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Sat May 05, 2012 4:43 am

My VW mechanic mate and I travelled about 4 hours west of Sydney with a trailer to a country town near Bathurst to pick up a 72 bug that he had bought sight unseen for the grand sum of $200.

Im kicking myself for not taking any pictures of the road trip but we had a good laugh as we carefully loaded her up and headed home, cautiously on the lookout for rats and snakes....she'd been sitting in a paddock for 2 years since a kangaroo hopped onto the bonnet. We dropped 3 bug bombs in the back to kill off any spiders and kritters as we drove

Got her back to Sydney safe and sound and that should be the end of the story as the plan was to take the good bits and crush the shell...

Slowly the plans changed as the body was very solid...having been an inland country car all its life it was almost immune to the rust that affects most coastal old VW's in Oz. We decided to rub the paint back a bit, repair the damage and give her a flick over with GMH black...I would use the bug as my daily driver, mainly to travel to the shed where we are restoring my 77 microbus
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=435443

Took the guards off and whizzed the paint back last week and my mind started racing. Decided I can't do half a job on a good car so I made an offer to buy it and do it properly. The panels are off to the blasters and last night/today I got busy with the paint stripper, clean and strip discs and sander. Made some good progress

Once upon a time the car was a Herbie

Plans from here are to finish getting her back to bare metal the next 2 weeks. I'm using a product called Extrol to keep the rust away as I go. The panel beater who shaped up my van will give it the once over and then it'll be painted. Going the same color as my bus which is ocean blue and white...still working on which panels will be what color.

Going to lower it a little and put some nice wheels on :)

Sat May 05, 2012 4:58 am

Nice, glad you decided to save it!