Chassis    Body          Engine         10/99 Progress picture
 

1/1/99-Well, now it is almost a year since I've had this thing in pieces all over the garage and basement.  What have I got done?  The chassis is pretty much  complete.  The engine I might use is in my other bug, a '78 that was until recently fuel injected.  The unfinished body is now bolted to the chassis for an alignment check. Still to do--a lot. Re-weld the left heater channel and front bulkhead, replace spare tire well. Grind ugly welds. All the body paint prep and painting, the interior, and on and on.

4/11/99-Haven't updated this page in over four months!  No excuses other than the usual, "too busy".  The body is in self etching primer and has been smoothed out thanks to filler, glaze, and lots of dry sanding.   I got four nice new fenders that seem to fit OK.  I'm waiting on a set of standard bearings to see if I can use the crank case in the new engine.  I'm getting some help spec'ing my engine from the experts at  WWW.AIRCOOLED.NET.   I've gotten good advise from these people for several years in the rec.autos.makers.vw.aircooled newsgroup.  Claudia, my wife, talked me into going with all new seats, a la Scat, rather than salvage and adapt them from a scrap car.

Still a lot to do before the interior.  Last Friday I took my daily driver '78 Super Beetle Convertible off the road and out-of-service.  She was tired.  I bought a '74 Ford F100 pickup to fill in as my temporary daily driver.  Hopefully I'll finish the bug soon and will only need the pickup for Home Depot and shrubbery runs. You can carry a lot of shrubbery with a V8, however,  I miss the fweem.

6/24/99-After what seemed like months of sanding, I finally painted the body last weekend.  I'll put more text in later, here are some pics.  I didn't update for so long mainly because the work has been very repetitive.  I'll just put the unedited contents of my evening Snappy session on this page.

7/23/99-This whole web page is a mess, I must reorganize it! Since last month I've done wet sanding, compounding and buffing to the body to flatten out "orange peel".  Put in sound deadening panels (Dynamat), painted the bottom of the body with POR-15, installed the Berg front transaxle mount, rear anti-sway bar, put on brake lines and cables, welded clutch tube (made a custom bracket for that per John Henry at http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/4000 ), painted spindles, calipers, misc chassis parts. Ordered and rec'd seats, wiring, all the rubber, more engine parts, about 10 UPS boxes worth of goodies.  Lots of small tasks. Looking for someone to do the headliner, if you want to know why, take a look at the JH's web page. Pictures of the July progress here.

10/06/99-Obviously been some time since the last update.  Just haven't had a chance. I've got the body all bolted on, fenders, most all the rubber, the windshields, the rear popouts, the seats, most of the dash, the wiring, lots more. Thumbnails that you can click on to enlarge here.   The engine is going to be almost completely new stuff and 2160cc.  I'll be adding a page for that project. I'm waiting on a set of German main bearings to get started, otherwise I have all the parts (I hope).