The listing found on eBay included these images
I am more than happy for people to make suggestions and tips on how to do anything
with this car, especially people drawing from their own experience, I may only be
20 years old but I know that you can never learn enough. You never know it all haha
Sorry about the changing image sizes different cameras used with different resolutions
and I set all the images to be resized to 40% of original so it’s ended up like this sorry
Seeing these I foolishly decided she was the car for me so I borrowed a trailer and
headed down to collect here from March in Cambridgeshire, and dropped her off at
the yard at work later that Saturday (25-08-07).
As can be seen in this the front bumper was a little worse for wear
And as such I decided to remove it
Over the next 3 or 4 days I was working the night shift so throughout the night I began
dismantling her, at this stage forgetting I would have to some how get her to my house.
Yet another great example of me thinking before I act haha.
Very soon the reason for the bumper hanging off was discovered, this is one side of
the bumper mount
After fashioning new bumper mounts
I began looking around the rest of the car to see what other delights may await me,
I made various patches to parts of the floor
In the middle of the night on September the 7th 2007 I drove her the 12 miles from works
yard to my drive way, where she would then site for about a month while I was away
at university.
After having looked through many pictures and a good few looks around, under, and
through the car, I deemed it necessary to split the car in half. This would be a major
operation involving fully removing the entire interior, disconnecting most of the wiring,
the steering and fueling. And only when this is completed can the fixing between the
body and chassis can be removed.
Interior removal
Fuel tank out, this is the front torsion bar and steering
State that the heater channels and floor pan were in was no where near a serviceable vehicle.
Who would have thought eh? After seeing those original pictures in the eBay advert there
wasn’t a hint of what might lie beneath. But after about 36 long hours of work me and a
couple of mates finally got the curse word split in half!
And yes that is one of my cats appearing to be stuck though the body work.
Although a lot has gone on in the past 6 months tomorrow (22nd June) I am hoping to fire
the ole girl up for the first time in nearly a year to make sure she still runs, I hope to be
able to upload a video!
Well the good news was I got her started first time sounds as good as ever.
Anywho back to the story so far, I had decided that with university deadline coming up
and Christmas, that I would do no more to her for 3 weeks. In the week between Christmas
and New Year I had taken position of these lovely panels they were to replace the front
bumper mounts.
They were half the price of a new pair and all they’ve done is sit in a bloke’s garage! So
I got on with fitting these, cutting out all the failed material and lining these up
Once these were all nice and fitted I stripped the rest of the body work. Doors, windows,
arches, bonnet, boot, seals
Due to it being the middle of the English winter I found myself in the workshop doing a lot
of stripping cleaning and spraying of parts, I began by stripping the doors to prep them
for spraying at some point in the summer.
Wire brushed the wiper arms
And sprayed them up
Along with the air box
Had a good look over the wings, removed all the loose rust and dirt then painted them up
with rust killer
Next was the fuel tank, which I discovered to be 40 liters which surprised me for a car
of this age. As you can see it was in quite a rusty state.
After cleaning and sanding it looked better
And after the rust killer and re-spray it looked a lot better
And as soon as that I was on my way back to Huddersfield for another 3 months of
university and the beetle would have to sit until the odd weekend I had free.
I realized I had been making very little progress of late and it was due to the fact the body
was still on the car even though it had been separated I had to put it back on as there was
no where else to store it. But luckily my dad still had the trestles from when we had one of
the wings from his plane in the work shop. After standing on these I believe them strong
enough to take the weight of the body. It begins
And there she has sat for about 3 months now steady as you like!
This enables me to role the chassis in and out from under her as I please. This has meant
the full chassis has been able to under go full restoration work.
A few days later this began
It seemed the most sensible to work from the front backwards so I began with removing
the front beam
A nice example of the restoring process, the steering damper
Once the front beam was off I did the usual cleaned it all up and sprayed it along with the
front section of the chassis
With this complete there was a clear improvement to be seen.
Moving further back there was a scary sight to be seen in the form of this crack
So the process of installing new floors would begin. To do this the pedal cluster must first
come out
And the old floors would have to be cut and chiseled out.
