1970 Standard Beetle Daily Driver Resto

[SdAufKla]

Ok, so I'm a total FNG here on The Samba. I've been a lurker for a long time, though, but until now, I never felt like I had anything to actually contribute.

The Samba has been a great resource, though, and before I go any further, I just want to thank all of the regular contributors for being so generous with their time, knowledge and experience. Hopefully, I'll be able to pay off a little of my VW Karmic debt and at least help keep someone from making the same mistakes that I'm likely to make with this project.

So... I'm finally getting around to restoring my 1970 Standard Beetle.

I bought this in '98 to use as a daily driver, and it did me good service for about 3 years. I really liked it, but when I bought it, I really knew very little about ACVW's. Had I known then what I know now, well, I would have hopefully made a better first choice. It had some serious faults, but the price fit my budget. No doubt it was way over-priced given its issues, but, as I said, I was pretty ignorant at the time in regards to ACVW's (and I really needed another car in the family...).

I had to pretty much re-do all the mechanicals at the time, to include a rebuilt long block engine, a rebuilt stock 4-speed tranny and "soup to nuts" with the brakes. At the time, I just lived with the other problems, but it was, mechanically speaking, a very reliable and fun car to drive.

(And my learning curve, at least about the mechanicals, grew very steep!)

Time, circumstances, and all that usual yada-yada, and the 'ol Bug has been parked for about 15 years. I did crank it up and run it off an on, but really nothing at all for the last 10 years.

Anyways, I've always intended to strip it down one day and really bring it back, and, long story just a little bit shorter, here I am...

I got started a few weeks ago by power washing the Bug. The plan (at least right now... LOL!), is to first refurbish the chassis and then move on to the body.

I know with the body that I have to replace the driver's side heater channel and repair at least one rust-through in the lower rear driver's side fender well. I also know that there's a quarter-sized hole rusted in the bottom of the passenger side heater channel, and the horizontal part of the parcel shelf has several small rust-through spots. I'm mentally debating what to do with those areas, but work on the body is quite some time off, so no major decisions need to be made on those details right now. None of them seem like real "show stoppers."

Seeing as this is my first ever post here, I'll try to keep things a little short for the moment. Right now, I want to be sure that I've "cracked the code" on how to post photos, etc, here.

So, here're a couple of "teaser" happy-snaps to see how things work here on The Samba.

A few weeks ago I partially stripped the interior and pulled the body off of the chassis.

(It's now on a rolling dolly, but more on all that later.)

And here's the rolling chassis.

I've progressed a bit further, and I'll catch the thread up with some more details later.

Happy Buggin'

Mike

[TX-73]

Good start.
I know that for me it was a great help to read up on the bug builds page, gave me a heads-up on how to best work on these cars.
_________________
My 1973 Standard Beetle Build SOLD
Click to view image

[mark tucker]

have fun!!! wish i had time room and $$ to do it to mine....when everything else is done...

[miller0358]

Nice!!! Document everything, take a lot of pictures, and don't throw anything away. Also use the best parts you can find. Used OE is best. Good luck. Jeff

[SdAufKla]

@ TX - Thanks. I have to say that I've read through your build several times. Outstanding level of detail and documentation. I, for one, really appreciate the time and effort you've taken with posting it all up here.

@ Mark - I know it's taken me a lot longer to get started on this than I ever expected, so I wish you luck. Hang in there, though.

@ Miller - Thanks for the suggestions. All sound advice that I've taken to heart reading through a lot of the builds here. Right now all the bits and pieces are going into bags and boxes, and I actually have a lot of pics still to post up.

So, the first post looks like it went up pretty much as I thought it would.

I'll see if I can progress the thread a bit to catch up to where I'm actually at right now.

After taking the body off the pan, I fab'ed up a dolly to hold it.

I shamelessly copied a basic design that I saw in one of the videos on Chris Vellone's website, "Classic VW Beetles & Bugs"

http://www.classicvwbugs.com/

I started with a simple rectangular frame of common 2x6 lumber held together with carriage bolts and added castors to the corners.

