Der Grune Kafer - My 1967 build - Photo Heavy

[Sesh_Vdubs]

It should be noted that this has taken me years to get this far. I work, have a family, love to travel and camp and fish. So my time is limited to an extent when it comes to working on this.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

Since I will be on air I opted to run all of my lines within the tunnel. The front lines come out the side of the tunnel on the passenger side near the fuel pump. From there they will be a mix of hard line and stainless braid. In the rear the nylon lines exit the chassis with the clutch and throttle cables. There are 4 bulkhead fittings under the rear seat nearest the battery that will be used to connect the manifold to the rest of the car.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

A few months ago I through a front clip onto the pan to take some measurements. While it was on the pan I realized that the look I wanted was not being achieved. So I went back to the drawing board. I ordered 3" drop plates and sleeve bags from EvoResto. Max is freakin awesome FYI.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

I also do not like the fact that the wheels are so far forward in the fender when its dumped, so I took a set of balljoint arms and extended them an inch. Not an easy feat to accomplish. Thankfully I have a small fixture table and a big welder. I did test an extra arm after welding it the same, it did not break and when I cut through the weld I had perfect penetration. I extended the pitman arm as well.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

Detailed and powder coated the rear caliper brackets.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

Installed shift coupler, shifter and delrin bushing that I picked up from Robert King aka @king_vw61

[Sesh_Vdubs]

The front beam is beautiful. Ordered it as a 5" narrowed setup as I want to run a wider 17" wheel. The air shocks are not what I want to run so I will be replacing them with the Evaresto sleeves. Will be doing some mock up in the coming weeks to see how I want to modify the beam to make them work. Really just poor planning on my part not the manufacture of the beam.

[scarabee]

Beautiful so far! Can't wait to see it finished.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

[Sesh_Vdubs]

I have recently started working on the body by stripping down the original paint to get to bare steel. I found pounds of body filler in the front clip and in the rear apron. Nothing that cannot be repair though. Below are some photos of that.

[Apostle_]

Wow! Your attention to detail is inspiring!

[Sesh_Vdubs]

[Sesh_Vdubs]

So a few weeks ago I decided to tackle a small side project for the car. I picked up a speedo rebuild kit. Replaced the gels, all new lamps and lamp holders, new rub gaskets, glass and chrome ring. Reset the clock to 00000 since the car will be all brand new. Went ahead and powder coated the speedo housing while I was at it.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

On Fathers day this year I drive to Riverside CA and picked up a roof section from a 1960 Ragtop car. Brought it home, cleaned it up and repairs a few areas of cancer and prepared it for a graft. I ended up having to remove portions on the inside rail to access the captured nuts. Some had broken off bolts in them. That was a fun adventure.

[Rome]

Very impressive build!

Correct spelling in German would have "umlauts" (two small horizontal dots) over the u in grune and over the a in Kafer.

Umlaut vowels have a different pronunciation than non-umlaut vowels. The equivalent letters if you don't have the umlaut symbols on your typewriter would be the letter "e" (e.g., gruene Kaefer) but you don't want to redo your entire lettering. American English computer keyboards have a few different options for typing an umlaut, found per internet search.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

[Sesh_Vdubs]

A few weeks back I moved forward with the graft of the rag top section into the 67 body. I spent countless hours checking and double checking my measurements and calculations. I cut in a rough opening, set the ragtop clip into the rough opening and verified my dimensions. I then Cleco'd the two pieces together, taped out my cut lines and made the cut through both pieces of sheet metal.

[Sesh_Vdubs]

Graft of the ragtop is complete. Again, this is the first time I have ever tried anything like this. Came out pretty well. I will be leading the seams in to get the basic shape before epoxy primer. The roof shape of a 1960 is slightly different than a 67. More photos with the finished welds to come. These pictures show how rough some of this was. A lot of lessons are being learned.

[sportin-wood]

Nice progress pics. The amount of welds is insane! Thanks for the progress pics so we can follow closely. Keep it up, man!
_________________
Dave

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1966 Bug project
1973 Thing project
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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

[Sesh_Vdubs]