thrown away and started again from scratch.



After one morning work the car is looked like that. Now the bonnet is also off, both doors will now open and interior is now stripped out bar the dashboard, seat belts and headling. More photos to come tomorrow provided it stays dry enough to work. I'm not prepared to try and put her in the workshop over the pit until those front wheels are free turning and not liable to fall off!