I then measured up the distances between the body mounting holes on the chassis and the difference between the heights of the front and rear mounts. Using these measurements, I welded up angle iron body stands for the front and rear and bolted those to the body.

I then lowered the body down onto the dolly, lined it up a bit, then bolted the stands to the dolly.

Yea, I know, nothing very exciting or sexy, but one of those grunt jobs that has to be done.

I figured the work was worth it since this build is likely to take a long time. I really wanted to be able to move the body around my shop and get it out of the way. I mostly do all this kind of stuff by myself, so sturdy, durable and safe were considerations.

I made the overall height what I thought would be comfortable for me to get inside and also reach the center of the roof for doing body work later. Only time will tell if I would have wished I'd made higher or lower. I knew that I did want the body stand / dolly so that I could reach everywhere on the body without the dolly being in my way.

Finally, I'm not 100% sure about doing the painting myself, so I wanted something that was sturdy enough that I could roll the body up onto a trailer to haul the body off to a professional, if I decide to go that route.

Over kill? Hmmm... maybe. But the job's done now, so on to more interesting stuff.

[SdAufKla]

I'm kind of catching up the thread, so here're a few happy snaps of the chassis after I got the body off. I guess these go into the "complete the record" category...

The passenger side floor pan is nearly rusted totally away. Hard to see in the photos, but there are rust-through holes almost all the way 'round the edges of it.

There were no fewer than three layers of PO kwrap welded, pop riveted and glued down to the floor. In these photos, I've already removed the layer of aluminum sheet that was pop riveted and screwed to the passenger floor. Some of it was actually attached to the inside of the body, so I couldn't remove the body without getting rid of the alu sheet.

I've also removed the complete aftermarket battery tray / floor pan section that was glued down to the top of the alu sheet with tar. What you can see below is the bottom layer of welded sheet steel that was, itself, rusting away...

So, the bottom layers finally removed.

The driver's side floor pan was looking pretty hopeful at this stage, but as I'll show later, it was unfortunately not to be.

My next step from here was to strip down the chassis so that the R&R on the floor pans could commence. Pics of that step to follow.

[SdAufKla]

After another power washing, the chassis was partially stripped down.

I removed the shocks, brake lines, master cylinder, pedal cluster, and shifter, then I pulled the engine.

The engine is a build that I did back in '98 based on a remanufactured long block. It only has a few thousand miles on it. I was able to turn the clutch / flywheel by hand, so the bottom end is not froze up. I figure that all it really needs is some freshening up. We'll see.

The transaxel is also a rebuilt, 4-speed stock unit that I replaced a the same time that I did the engine. It was running fine when I parked the car, so I have no concerns that it won't be fine once I get the car done. Should only need an oil change. I'll probably pull it later when I do the painting on the chassis, so when it goes back on, I'll also likely replace the mounting bushings.

Next up was to scrape away all of the old body seam sealer and the tar board in preparation for the new floor pans. Here's the result.

I found the most useful tool to do this work with was a common, 1/2 wide wood chisel. In a few spots I used a rubber mallet with the chisel, but in the main, elbow grease and the chisel worked.

Unfortunately, once I got the tar boards off the driver's side floor, I found a lot of rust rot through. I was good with just thinking I would patch the holes in the rear corners, but once I found more holes under the seat area and in the driver's foot area, I've decided that it will be less work now to replace the entire floor pan.

Here're the holes in the rear corners of the driver's side floor pan.

One question that I do have for the more experienced guys at this point is: What is the "best practice" for handling the holes from the OG factory nails used to hold the body-pan gasket in place?

Seems like the best thing would be to simply spot weld them closed and grind down the over-weld, but I guess you could also just pound the nails down and put a spot of body sealer over the nail heads.

Maybe I'm just over-thinking the problem. In the absence of any strong advice to the contrary, I'm leaning toward the spot weld solution.

