1964 Chop Top Build

[banana split]

October 19 2018 - Today I get my second invoice from Rust Blasters for re-blasting my car : pull all of the hoods, doors & fenders off, hang the body in the air, blast everything, get rid of all of the blasting medium, hang everything for paint and then reassemble. That was another $2,338.01
An insane amount of money spent altogether for the blasting and epoxy primer
Ugh... life and the build must go on.
Here she is back at home waiting for another option for body & paint :

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[pierre2]

More please....

[banana split]

A few days later some friends popped by so that I could get the body back on the pan.
Now that the car is painted black, you can really see the dents, waves and distorted metal from all of the chopping, cutting and welding this car has seen. It's certainly a Frankenstein of all kinds of different years of body panels. Whoever the final body shop will be will certainly have their hands full straightening this one out!

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[sportin-wood]

Frankenstein or not - can't go wrong with chromed Fuchs....they make any car look bad ass!
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Paused 66 project bug
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"Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman. He's got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it." --- Jeff Spicoli

[banana split]

Tucked away in the garage with the other projects for now.

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

Looks like I've found a new option for body & paint. A longtime VW friend/acquaintance said he can do the car for me. He said he's hoping to open his own shop and go independent so I'll have to wait this out until he's set up. He has done some beautiful work in the past and said my Beetle would be no problem. Some of his previous work has wound up on the cover of Hot VW's magazine. Super excited about this!

In the meantime I'm looking at my Bug and notice that my front fenders don't match! Both have very different stampings around the headlight areas. Rats! I never noticed this before. There's no way I can move forward with a mismatched set of fenders

I didn't want to buy a new pair of Brazilian fenders because the metal is so thin etc. so I decided to pony up and order 4 new funky green fenders. Might as well go big or go home as they say. I figured this is now a once in a lifetime build for me so I might as well go with the best out there.

A set of 4 fenders + shipping + tax & duty and then add in the exchange rate = a super expensive set of fenders!!
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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

I've now been waiting pretty much a year for my friend to get his new shop opened and fit me in, so I decide to pull the trigger and get the green fenders ordered.

I missed the FedEx delivery at my house so now I had to drive out to Vancouver airport to pick them up. This was all the day before my Bug was scheduled to get picked up to head over to the body shop which is a 4 hour drive from where I live. I figure I'll have all 4 swapped around within an hour or so. Hmm... didn't work out that well.

The green fenders are made of super thick metal - very heavy. After checking them out, I didn't like the stampings of any of them. I tried fitting the front fenders but only 3 bolt holes lined up per fender. The rest were way off. The flange was stamped wrong and would require some cutting, bending and re-welding as well. Crap! Once I had them loosely bolted in place I noticed that the headlight buckets on the fenders are sticking out too far! They would need to be cut loose from the fenders, re-positioned and welded back in place. Oh man

Here you can see comparisons between the black German fender and the green. I fitted a German headlight assembly. Even adding the headlight to fender seal wouldn't make any difference :

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

Hopefully better luck with the rear fenders... Well, no...

What the heck? Now the green ones are too short and don't line up with the bottom edge of my apron! And I can't get all of the bolt holes to line up. Ugh! Plus there are other small fitment issues.

I don't know what's going on. The original German front fenders and the Brazilian rear fenders fit absolutely perfect.

Here are some of the obvious problems with the rears :

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

November 24 2019 - I have the fenders fitted... barely. My friend swings by my place to pick the Beetle up and says he'll have to modify and custom fit all 4 green fenders Crap! Well I'm in this deep so we load the car, I give him a $4000 deposit to get started on it and away she goes...

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

This whole ordeal with the green fenders needing major modifying to fit was really wearing on me. More money outta my pocket. Then I hear that BBT is coming out with their own front fenders and I see all of the tooling they created on their blog. These must be good!
I make the decision to ship all 4 green fenders back to Gerson. They were really good to deal with and wanted to help me out. They offered to help pay for any extra body work or would send me another set of fenders. I said no. I just didn't want to deal with it any more.
I called my friend and said I wouldn't be using the fenders. He was rolling through town soon and said he'd drop them off at my house. I boxed them up and sent them back for a refund.
July 15 2020 my new BBT front fenders arrive!! I'll stick with my IGP Brazil fenders for the rear.

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[Matthew]

Those BBT fenders look nice. I hope they fit…
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1965 Beetle sedan
Click to view image

[Busstom]

I'm surprised that Gerson didn't nail those fenders, especially the bucket depth. Why ship if it ain't shape. I've pondered ordering his fenders for my mid-sixties Bugs just for the pure heft of them, but that's disappointing news.

