1954 Ragtop Resto - The Journey

[lardawge]

Hey All!

I decided I wanted to share the journey of my restoration so that I can have some history of the car documented but also to hold myself accountable to finish the project. It is so easy to get a large project like this underway and let life get in the way. This is an attempt not to let that happen. It will also serve as documentation of the pain it is to find parts that fit and people that can do the work at the level I am interested in.

Some history of myself. My first VW beetle was a 1966 hardtop that I purchased when I was 16 that started an obsession with these little cars. It was in primer and lowered Cal look style. By the time I was 25 I had owned around 20+ pre-66 VWs including a singlecab, gia, 21 window, and kombi. I can't remember all of them or in what order I owned them. There are a few that stick out and I have been able to put in a time frame, but for the most part, it was a blur. My whole goal at the time was to find a rust free, accident free, pre 55 vw beetle. With my limited funds, I could not make that a reality. Every car I owned came with its own set of issues and usually accident damage.

I ended up getting married and sold my last VW, a 1961 ragtop, to help finance a house. At that point, I drifted away from VW’s and got caught up in life. Flash forward 25 years and that little voice in the back of my head told me it was time. My first purchase was an Aug 1958 VW ragtop. When I got it, it had a really nice paint job. It was L71 Black. I spend the better part of a year going over every nut and bolt and bringing it to level I was happy with. In the meantime, I found a 1955 hardtop that I started a full restoration on. I finished the 58 towards the end of 2021 and put it up on BaT. I believe it went for the highest price a big window ragtop had gone for at that point. Given how many hours I had into it, I pretty much broke even. My intention was not to make money, I just enjoy the process of building cars.

I then went about getting the 55 into a good shop to do what little metalwork needed to be done. That took the better part of a year and a half. One thing kept grinding on me, I wanted a ragtop. I deliberated with myself and a few friends about putting one in the 55, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It was too cool and original for me to do that. It didn’t stop me from thinking about it though… a lot

Three months after dropping it off to get started on metal, there was an ad posted for a 1954 original ragtop with the documented numbers matching engine. It was in Colorado but was originally a CA car. I reached out to the owner who was kind enough to take my phone call. It turns out he and I knew a lot of the same people from back in the day. He sent me a good amount of pictures that answered most of my questions. I then jumped on a plane out to CO to get eyes on it in person and hopefully strike a deal.

The car itself had been decently taken care of. It was lowered on alloys, which I am not a fan of, and always worry about beating up the bottom of the car and pan. In this case, there were very few signs that it had been lowered other than a few scratches on the underside of the pan halves. It was Strato Silver and the outside had been repainted. The hood had been replaced with a later hood and the right front fender had signs as to why. There was a dent above the headlight bucket. Other than that, the front of the car had zero signs of ever being in an accident bad enough to move the inner apron. It had original front fenders, doors, and right rear fender. Left rear fender was off of a later car. Decklid also looked like it had been worked on and repainted after the repaint. The floor pans had not rusted through which was amazing. I didn’t really want to take on another project but decided to see if I could get to the number I felt comfortable with, I would be happy to own it. We did and I became the owner of a Nov 54 oval ragtop!

I made plans with the PO to come out two weeks later with a trailer. The car had a lowered beam and a tunnel transmission that we needed to take out and replace with the stock beam and a split case transmission as per the agreement. Thankfully the original beam was saved and will now live in the car once again.

Two weeks later, I drove out from Los Angeles to Denver with a trailer and picked up the car. It was a crazy trip given I decided to cut some time off the leg out and went north through Vail. Thankfully I opted for a 4x4 when I bought my Tacoma or I would have been in pretty bad shape. Even with a 4x4 the drive through Vail was nuts. It was 2 hours of white knuckles. On the way back I decided to not risk it and went the southern route through Albuquerque. Other than a lot of rain, it was uneventful. I made it home safe with the car in tow. Let the restoration adventure begin!

Next up, the plan...
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11/2/54 L227 Strato Silver Ragtop - Soon to be L41 Black - Build Thread
1/7/55 L275 Light Beige

[VW_Jimbo]

Looks like a great start! Looking forwards to “The Plan”! I remember having one of those. It was a great thing. There was even a budget! I blew that out of the water, too! All good stuff!

Looking forwards to this story!
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Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[stale air]

Great looking oval (s) congrats.
I look forward to seeing it brought back to its former glory.
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WANTED: Henry Veale Santa Rosa plate frames
WANTED: Brittsan Motors Fresno plate frames
WANTED: Any Georgia plate frames

[tehillah1]

Thanks for posting this up lardawge. I'm with you on starting a thread to ensure the motivation to keep things rolling and getting the project done.
That looks like a really clean car and I love the pic of the two ovals side by side in your garage. What a treat. Looking forward to "the plan"...

[lardawge]

[lardawge]

The plan.

When you initially look at a car, there is a strange thing that takes place, you start to visualize a romantic version of reality. It always comes with a shorter timeline as well as a much smaller budget than reality will later dictate.

So this started out much like that. On my long drive back from picking up the car, I went over how I would get the car back on the road. At that point, I had two cars in some state of repair. I was finishing up a rebuild on the original engine for my 57 (short block built by George Schmidt) as well as a full restoration of my 55. At the time,I was determined to finish the 55. Metal was getting finished and I had a painter lined up. So the plan with this car was to get it back on the road and enjoy it for a while until I was finished with the 55.

After I got it home I went over the car to figure out what it would take to make it road worthy.