So, I think this catches up my progress so far.

Right now, I've got replacement floor pans on order from WW. While waiting for those to arrive, I'll continue with cleaning up the chassis, especially the front beams... 45 years of hardened grease and dirt. I actually thought some parts had been sprayed with hot tar!

[[email protected]]

What's wrong with the heater channels in the body, they look fairly solid in the pics?

[SdAufKla]

[SdAufKla]

OK, so I finally got my new floor pans from Wolfsburg West. More on that later, but I found their service was quick and trouble-free - five working days from order to delivery.

While waiting on the new floor pans, I commenced to deconstruct the old ones.

The first thing I did was to take some detailed measurements of the old floor pans.

As it turned out (at least on the passenger side), the new pan fit dead on or within 1/16" of these, but taking the measurements only took a few minutes. Better to have and not need than need and not have.

Actually removing the pan was pretty straight forward. I only did the passenger side rather than doing both at once. Call it a decision based on my awareness of my own inexperience in doing this. I figure if I somehow screw it all up royally, I want to limit the damage

Here you can see that I took a bit too much off the rear side of the end of the front cross member leaving a hole. I wasn't sure what this actually looked like as I was removing the material, but now I know. On the driver's side I'll grind this area down but not open it.

For most of the removal work, I used Eastman's spot weld cutter. I know reviews for this tool are all over the place, but I found that it worked very well.

I used coarse sand paper over areas of the original spot welds to make them stand out. I then center punched each of the old welds.

I have a fair amount of experience with machine shop work, so I followed the normal practice of applying a drop of cutting fluid / cutting oil to each spot weld before cutting it out.

I was careful to make sure that the cutter's pilot was cleanly in the center punch hole and started the cuts with slow to moderate speed until I didn't get any chatter from irregularities on the surface of the pan. I then increased the cutting speed but not to full to maintain control and avoid cutting too deep.

In the end, after cutting out 40-50 old spot welds, the tool is just as sharp as when it came out of the box. Seems like good kit to me.

The only troublesome areas that I had were along the tunnel and front cross member flanges where the old floor pan was nearly totally rotten and through rusted. Here I couldn't find the old spot welds. I used a 1/2" chisel and hammer to remove the old pan.

I wire brushed the heck out of the tunnel and front and rear cross member flanges. I also ran a flap-wheel over some of the rougher areas, but still had some pitting in the worst areas.

I gave the flanges a wipe down with acetone and applied Eastman's rust converter and allowed it to do its thing (mostly in the residual pitted spots). I then gave the flanges another wipe down with acetone and sprayed on a weld through primer.

To keep this post from getting too long, I'll continue the up date in the next one.

[SdAufKla]

As I mentioned, I got the new floor pans from Wolfsburg West. I shopped around a bit, but based on reviews and comments here and elsewhere, I figured the extra $30 or so I spent was worth it if I saved myself some fitting up problems.

Here's a happy snap of the driver's side floor pan and accessories.

The pans were shipped in a sturdy corrugated box that seemed designed just for that purpose. Although not shown, both pans were in very heavy poly bags and the accessories were in bags inside of another box used to keep the pans from banging each other in transit. WW does note on theis web site that slight damage in shipping should be expected, but I couldn't find so much as a scratch. All of the parts are painted in a pretty heavy gray (primer?) paint.

Out of curiosity, I did use a sheet metal gage on the pans and they did spec out to 18 ga. The pans and parts are clearly "generic" and not exact matches with the rib stamping on the OG pans. The seat tracks, in particular, are quite "simplified" when compared to the OG seat tracks. However, my seats do fit on them, so I'll live with them.

(I considered using the OG seat tracks, but the passenger side is through rusted in several spots along its bottom edge. I will save the OG seat tracks, and may be able to use them on a future project.)

Here's a comparison of the OG jack point and the new WW part.

You can see some detail differences, but the new WW part made from stock that's very close to the OG part, so I'll use the WW part to save some work for now.

(I will also save the OG jack points to maybe use later.)

