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Wed May 07, 2025 8:06 pm

I re-indexed the rear torsion bars today. When I first got the car, the rear end was sagging badly. The untensioned angle of the spring plates was about 17-18 degrees. Bentley says it should be 20.833 degrees for a 1500 equipped with an equalizer spring, which mine has. So I reindexed the torsion bars and put it all back together. I thought I was being smart by over compensating for “tired” torsion bars, but I ended up with about 3 degrees of positive camber. Oops.

Today I tore it back apart and re-indexed the spring plates to the recommended 20.833 degrees (20 degrees, 50 minutes). It ended up as close to spec as possible I think.

Here are some pictures of the finished product. I still need to get an alignment, but that’s on the list!

Wed May 07, 2025 8:44 pm

Looks good. It’s always easier the second time! :lol:

Fri May 09, 2025 5:10 pm

New to The Samba and am looking forward to learning more about my 1967 Beetle.

Sat May 10, 2025 10:24 am

desertrat57 wrote: New to The Samba and am looking forward to learning more about my 1967 Beetle.

Good looking car, but posting it in somebody else’s thread isn’t the best way to learn anything about it.
I would suggest reading this entire thread to start:
School me on the 1967 one year only stuff
Welcome to thesamba (if you ever see this)

Sat May 10, 2025 11:23 am

I did this with the wire for the license plate light. It runs really close to the generator pulley as you know, and gets cut sometimes. Not sure why this occurred to me but it should keep the wire away from the pulley.

Sat May 10, 2025 11:41 am

I’ve been meaning to post these pictures as a suggestion for anyone who finds it helpful. I bought a new Bentley manual because my old one is tattered and greasy. I took the new Bentley to a professional print shop and had them cut off the spine, scan the whole book as a high quality PDF, and then 3 hole punch the pages.

I’m in the process of bookmarking all of the chapters and subsections in the PDF for quicker reference. I’ve used the PDF a few times to print a page so I can lay it there without caring if it gets greasy or ripped when I’m working on something.

I put it together in a binder and I really like it. I’ve added a few of my own odds & ends pages at the back - stuff I came across and wanted to keep for reference.

Sat May 10, 2025 4:11 pm

Or DIY as I did back here....

4th Post

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...p;start=20

Sat May 10, 2025 6:53 pm

aquifer wrote:

I’m in the process of bookmarking all of the chapters and subsections in the PDF for quicker reference. I’ve used the PDF a few times to print a page so I can lay it there without caring if it gets greasy or ripped when I’m working on something…

Great idea! I had my green bus Bentley spiral bound at a shop years ago. The tech didn’t do a 100% job on it and the spiral binding went though the text on the margins in some places, so I was bummed about that. But the overall format was significantly easier to use as a mechanic. I really like the idea of scanning and printing soft copies. That’s what we do at the day job (well it’s night shift but whatever) with our manuals, print em and take them out to the job. I much prefer to throw out grubby paper vs leaving forever fingerprints on an important paragraph :)
The binder format you did looks better than spiral bound to me.

Sun May 11, 2025 5:14 am

scrivyscriv wrote: aquifer wrote:

I’m in the process of bookmarking all of the chapters and subsections in the PDF for quicker reference. I’ve used the PDF a few times to print a page so I can lay it there without caring if it gets greasy or ripped when I’m working on something…

Great idea! I had my green bus Bentley spiral bound at a shop years ago. The tech didn’t do a 100% job on it and the spiral binding went though the text on the margins in some places, so I was bummed about that. But the overall format was significantly easier to use as a mechanic. I really like the idea of scanning and printing soft copies. That’s what we do at the day job (well it’s night shift but whatever) with our manuals, print em and take them out to the job. I much prefer to throw out grubby paper vs leaving forever fingerprints on an important paragraph :)
The binder format you did looks better than spiral bound to me.

I thought about spiral binding, but I liked the idea of being able to replace a smudged or torn page by printing a new one from the PDF, so I went this route.

They make stiff plastic 8.5x11” three ring divider pages, which I inserted between each chapter. Makes it easier to flip to the chapter I need without stressing the holes in the pages themselves. If I do get grease on a page in the binder, I can just print a replacement from the PDF.

Tue May 13, 2025 5:38 pm

Great ideas from both of these methods. I have had my original Bentley manual for over 40 years and it has accumulated a few fingerprints over the years.