1. I had a rebuilt transmission and engine that would go in it. The engine was a period correct Feb 55 and had just been fully rebuilt.
2. I needed to redo the ragtop because it did not operate properly after years of use.
3. The headliner was pretty trashed. It had been replaced by someone at some point and was pretty poorly done. Pulling the top would finish off the headliner.
4. The pan had some surface rust that needed to be addressed as well as some surface rust under the front carpet on the body. So the ratty carpet needed to be removed and replaced.
5. As far as the exterior, the rear had been hit. Not hard enough to do any more damage than cracking the inner apron and splitting the bumper bracket on the right side. At the time, I didn't see the inner apron so I was going to replace the bumper bracket and a crack on the apron where years of flexing with no support did it in.
6. The apron itself had been crushed underneath to accommodate dual mufflers for the big motor that was previously installed.
7. The driver's side rear section of the heater channel was rusted out. I am sure that there is something with the engine configuration that allows condensation to get pushed in from the engine on the driver's side if you operate the heater. My 55 has the identical issue. The passenger side of both cars are pristine.

I went about stripping the interior and pulling the top so that I could get it sorted. I then made plans to tow the car down to Washburn’s Metal to get the rear apron repaired and see if we could get the heater channel patched.

Full disclosure, I do not do metalwork. I do have a good idea of what it takes to do it and understand how things go together and what it should look like when successfully fixed. In my mind, I thought we could just patch the panel behind the running board and call it a day. Remember, at this point, I am thinking to drive it then worry about a full restoration and correct repair later.

Brian gets eyes on it at which point he points out the crack in the inner apron as well as cracks just in front of both bumper brackets and informs me the pan has to come off to do the heater channel repair. Ugh. The main reason I didn't want to pull the pan was that I didn't want to risk breaking bolts off in the body. Usually, any amount of rust in the heater channel adds to the risk. The upside of doing this is that I could repair/replace the stuck choke cable tube as well as powder coat the pan. So I agreed that would be the path forward. Thus starts the run down the rabbit hole.

Brian was kind enough to lend me tools and space and I went about the process of removing the car from the pan. I was amazed at how easily the pan bolts came out of the passenger side. I didn’t start having issues until I got close to the damaged area on the driver's side. That was a good sign because it meant that we could likely replace only the affected area. I was able to get all the bolts out without issue (penetrating oil helps). It took me about 2 hours to get the body off the pan and strip the pan down for sandblasting.

At this point, I was sticking to the original plan with the addition of a restored chassis. I then went home and slept on it over the weekend. The more I did the math, the more sense it made to put the 55 on pause and get the 54 ready for paint. I have been wanting a 3-fold for as long as I have been into VW’s. I don’t know how many cars I want to restore. It is a painful expensive process and finding parts and good skilled people to help is extremely difficult. So I made the tough decision to stop work on the 55 and sell it if possible. The only thing it would take is convincing Brian to take swap cars and take on the 54 (the 55 was already being worked on).

Thankfully, He was up for it. He was working on the rear apron on the 55 and agreed to finish it while the 54 was at media blasting. We would save the rest of the work on the 55 for a later date or a new owner. So I went about stripping the 54 down to just the body so we could send it out and get it blasted and epoxy primed. That took about 2 hours and again, Brian was kind enough to let me take up space in his shop to do it.

New plan, full restoration. The other kicker, I am going to change the color from Strato Silver to L275 Light Beige. It is such a classy color and even nicer on a ragtop. This is probably the most controversial part of the build. I would likely not do that if the color was listed on the Birth Certificate, but given it isn’t, it is getting a color change. It is going to be bone stock as it would be driven off the showroom floor.

Post Media Blasting

Epoxy Primer

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11/2/54 L227 Strato Silver Ragtop - Soon to be L41 Black - Build Thread
1/7/55 L275 Light Beige

[markendee]

Great story so far.

Really looking forward to following this build.

You are so far ahead by starting with a sound car. You said bone stock so keeping 6V?

Good luck and have a ball.

Regards,

Mark.
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Member # 145244

[lardawge]

[OgCalLook]

Congrats Larry for making the commitment to a 100 point restoration.

This is a special car, by far the driest / straightest beetle I've ever owned.
It was never crashed and probably off the road and had infrequent use for 44 of its 68 years.

I thought I would keep it forever, but as the saying goes things change.
You couldn't ask for a better caretaker, I'm sure you will do it justice.

Looking forward to the build.
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Tom

[lardawge]

[aa390392]

It is in my opinion, that you made a wise choice in the color change. strato is nice but there’s no 2 that look the same, metallic is hard to get right.
I to went from Strato to Iceland green, very pleased with my choice as well.
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getting grumpy & less tolerant!


55 ragtop
56 delux sedan
56 Kabriolet

[lardawge]

[aa390392]

Bulli Bill Bowman has a beautiful example OG 54-55 3 fold..good to see his pics for inspiration,
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.
getting grumpy & less tolerant!


55 ragtop
56 delux sedan
56 Kabriolet

[ecallaway]

[ecallaway]

[lardawge]

[EverettB]

I have that photo labeled as 1954 Auto Show on the Reynold C. Johnson page on the site:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/dealers/reynoldcjohnson_sanfrancisco_ca.php

There's also a larger version of the photo there, if anyone else wants a copy or a print out:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/dealers/...w_1954.jpg

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[ecallaway]

[ecallaway]

M018 (not 108).

[lardawge]