I saved the OG heater control cable tube and battery clamp and bolt.

The tube and bolt cleaned up and are usable, but the clamp part is really too far gone. I'll source one from another vendor. (I've found a couple places on line that sell the battery clamp parts).

Trial fitting the passenger side floor pan showed only a couple of spots where the new pan didn't fit well.

In particular, the inside corners of the cross members and tunnel needed a bit of trimming.

Overall though, as I mentioned in the last post, the new pan fit either exactly or within 1/16" of the measurements I took from the old pan, and I got a few measurements that varied by that much between the driver's side and the passenger side.

I did need to adjust the fit of the new jack point.

This only took a few minutes using the bench vice to slightly bend the mounting tabs so that they fit snugly to the new pan.

I traced around the bottom of the floor pan following the edge of the tunnel and cross member flanges and also marked out for holes to plug weld on the jack point and batter clamp bolt.

I averaged out the spacing between 10 or so of the factory spot welds and got 1-1/4", so that the spacing I'll use with plug welds.

I then used a punch tool and 1/4" drill bit to make the necessary holes on the pan.

After making all of the holes, I used a wire brush to remove the gray paint and then sprayed over the areas that will be between two parts or the flanges with weld through primer.

I then plug-welded (button welded, etc) the jack point and battery clamp bolts onto the floor pan. For appearance sake, I ground down the tops of the welds to make the pan look more like the original (since the factory spot welds are nearly flush).

After this prep work, I was ready to weld the new pan into the chassis.

[SdAufKla]

As with many things in life, the majority of the work is in the preparation, the job itself is often easier.

Welding in the floor pan was quite straight forward.

For anyone who's never done this, I'd offer up a few suggestions -

When welding thinner metal to thicker metal, your welder settings should be based on the THICKER metal. From there, you adjust to get a good weld. However, remember that you have to get the weld hot enough to penetrate the thicker material first, then control the weld pool to avoid burning through the thinner material.

If you base your weld settings on the thinner material, you'll likely not get penetration on the thicker material and your welds will not hold or you'll have to try to build up the weld resulting in blobs of cold weld all stuck together.

So, for this job, I used .030 wire and my welder's auto settings starting with the thickness of the tunnel flange (1/8"). I then actually had to dial things down and finally wound up with the settings for just a bit over 18 ga.

(My welder, a Millermatic, doesn't actually indicate voltage or wire speed in in/min, and this is true for most non-commercial welders. You'll need to adjust your own welder according to its controls and test your welds.)

The fillet for the weld does not need to be any thicker than the THINNER material, so the plug weld doesn't have to actually be any thicker than the floor pan. It can be thicker, but it doesn't need to be. (If the thinner material and the weld fillet are the same, they both have the same strength. A thicker fillet just means that if the joint fails, it will be because the thinner material itself failed - assuming the weld has good penetration, etc.)

I started my plug welds in the center of the holes on the underlying base material, either the tunnel or cross member flanges. I built up the weld pool using pulses on the welder's trigger, but generally kept the tip in the center of the weld. I watched the pool form and spread to the edges of the hole in the pan, pulsing to keep from over heating and slightly pushing the pool outward to close the hole. As soon as the weld pool filled the hole in the pan, I stopped.

Now, I did burn through a few spots on the edges of the pans where the holes were close to the edge, but these were all self-inflicted because I tried to push the weld pool just a little too far.

As with the welds for the jack point and battery clamp bolt, I ground off the tops of most of the plug welds to more look like the flush factory spot welds. Although I probably could have gotten the welds between the seat track the tunnel, I just left those alone.

I wire brushed the welds clean, vacuumed and used compressed air to get any bits and pieces out of the cracks, gave the welds a wipe down with acetone and sprayed the bare metal with a self-etching primer.

That should hold them until I get to resealing, refinishing and painting the chassis.

So, now onto the driver's side.

[mikewilkinson007]

I am going to very much enjoy following this project. Thanks for the updates and pics!

