1974 VW Beetle - Cal, Rat 356 racer mashup

Sourced some cheap pre 66 rear lights for my beetle. It's a 74 but someone has took the time and considerable cost to put early front and rear clip, wings and bonnet on but left the later tombstone lights on.
I got some bits of lights from multiple Ebay purchases to make up a set. One was quite new and been painted orange, reflector and all



The other was pretty rubbish, really bent and rusty. A few hours over the last few days of straightening, filling and sanding and I have these




I'll try and get them fitted after work in the week.
Next up is to remove the Pope's nose number plate light as it has the finish of stonechip and give that some love too.

Cheers, I just wanted to get as much use out of it as possible this year and have been lucky up to now with some gaps between jobs to get stuff done. That's COOL about the ITB's, will have to see if I can find any pictures of that. Definitely going to get busy with the carbs over winter. I'm going to make a manifold up like I did on my 924 because I've not got enough to do!

Finished work early today and seized the opportunity to fit the rear lights

Before



After




Happy with that, hopefully get the exhaust done at the weekend if I can get this lot together



I've cleaned up the 4 into 1 and painted it in Wilkos finest BBQ paint and found a gorgeous looking stainless motorbike silencer which will be welded up to a 90 degree exhaust bend and to a homemade flange to create what should be a pretty amazing looking exhaust.

It's a universal slip on one from Ebay

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232655369097

The welding looks ace for £16

"Expect much cursing."

From the neighbours every time you start it up !

Little things adding up to a nicer whole.

James

If it's too loud, simply add a turbo to the system and hey presto, less noise and more tyre smoke!

Well I wanted a stinger but it would block the pavement.

I came so close to buying a cal-look beetle as my first car in 1992 (I was 20) but the one I really wanted had a terrible interior and under massive time pressure (long story) bought a nova sr instead! (insurance was much cheaper too as it was only a 1.3 and hadn't been modified). A case of what might have been.

It had everything - pastel blue, wound down, empi 5 spokes, can't remember what the PO had done to the engine but it went well on the test drive.

The PO had given me a lift in his 3 year old e30 325i two door mtech2 as we just happened to live close to each other but the beetle was in a lock up about 15 mins away from us.

That journey in itself had a massive effect on me (in as much as it properly ignited my love of e30's - have had two since).

But he'd put me off buying the car from him by telling me a story, whilst he drove like an absolute knobber to the beetle's lock up garage at his parents house, of him having gone to prison for killing his best friend in a previous car crash (he'd crashed the car he was driving whilst tanking it around and his best friend had gone through the rear-window and died). He told me as if it was some sort of badge of honour or pity - I'm not quite sure.

He was only recently out and there was definitely something 'off' with him, a manic energy that worried me/made me feel like this is how you end up after doing a stint in prison. He was v upset when I decided it wasn't the car for me. Looking back now I think he was suffering PTSD from the crash, from the guilt, from his experience of prison, from how his life really wasn't turning out like he'd thought it would. He had all the yuppie trappings of 'success' and yet the bloke was a basket-case.

He was a salesman working for a garage in Johnstown in Wrexham at the time and this garage had alot of exotica in it - pride of place being a black lancia integrale evo or evoII - black with a light brown interior - when I visited.

But there was something off with the whole garage......and subsequently the owners (about 3 or 4 months later from memory but I'd moved to Birmingham by then) were arrested for selling ringers/cut and shuts and generally running the sort of garage operation that tars every garage with it's bad press. When I got there for the lift the two blokes that owned the garage were there - and were aggressive in their attitude to the PO (he was a salesman) when he told them he was just nipping out with me to sell his car.

It really struck me as 'is this how life is working for someone else?'

I think he got out before things went badly for the owners (who went to prison from memory) but I remember thinking the PO seemed to find himself consistently in the wrong environment.....

I remember us travelling back (at an indicated 125mph down the wrexham bypass) thinking 'I hope I get out of this alive'. I'd crushed the top and bottom notes of the £3,300 I had in cash in my pocket (he wanted £3,500 for it....!!) - more cash than I'd ever held at any time in my life - to a sweaty, mangled death by the time I got out of the car at the end of the journey.

I walked/ran away from that garage with his eyes on me and I actually feigned going up the drive of the wrong house just in case he was counting the number of houses in order to nick it later - I was that worried about him - I jumped over the fence into the other garden, waited for a couple of mins and then carried on to my grandma's house.

So I'll be following  your post with great interest - it brings back alot of (mixed) memories.

Absolutely freezing cold today, my hands are killing me and I'm rolling around on the drive.

Old exhaust off without too much trouble, rear tin has to come off to get the top nuts off the studs.
New manifold tried, about 25mm too narrow on one side, back off again and some gentle persuasion. Back on again and some brute force and it's on. Do up the studs and clamps on the J tubes, phew.

Heat risers not lining up, bit more brute force and finally get the bolts in with contorted frozen hands.

Offer up the silencer and the bend fouls the inner valance. Out with the grinder and take out a scallop and paint the cut edge. More frozen contortions to get the bolts in and I'm done.

As I'm lying on the cold hard drive with painful hands and covered in dirt I think I'm getting too old for this. Maybe I should just give it a rest with the old cars.

Then I get up and stand back and look at what I've been doing for the last 2 hours.







Yeah, that was worth it. Time for a cup of tea.