1961 very original pearl white deluxe

[RobE30]

What a great car.

I am sorry to hear about your friend. I hope your memory of him is strong each time you drive this car.
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1960 Ragtop bug- work in progress

[pastellgreen]

Next step was to source a original painted wheel, as the original wheels of the car had been repainted in a wrong colour. Sourcing the wheel was easier than I thought, I found it in the stock of my now dead friend, that had to be dissolved.
Unfortunately, it wa not possible to get a dead match on the L 479 clay beige and so I used a RAL tone as close as possible:

The rims got blasted and powder coated in gloss black. After, I started with the inner portion using a flexible masking tape.

and after drying finishing the outer rim, again using masking tape

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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[pastellgreen]

With fresh painted wheels:

Just a few word about pearl white:
Since years I'm trying to investigate the truth of this colour. I tried 8 or 9 different supplier in Europe and UK, including Standox, Glasurit, always unhappy with the result. No temple studio here. Just one part of the results:

Trying them at the object:

White colours are the most hard to get right. The problem is, most supplier use wrong pigments, such as red. Even if you found a situation where you think, the result may be ok, you will have a not matching appearence in another light.

The original formula was:

98.4 parts 1051 / 80 white
01.0 parts 1066 / 12 yellow green
00.6 parts 1052 / 40 black

These are the original mixing colours:

Now you get an idea of what yellow green means. There is not even a trace of red or orange in it.
But here, we see part of the problem:
"White" yellows with time, the more the longer it is not exposed to daylight (as you can see at the colour sample above). You will find darker areas of pearl white under the hoods and in the b-pillar and flanges of the doors.
When the supplier try to find a formula for this colour, they don't have the orignal formula at hand, and even if, they don't know how the pigment yellow green exactly was. When they take a original paint sample from today they won't find the pearl white as it was freshly delivered. So they add some pigments that haven't been original part of pearl white, because they try to get a match on the pearl white as it looks today after more then 60 years of environmental influences, now with more yellow in it.

If we have to paint a car partially, this is the right way to do, even it really is very hard to find a dead match.
If we want to paint a car completely, what is the right way? As delivered, or as 60 years later?
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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[pastellgreen]

For a partial paint job I always send the glove box door to the supplier and hope he will get a close formula. But it didn't work out.
Here I show you the best match I could find: The supplier is MIPA.

But I was still not happy with the result. So I ordered the basic colours and have taken hours and hours to adjust the formula, mixing by hand to reduce the appearance of red by adding white black and green. Now, two years later still not finished...
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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[pastellgreen]

Wednesday, 5 of December 2023. On the way to work, the little original car got hit in an accident. Both fender have been crunshed and also the front quarter panel was pushed in. The opponent in a VW T5 bus was changing the lane and oversaw the beetle.
But it could have been worse. Now, the car really deserved an exterior paint job. It took me five months to convince the assurance of the opponent to pay for it.

First problem was to find some original fender of that time, NOS when possible. The biggest problem was to find a front fender with the right details. Cudos to Björn Schewe, who gave me a good used original one.
Second problem was to find someone, who was able to pull out the front quarter panel wihout destroying the originality
Third problem was that by now the right formula for pearl white had to be found.
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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[pastellgreen]

I disassembled the car by myself, as I don't trust any workshop to take enough care on all the rare parts. For the rear fender I was lucky to find a correct NOS one. The front fender was given by Björn Schewe, an original good used one. The fender had been sandblasted and got 2-stage epoxy primer, that was the condition how the paintshop got them. The owner of the paintshop was very kind and offered me to use a mobile sand blasting unit to do little areas with surface rust. They also closed wrong holes vy welding that have been added during the cars life, the most I hated was the one for the antenna.
The most hard thing was to convince the assurance to pay for the repair. They just wanted to repaint the damaged areas, but I insisted in getting a car with an overall equal apperance as it was before.
The other thing was the paint. I decided to go with acrylic enamel paint from Standox. But as always, at the end the shade of paint was not dead on, what puzzles me every day. We used a spectral analysis, and took 4 hours to manually adjust the result. But still, there is too much yellowish-red pigments in it, too less black, too less white.