[Q-Dog]

Looking good.

For the nails that hold down the pan seal (and the carpets) I find no reason to do anything other than pull them out.
_________________
Brian

'69 Dune Buggy
'69 Beetle Convertible
'70 Beetle

[Frank Bassman]

Excellent thread will definitely be keeping up with it!

I used the WW pans about 3 years ago on my '70... didn't do a body off though.
I thought the quality of the pans was excellent, the protective paint they have IS thick, I cleaned it up and undercoated the car. Didn't scrape the paint off.

The seat tracks that came attached to the pans I found to be very sturdy too. My original pans didn't have the seat tracks, they had been hacked off once upon a time. Still, those WW tracks are pretty solid and no issues with being well planted whatsoever.

Will be following this thread, very good work!

-Frank

[rutzpa]

very nice, I need these threads to keep me motivated

[SdAufKla]

@Mike W. Thanks for the props. This project will no doubt take quite a while, so bring a BIG bowl of popcorn!

@Brian I appreciate the comment and suggestion about the factory nails.

I think that I'll probably just nip the heads off and leave the shafts to plug the holes. I can't find any evidence of rust around any of them, so they don't seem to have created any issues thus far.

I see that a lot of guys use pop rivets or self-tapping screws to hold the body seal in place anyways, so I suppose that I'll be making my own holes later to do the same. Oh well...

@Frank Thanks for the observations about your WW seat tracks.

The factory tracks have a "T" shaped profile while the WW tracks have an inverted "L" shape. This means that the matching tracks on the bottom of the seat frames don't fit as snugly on the WW tracks - there's a bit of play.

However, there were also plastic (?) seat track covers (bushings, runners?) that were on the tops of the factory tracks that I removed during disassembly. I'm hoping that these will install on the WW seat tracks and take up some of the slop.

I'm not confident of the long term durability though. These plastic track covers won't be supported as well by the tops of the WW seat tracks, so they might break or wear after a time.

In the long run, I may regret not trying to re-use the factory seat tracks, but then again, this might turn out to be a non-issue.

Bottom line for me right now is that the seats will fit onto the WW seat tracks, and as you note, the WW seat tracks are sturdy.

@rutzpa Thanks for checking in. I've gotten a ton of motivation from so many other build threads here. I'm glad that someone else is finding some motivation in this one. Hopefully I'm able to pay off some of my Karmic debt to the others who have posted here before me.

Cheers, everybody!

[Frank Bassman]

Your old tracks are for 71-72 beetle/super.

The tracks on your new pans are for up to '70. They do not require the plastic slider. But if your seats fit loose that means those tracks are WRONG for your seat.

I don't know why you have those two year only tracks in there... maybe the pans are not original. OR, more likely, since your bug doesn't have the crescent vents behind the rear quarter glass, your car was a LATE year model '70 beetle that left the factory with the newer rails. This is what I would imagine happened.

I went through this hassle when I put in new pans. I decided it was better to get different seats with proper rails than unweld the WW rails, and re weld the flimsy CiP1 replacements I had bought. I got a good deal on two nice front seats for 70 bucks so it was a no brainer for me.

That is actually what I would suggest you do! It will be less of a hassle. My seats were in deplorable condition so it worked out for me too. There will be NO play in your seats and you won't have to worry about the availability of those fragile little plastic sliders in the next 40 years. A little grease on the rails and you're good to go for the next eternity.

Humor me and take pictures of the old tracks, close up, and the bottom of your seats too. This will tell us everything.

-Frank

[pistolpetecowboy]

I thought the replacement seat tracks were a little lacking compared to factory as well.
I welded a piece of angle iron across the front between the tracks, sorta like the stock one the seat return spring hooks to.
(1970 Standard).
_________________
70 Beetle, 70 Beetle, 71 Beetle, 71 Super, 73 Super, 74 Beetle, 2000 Vintage Speedster, 2020 Jeep Renegade, 71 Squareback

[SdAufKla]