Mon May 26, 2025 2:41 pm

FYI… I tried the heat gun on my lobster claw plastic today. Can’t recommend it!
The pebbly surface texture gets soft and flows. It might work on a smooth plastic but you’re asking for trouble on anything with texture

Tue May 27, 2025 6:47 pm

scrivyscriv wrote: FYI… I tried the heat gun on my lobster claw plastic today. Can’t recommend it!
The pebbly surface texture gets soft and flows. It might work on a smooth plastic but you’re asking for trouble on anything with texture

Good to know, thanks for the follow up. I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet, so I’ll most likely just leave them be. One thought: do you think actual fire would make any difference, vs heat from a heat gun? Probably not, but I might get a wild hair sometime and try it.

Tue May 27, 2025 7:04 pm

Here are a few more pictures. It’s running really good and I’ve been driving it around to give it some exercise.

Oil puddles under the crankcase breather tube led me to discover that the oil deflector at the base of the generator stand was missing. Turns out it was relatively painless to replace. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the new one correctly installed, but oh well:

I installed the passenger and rear seats along with a reproduction parcel tray:

Here are a couple of pictures from a recent test drive. I’m going to leave these wheels on it for now. It came with them when I bought it, and I like them for some reason. I have OEM rims for when I want to return to stock.

Thu Jul 24, 2025 11:46 am

Here are a few more pictures of the project.

I rebuilt my wiper arm assembly because there was so much slop in the movement. Turns out the posts had deep grooves worn in them and the set screws couldn't keep the wiper arms tight enough.

Sandblasted, repainted, and installed new shafts. The red wire is just a jumper wire to ground so I could test it before reinstalling.

A picture of the trunk area. Not sure why I took this, maybe for the washer reservoir and the DOT 5 sticker I put on the brake fluid reservoir.

Here are the original wiper arms reinstalled. I sanded off the rusty spots and had some silver spray paint that matched really well.

Here's a picture of the engine. I'm slowly getting everything rebuilt and returned to oem as possible. I acknowledge that the sticker on the oil bath wasn't present originally, but I like it, so I put it on.

Here is a picture of both 67's side by side. The decklid hanging on the wall is the original decklid from the car underneath it. That's the car I restored myself in the 90's. We grafted the louvres into a used 67 decklid to accommodate the 1600 dp transplanted into the car. We painted the original decklid at the same time and I've kept it over the years in case I ever need to use it.

Thu Jul 24, 2025 2:18 pm

Nice work on both of those. I have an extra 67 lid for my car also that I have been thinking of grafting the vents into. The one concern I have is that I probably will not be able to get vent drains to fit. I have a 70 lid with the drains but I do not think there will be enough room between drains and air cleaner. Did you put drains on your vents?

Thu Jul 24, 2025 2:36 pm

Bobs67vwagen wrote: Nice work on both of those. I have an extra 67 lid for my car also that I have been thinking of grafting the vents into. The one concern I have is that I probably will not be able to get vent drains to fit. I have a 70 lid with the drains but I do not think there will be enough room between drains and air cleaner. Did you put drains on your vents?

No I didn't. The 74 donor vehicle didn't have drains, and I never looked into it again. You're right, there is very little room between the vents and the air cleaner so I'm sure nothing would fit in there.

Were drains originally present on a 74? I'm 93% sure that we didn't remove any kind of fastening points when we grafted, so I'm pretty sure there never was a drain on that 74? I've never noticed any issues, and a good friend had the donor 74 before me, and I don't recall any discussion about that either.

Thu Jul 24, 2025 5:07 pm

Thanks for the reply acqifer. I think vw did away with the drains sometime after 1970( hopefully another member will weigh in on that) and that may have been the reason you saw a lot of those black aftermarket covers on alot of bugs after 1970. I do not want to use one of those. I also have a 1974 lid which has the thermostatic vent behind the license plate area and I may try to use that. When driven or left out in the rain did you have any trouble with water in the engine compartment on that 67?

Thu Jul 24, 2025 6:09 pm

No, I never had any trouble like that. Then again, after I did the restoration I didn’t drive it in foul weather very much. It entered into retirement at that time and was driven quite a bit but rarely in the rain and never in the snow.

I did a little google work after you mentioned it, and it seems like the later cars didn’t have a tray, though I did see some examples of the external cover that you mentioned. I wouldn’t want to do that either. I suppose the biggest risk is getting water in the generator. Maybe there is a way to protect that somehow if needed?

Fri Jul 25, 2025 4:27 am

A generator hole plug would probably help.

Fri Jul 25, 2025 6:23 am

Maybe the dune buggy and Baja bug guys will weigh in on what they do to prevent water into the generator or if it even matters.