The car was ready three weeks before its big trip to south france again.

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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[volx808]

It came out nice, regardless of the problems it faced. Color looks alright to me, very clean, great work.

[House]

Looks good Pastell!
Sorry you had to go through that…

[wcfvw69]

[pastellgreen]

[Ovally]

[pastellgreen]

A comparison as example, why the paint question puzzles me.
The car stayed original painted inside. When you look at the A- or B-pillar, you won't notice the changeover between original and new paint. But during driving through different lighting situation, I always compare in and out.
Above I described how paintshops use spectral analysis and always the result is they add red or orange pigments. That is totally wrong, but given through the analysis.
Driving home from France, I took the picture above remembering that I already have a similar picture of an original painted former car from me, taken 10 years ago but in an similar angle to the sun on nearly the same point of time during the season. So I took that picture to have a comparison later on the screen using the same mobile camera!
Here it comes:

Here you see the result of having too much colour pigments instead of white and black, also too much red in it. Pearl white ist nothing else than a very light grey with green in it (see above the colour samples of the ingredients). The colour is "colder" than one might think. However, we will never be able to see the original paint how it was delivered from factoy...
Unfortunately, I don't know someone having the 60's Glasurit book with these samples beeing able to make an exact copy from the yellow green pigment. I'm convinced there is not much change to it over the years, the most impact happened to the white pigment.
Please note: the original painted car above has a repainted set of fender and front hood! For me, that result would have been close enough for me to repaint the current car with. But it simply did not work out.
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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[pastellgreen]

[Ovally]

Thanks for the link.
It's a complete exchange engine ... X I bought from a VW dealer in the late 80s. The engine has 34,200 km on it so far. I'll investigate it further soon.

Regards.
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VW Bug Oval 1953
VW Bug 1200 D motor
Porsche 911S MFI 1970
Mazda 929 Hardtop 1977
Mercedes SLC 180 Roadster 2018

[pastellgreen]

During the second rebuild of the engine, I was lucky to source NOS parts for the muffler and heating elements. These have been sandblasted and flame plated with aluminium and additionally with ceramic.
Note: The muffler are the original ones, how these cars left the factory. They are unique as the aftermarket muffler from Ernst, Lange, Sebring and others are different in detail. Two visible unique things are the VW stamp and the situation that the left end of the preheat tube is casted togehter with the flange:

Since have plated the first muffler (from begin of this thread) with the same methods, I put 33.000 Kilometers on this muffler, summer and winter. The coating ist excellent, still no rust or damage of the plating. But I will change it to one of the originals above, as these are period correct.

The flaps stayed untouched, as there is asbestos rivited on.

As one heater element missed the connecting rod, I ordered 5mm round steel an just bent it like the existing part from the other side.

Of course I had no tool to produce the bajonett stamping, so I bent the rod in a U-shape, what works fine.

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1961 pearl white beauty from Portugal
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=759951

[Eric&Barb]

If you are driving this beetle, should install the metal loop vacuum line between the carb and distributor. That will keep fuel out of the distributor vacuum canister where it damages the rubber diaphragm, it would have been added on by the dealership in 1962 or 63 due to this. Fuel line looks a little too long and should pass thru the metal loop to keep it above the vacuum port on the carb.
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In Stereo, Where Available!

[glutamodo]

The vacuum loop pipe is a functional change, but I think he's trying to keep the car as original as possible. My own Pearl White 62 Bug was built just a week after that change. I learned about it when I bought the Bentley reprint of the Workshop Manual not long after it was first issued in 1990. At that time my bug had the original engine but sadly, the distributor was a German 009. But since I now knew about the original loop pipe I looked for one at swap meets in the early 90s, and have been running it on there ever since I changed back to a vacuum distributor.

You can see that the Workshop manual does talk about a retrofit pipe, which I also found (bigger loop than depicted) and I've been running on my Baja bug for a long time now as well. I wonder if one of those would be a compromise.
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Andy T.

"What is Glutamodo, Horror of Toyko, besides total, fiendish, quality-a-you brain!"

[pastellgreen]

@ Eric&Barb and glutamodo

Thank you both for chimming in.
By saying

[Eric&Barb]

[wcfvw69]