My 1966 Beetle rebuild

[supercub]

Painted the passenger door today. Ran out of the remainder of the color can from the fender and the new one I grabbed sprayed like crap comparatively, so it ended up with some runs, sags and other stupid stuff. Or maybe I'm just losing my touch. I'll wet sand and polish it a bit in a couple days to reduce some of that crap and give it that show quality shine. The LED lights in the garage are really harsh and make the color mismatch stand out glaringly. It's much less noticeable in natural light. And it's a lot less noticeable than yellow and red. Ready for the summer show season now. Ha!

[supercub]

Got some hubcaps to complete the "restoration". They're used so they have some dings and dents but shined up good and match well with the condition of the rest of the VW.

So beautiful!

[cdennisg]

Looking great!
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You can't spell sausage without "USA"!

[supercub]

[supercub]

Today I replaced the spring plate bushings on the VW. They were original and done for. Funny thing is I've had the replacement bushings since I rebuilt the car but never installed them. For some reason I remember being scared of messing with the spring plates back then, but I don't remember why. It wasn't too difficult of a job and wow, what a difference the new bushings made. The rear end just feels so much more planted than it used to. In a high-speed corner, the car used to sort of steer itself into a little tighter radius than the initial input after entering the turn. I got used to that over the years but now it stays solid at the same radius. Nice. Also replaced the front trans mount and rear wheel cylinders a little while ago. The wheel cylinders had a slow leak. The trans mount was getting worn out and the shifter would jump a bit when letting out the clutch in 2nd and 4th gear. The new trans mount looked different than the old one. Turns out the old trans mount was actually for a bus. Must have ordered the wrong part back then. That would likely explain why I had to shim the mount to get the rear toe in spec. The car drives much nicer now with the new parts. The rear of the car always sagged a bit but sits fairly level now with the new bushings and trans mount.

OG 60-year-old bushings with close to either 300k or 400k miles. Could still make out the VW logo on one. Done for.

[supercub]

I was just kind of looking around under the VW a bit yesterday and happened to notice that the heater channels are starting to develop some small rust holes here and there. That's unfortunate, but not too surprising since I never replaced the channels originally. They didn't have any holes in the bottom at that time. Even though I don't drive the VW in the winter, southeastern Wisconsin is very damp and humid for much of the year. I don't see myself addressing the rust at this point though. The holes are small for now. Maybe when the engine finally gives out and I have to go through rebuilding it again I'll pull the body off the pan and replace the heater channels.

Rust holes in the driver side heater channel. This side is the worse of the two. There are probably 10 or so small holes between the two sides.

[supercub]

Drove the VW out to Gibraltar Rock near Lodi, WI to do some hiking. About a 200-mile round trip. Stopped to eat lunch at a wayside rest area on the shore of Lake Wisconsin. It was a perfect sunny day with cooler temperatures, a nice breeze and low humidity for the first time in quite a while.

The VW at Lake Wisconsin. Couldn't leave this thread hanging on a rusty heater channel picture.

[supercub]

I finally decided to add a stereo to the VW. It kind of came about on a whim. I was down in the basement looking for I don't know what a couple weeks ago and happened upon the CD player that I had used in my old '85 Chevrolet G20 van. It's just a cheapo Walmart Pioneer unit, nothing special, but it got me thinking. In my closet was a box with a single Pioneer 4x10 dash speaker. Its twin was mounted under the dash in the '65 Riviera. My VW already has a variety of holes drilled in the bottom of the dash that most likely mounted a CB radio at one time. Everything for that was gone when I got the car except for the antenna mount and the holes in the dash. I always have a good supply of scrap wood in the garage rafters left over from the previous owners of the house. I looked around and found a decent old pine board to construct radio and speaker mounts. I mounted the CD player to a piece of the pine board with some metal brackets that I made out of a random section of dryer duct pipe I found in the basement. I used the existing CB holes under the dash to mount the CD player. There was also a hole already drilled to run the wiring through from the fuse box. I used a short length of some clear vinyl tube I had to make a grommet for the wiring. Then I mulled over how and where to mount the pair of 4x10 speakers. After several ideas that just wouldn't work out, I settled on mounting them under the ends of the dash with more of the pine board I had. I made some more metal brackets to attach the speaker mounts to the dashboard. I had to drill three new holes on each side to mount the speakers. I figured what the heck, the dash already has lots of random holes added already, what's 6 more? Got the speakers all wired up and everything seems to be working great. It's strange listening to music driving the VW after 15 years with no radio. The car has no antenna, so the radio tuner is useless, but I have a few hundred CD's that I still listen to. And a whopping zero new dollars invested in the stereo. I like it. I do need to get another 4x10 speaker for the Riviera now though.

Not the prettiest install but it's functional and I can't argue with the price. My dash is starting to look like a remedial high school woodshop project. Nothing is in the way for operating the pedals, the hood release knob is still accessible behind the speaker, and the CD player is far enough back that I don't hit it when shifting. Can't eject or insert a CD if the shifter in 1st or 3rd gear but that's alright. I need to figure out some sort of cover for the speakers.

[supercub]

Built some boxes for the speakers hoping to improve the sound quality a bit, especially the bass. I don't know much at all when it comes to speakers but hanging them out in the open was not the best for good sound. I used more of the dryer pipe metal to build the boxes and then covered them with leftover carpet from when we did the interior on the '65 Riviera. It's green but oh well. Christmas spirit or something. The bass is much improved, and the overall sound quality is a lot better, so the boxes appear to be doing their job. The driver's side was a little trickier to make accounting for the hood release knob, which is still accessible. Adding the boxes was definitely worth it. Still thinking on the speaker covers.

Passenger side box.

Driver's side with indent still has room to pull the hood release.

Added some rubber between the speaker and the mount thinking that sealing it may help the sound a bit too. Plus, it was really easy to do.