[Matthew]

I just looked at the Klassic Fab site and there are no front fenders listed.
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1965 Beetle sedan
Click to view image

[banana split]

Well my Bug has been at my friends shop for almost a year. During this time we had many phone calls and text messages... but he never sent me any photo updates
Anyways, he said he was working on my car here and there. The original deal was that he'd work on it in between regular jobs and give me a bit of a good guy deal on the labor. He told me he took the body off the chassis and stored my pan in the corner of the shop with a tarp on it to keep it protected. He mentioned that he fitted and aligned the doors, did some cutting on the roof and everything else was going to be a surprise. OK, why should I doubt him?
We meet up for coffee one day when he was passing through town and he said he's ready for the fenders. Great! This must mean he's been making progress.
Two weeks later I make the 4 hour journey to his shop with my new fenders and I see this (October 18 2020) :

Are you serious!!?? Basically nothing was done! The Bug has been at his shop for 11 months and all he has done is quickly sand & scuff a few panels, cut 2 holes behind the 1/4 windows & patched one, and laid a spare roof skin on top of it. I was speechless. All this talk about working on it and it was lies. I didn't know what to say or do.
Being the nice guy that I am, I zipped my lips. We quickly bolted on 3 fenders and went for lunch with several other buddies. Oh man... what am I going to do?

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

Decision made - the following weekend I head back to the shop with a friend and an enclosed cargo trailer in tow... I'm pulling the car.
A $4000 deposit and a year passes with nothing done is unacceptable.
When I get the Bug back home, I have this mess to deal with :

Car is filthy. It's covered in dirt and road spray with salt - it was hauled to the body shop at the beginning of winter on an open flat deck trailer. The salt has been sitting on my new EMPI alloys for 11 months! Damn I hope they clean up ok.

So... I never got any of my money back , I spent 2 days with the bug up on jack stands trying to clean my suspension and the whole body inside and out. What a nightmare. The sooner I can forget about this and put it past me the better off I'll be.
Now I have to find another shop... ugh!
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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[Busstom]

That stings, for sure (or stung...are we caught up yet?)

My sting is a 1,000 times worse, I'd take your mess in a New York minute over my mess. My concrete contractor just burned me, bad, real bad...

I just had an entire new driveway and porch/walks poured. Part of the project was to repair the garage door "threshold," so to speak, where the garage door rests when it comes down. So that involved cutting and grinding about 1 inch of the concrete surface.

He told me "Oh, we'll use water, so there won't be any dust." But, I had to open the garage door about 15 inches to give them access for the cutter and grinder. So, of course, I taped poly sheeting across the entire bottom to prevent water from being sprayed under the door and all over my stuff.

I return home that evening, walk into the garage from the kitchen, to find that it looks like the season's first snow had arrived! I had to turn around and check my eyes, see if they were just adjusting to the light, I couldn't believe my eyes. I turn back to look again...Yes, yes, my entire garage was completely covered in concrete dust! Top to bottom, front to back, side to side. My black primered Bus was white on top. My welders, grinders, drill press, two rollaway chests with several drawers opened, pistons, rings, engine case, measuring tools, all covered in white. Nothing was spared. The inside of my Bus, underneath, suspension parts, shelving, chemicals, wall-to-wall pegboard loaded with tools and accessories, compressor, blast cabinet, all covered. My summer is ruined. It will take me at least the rest of the summer to empty out my garage, piece by piece, surgically vacuuming first, then blowing off with the compressor, then hand-wiping with wet cloths and paper towels. It's an epic disaster of global proportions. I was quivering in shock, I truly wanted to strangle them, but what would it change? Nothing. The damage was done, and it was all mine.

His response? "Ooohhh, noooo, we can only use water for cutting, NOT for grinding." So the dust was being propelled upward and into the huge gap at the top of the door where it folds open, for several hours. You know what he did for me? On an $18,000 job, he knocked $200 off. Imagine?

Anyway, yeah, I feel the sting. $4k and no work done on your project? I'd have one less "friend" at that point. Sorry to hear about that one.

[banana split]

I've collected a bunch of semaphores over the years and since I need a set for the chop top, I decided to contact Matthew Ross and have him rebuild a bunch of them for me :
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=16303
Matt is definitely a semaphore freak! He really knows his stuff. I wound up sending him 9 very early ribbed semaphores for pre 1953 VW's and one set of extremely nice smooth SHO semaphores for the chop top.

Matt stayed in touch with me during the restoration process giving me updates as he progressed. In the end, I got back 4 pairs of the ribbed and the one set of smooth all fully rebuilt - all disassembled, plated, wired, new springs, lenses, covers etc. They turned out beautiful.

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

So now I've been waiting a year to get my Bug into a local hot rod & vintage car body shop : http://www.oldtimegarage.ca/
They now have room for me! Woo hoo!
November 29 2021 they post up a video :


Link

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

December 28 2021 - These guys don't mess around. In the course of 1 month they have completed a ton of work. They've replaced the rust along the bottoms of both doors & body worked them. All 4 fenders are body worked as well as the front hood and deck lid. Now it's onto the body :


Link

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top

[banana split]

A few photos from December 21 2021

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My Beetles :
1951 Crotch Cooler 11G Split Ragtop
1953 Zwitter
1964 Chop Top