1973 Sports Bug

[vamram]

[CWAVE]

Your car does look very similar, especially the faded paint... If you find any other photos would love to see them. Thanks for sharing!

CWAVE

[mascrappo]

[CWAVE]

[CWAVE]

Today I progressed, completing work on the wheelwells! YEAH! Doesn`t look like much has changed, but I welded in four replacement patches after cutting out the bad, ground down the passenger rear wheelwell and primed.

Today`s work was particularly difficult as it was -32, and all the welding and grinding had to of course be done with the door open. Man were my hands cold. Talk about diehard VW work. My wife thinks I`m nuts... Heh. She's probably right!

So I haven't yet ordered my lead kit from Eastwood, so that`s still a few weeks away. I will for sure place that order this coming week, as I want to get that done.

Next on the list of things to do now is going to be to strip the remaining interior out of the car (headliner and all glued in insulation), remove the dash and document the wiring behind it, remove all the glass, clean up the surface rust under the front hood and clean up and rustproof under the body.

Putting it that way, there`s still a number of weekends worth of work there. That`s ok though, I`m not in any kind of rush other than wanting to keep moving forward at a steady pace.

Here are a few photos of today's efforts.

Back on the topic of wheelwells, it just occured to me that I'm not 100 percent done there either. I still have to do some seam sealer on the patches to make sure they're completely watertight. I'll give the primer the week to properly dry before I do that, probably next weekend. I keep the garage nice and warm (warmer than my house... heh), so should be just fine by next weekend.

CWAVE

[Rome]

You have alot more motivation and dedication than I do, with your progress.

Will you still weld in the 3 missing fender nuts in the right front wheelwell?

[CWAVE]

There are actually only two missing. The third hole you see is just some factory round hole. Never was a nut in there. But yes, I just have to make my way out to storage to pick up a couple of those fender nuts. Then I can weld them in place. Good eye!

CWAVE

[CWAVE]

Another productive day. Before I start however, I wanted to say that I picked up the latest "VOLKS WORLD" magazine yesterday (Dec 2016 issue), and it has a nice article on the 73 Super (actually "fat chick" Supers in general). Very nice read.

So, now on to my work. Today was all about cleaning out the interior, documenting how the headliner was put in, and documenting the partially butchered wiring harness. The PO had installed a number of gauges through the use of creative wiring. Cutting and splicing into the factory harness. I chopped out all of his stuff, leaving the tell-tale connections so when I get back to the harness I'll be able to see (and figure out) where the repairs need to go.

As I removed pieces connected to the harness, I tagged and photographed everything.

I've never done a headliner, so this is going to be a first. As such, I wanted to record how the original one went in. So I very carefully opened it up to reveal where all the padding went, where it was glued and where it wasn't. I think with my photos I'll have a good chance of putting the headliner in as it was.

I'm happy to report that there was no evidence that mice had ever made a home in this car. That's one thing that I'm always a bit dubious about. I know my yellow sports bug that I have in storage had mice in the headliner at some point in the past, so that'll be a clean up job some time in the future.

Got all the glass removed. The windshield had MANY rock impacts and was severely pitted, so I didn't end up saving that. I still have to remove the glass and mechanism from the doors. Haven't done that before either, so I'll have to find a youtube video that I'll walk me through that. So that has yet to be done.

Amazing how long this work took today. All has to be done.

CWAVE

[CWAVE]

Forgot to mention that I also FINALLY remembered to order the remaining stuff I need to do the lead work. Placed my order for the tinning butter, some more sticks of lead and some tallow for the paddles. Once all that stuff arrives, I'll get to doing the lead work. If the sides turn out well, I'll probably use the same process for the two small dents on the hood and the small dent on the passenger side. Will see how it goes.

CWAVE

[CWAVE]

Well it certainly has been a lot of months since I posted or actually did anything on the car. I was going great guns there for a while, but our cold Canadian winter took hold and it simply got too cold for me to do anything... so I had to step away for a while. Who wants to work on the car at -30. Not an enjoyable experience at all... and afterall, this is supposed to be fun.

Although it's still snowing right now, the temps have been slowly rising and plan on starting (hopefully this coming weekend) if the weather co-operates. If not this weekend, it will be soon.

I did manage to get all of my supplies from Eastwood. It only took them 3 months to ship ( after forgetting to send my order ). After MANY increasingly angry phonecalls (I was pleasant at first, but constant lying got me angry) they eventually shipped what I had paid for at the end of 2016. Don't know what happened there, as I've bought lots from them and never had this kind of trouble. Have to say though, I experienced shockingly bad customer service throughout the entire fiasco.

But in the end, I have the tinning butter, tallow, lead and paddles, so I'm all set to lead the lower rear quarters as soon as it's warm enough to work with the garage door open.

So, that's about (sadly) all to report right now. As I get into this again, I will post my progress.

CWAVE

[onezero]

Really nice work.
Looking forward to seeing its resurrection!

[CWAVE]

onezero : Thanks, can't wait to have it on the road myself!

After 4 months away from my Sports Bug, I'm back at it again. Yeah!

This weekend I did manage to get a bit done on the car. The weather however refused to co-operate, and as I won't put my "R" out into a blizzard, the amount of work I was able to do was somewhat limited.