I am more than happy for people to make suggestions and tips on how to do anything
with this car, especially people drawing from their own experience, I may only be
20 years old but I know that you can never learn enough. You never know it all haha
Sorry about the changing image sizes different cameras used with different resolutions
and I set all the images to be resized to 40% of original so it’s ended up like this sorry
Seeing these I foolishly decided she was the car for me so I borrowed a trailer and
headed down to collect here from March in Cambridgeshire, and dropped her off at
the yard at work later that Saturday (25-08-07).
As can be seen in this the front bumper was a little worse for wear
And as such I decided to remove it
Over the next 3 or 4 days I was working the night shift so throughout the night I began
dismantling her, at this stage forgetting I would have to some how get her to my house.
Yet another great example of me thinking before I act haha.
Very soon the reason for the bumper hanging off was discovered, this is one side of
the bumper mount
After fashioning new bumper mounts
I began looking around the rest of the car to see what other delights may await me,
I made various patches to parts of the floor
In the middle of the night on September the 7th 2007 I drove her the 12 miles from works
yard to my drive way, where she would then site for about a month while I was away
at university.
After having looked through many pictures and a good few looks around, under, and
through the car, I deemed it necessary to split the car in half. This would be a major
operation involving fully removing the entire interior, disconnecting most of the wiring,
the steering and fueling. And only when this is completed can the fixing between the
body and chassis can be removed.
Interior removal
Fuel tank out, this is the front torsion bar and steering
State that the heater channels and floor pan were in was no where near a serviceable vehicle.
Who would have thought eh? After seeing those original pictures in the eBay advert there
wasn’t a hint of what might lie beneath. But after about 36 long hours of work me and a
couple of mates finally got the curse word split in half!
And yes that is one of my cats appearing to be stuck though the body work.
Although a lot has gone on in the past 6 months tomorrow (22nd June) I am hoping to fire
the ole girl up for the first time in nearly a year to make sure she still runs, I hope to be
able to upload a video!
Well the good news was I got her started first time sounds as good as ever.
Anywho back to the story so far, I had decided that with university deadline coming up
and Christmas, that I would do no more to her for 3 weeks. In the week between Christmas
and New Year I had taken position of these lovely panels they were to replace the front
bumper mounts.
They were half the price of a new pair and all they’ve done is sit in a bloke’s garage! So
I got on with fitting these, cutting out all the failed material and lining these up
Once these were all nice and fitted I stripped the rest of the body work. Doors, windows,
arches, bonnet, boot, seals
Due to it being the middle of the English winter I found myself in the workshop doing a lot
of stripping cleaning and spraying of parts, I began by stripping the doors to prep them
for spraying at some point in the summer.
Wire brushed the wiper arms
And sprayed them up
Along with the air box
Had a good look over the wings, removed all the loose rust and dirt then painted them up
with rust killer
Next was the fuel tank, which I discovered to be 40 liters which surprised me for a car
of this age. As you can see it was in quite a rusty state.
After cleaning and sanding it looked better
And after the rust killer and re-spray it looked a lot better
And as soon as that I was on my way back to Huddersfield for another 3 months of
university and the beetle would have to sit until the odd weekend I had free.
I realized I had been making very little progress of late and it was due to the fact the body
was still on the car even though it had been separated I had to put it back on as there was
no where else to store it. But luckily my dad still had the trestles from when we had one of
the wings from his plane in the work shop. After standing on these I believe them strong
enough to take the weight of the body. It begins
And there she has sat for about 3 months now steady as you like!
This enables me to role the chassis in and out from under her as I please. This has meant
the full chassis has been able to under go full restoration work.
A few days later this began
It seemed the most sensible to work from the front backwards so I began with removing
the front beam
A nice example of the restoring process, the steering damper
Once the front beam was off I did the usual cleaned it all up and sprayed it along with the
front section of the chassis
With this complete there was a clear improvement to be seen.
Moving further back there was a scary sight to be seen in the form of this crack
So the process of installing new floors would begin. To do this the pedal cluster must first
come out
And the old floors would have to be cut and chiseled out.