Did manage to strip out all of the glass and mechanism out of both doors. That was kind of interesting as it was a first for me. Done virtually everything else on an AC VW but pull the glass out of a door. Went reasonably well, didn't break or destroy anything so I'd call it a success.

Hoping for some better weather next weekend, as I'd like to finish stripping and cleaning the inside of the body shell this coming weekend. In the next 3-4 weeks I'm shooting to run the body over to the bodyshop so they can start work on making it look nice. Still a bit of work to do before I can get to that point. Will see how it goes.

[CWAVE]

Been busy plugging away at my VW since my last post.

Since yarding out the door windows, I've seam-sealed all of the repairs in the wheelwells.

After cleaning up the metal under the car (rear and front), and straightening out the front apron, I dug out one of my cans of POR15 and painted all of that nasty metal. Turned out pretty nice, but what a miserable job that was. Missed a couple small spots, but I'll get touched up next time I'm under the car again. I have to say, I have a whole lot of black "beauty marks" all over me from that POR15 dripping on my arms... face... back... heh. Seems that stuff is going to take some time to naturally wear off. Until then I'll have to entertain questions like... "What's that Sh|t on your face..."

Tonight I moved on to deal with surface rust under the hood, in the spare tire well and under the gas tank. That's going to take me a few days to clean up as this part of the car was pretty neglected. I'll have it looking like new in no time.

Certainly am enjoying the nice weather now that it appears to have finally arrived! Going to make sure I take advantage of as much of it as I can. Having a good time bonding with my Sportsbug!

CWAVE

[vamram]

You should've used Master Series Silver. Then you'd get questions about the "silver shit on your face."

Btw, looking great, amazing work! Can't wait to see the finished product!
_________________
Eventually, "we are what we pretend to be.’”
Give peace a chance - Stop Russian-Soviet Aggression!!

'74 Super 9/16 - present, in refurb process.
'73 Super - 6/18 - Present - Daily Driver!
'75 Super Le Grande...waiting it's turn in line behind '74.
Click to view image
Save the Supers!!

[CWAVE]

Thanks vamram! It'll be my pleasure to get it done to show it to all you guys.

Was talking last night to a buddy who did his own Sports bug resto, and he suggested that I use this product in the wheelwells and under the fenders.

Thinking it might be good protection and cover up some of the patch work I did.

CWAVE

[Chochobeef]

[CWAVE]

My buddy used this beige stuff because he figured it'd cover better when the car got sprayed with the marathon metallic... I was thinking of the rustoleum as well. He had good success with this stuff, so I think I'll pick up a few cans of the stuff this weekend and go to town on it...

Hoping to get past the surface rust under the hood this weekend too. The weather here sure is begging me to go out and work on the car...

CWAVE

[CWAVE]

Spent the weekend grinding and painting. Got all of the surface rust, oil and who knows what else that covered most of the surfaces under the hood. LOTS of surface rust, so it ended up taking most of the weekend to grind it all down. There was quite a bit of pitting, so I did my best to grind it all away and then proceeded to paint it all with POR15.

I quite like that paint (except when I end up getting it all over myself), seems quite tough and flows out nice and smooth even though I put it on with a brush.

Also picked up a bunch of cans of that beige rocker guard. Turns out it was heavily discounted when I went to the store, so I ended up buying 10 cans (can always return what I don't use). Wanted to make sure that I had enough for the wheel wells and the insides of the four fenders.

Inspected the fenders that came off the car originally, and they look pretty good save for a few dents. Just some light surface rust on the inside. I'll be grinding that off, then giving it the POR15 treatment followed by the undercoat.

Next I plan on welding closed the last of the holes through the body. There are a couple holes through the firewall where the PO had installed his ignition coil inside the cabin, and ran the output through the firewall. Getting close to being able to haul the body away to the bodyshop.

CWAVE

[Buggeee]

[CWAVE]

Thanks!

Ya, I'm trying to do as much as I can at home before I take it there to minimize the overall bodyshop cost. Given what things cost these days, I'd imagine it's going to be expensive enough. Figure that if I get rid of all the surface rust, deal with the wheelwells and underside of the car that should make a big dent in the bill. There are a few small dents in the fenders, body and a small one in the roof that they can take care of before painting.

I am SOOOO looking forward to getting this on the road. It's going to be awesome.

Another cool thing is there simply are none on the road anymore (that I've ever seen anyways) where I live. I'm on the road in my area every day, and the last time I saw a beetle was 2 years ago. And that car was in desperate condition from what I could tell from a distance.

Many of the young people around where I live don't even know what a beetle is... (that's very sad to me) So it'll be fun to see peoples reactions to the car.

OH. I got my samples from Sewfine the other day, and have been debating what to select for the seats. Here are the samples I got.

I originally wanted to go black on black, with the black tweed in the center and black vinyl everywhere else... but the two blacks are strikingly different looking at the samples (not so much in the photos). The tweed is a VERY dark black, whereas the vinyl isn't anywhere near as black. Thinking it might look out of place combining the two.

The wife wants the grey (or black marble) in the center/seating surface and black vinyl everywhere else, but I'm not keen on that.

Might still go black on black... Dunno. Have to think on it some more. You guys have any thoughts?

CWAVE