Hello everyone.
I finally have a minute to get into this great site and introduce myself to you all. Name's Nick and I'm a full time tow truck driver in the great city of Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Havent seen too many other canucks on here, so if you live in the "Great White North" drop me a line.
I have been an avid VW enthusiast since I was 15 as a 1973 Super Beetle was my first ride. (Thank's Mom!)
I have also owned a Manx kit on a '69 chasis, a '64, a '71 and an '83 Rabbit. I bought another '73 super last september from a coworker and had started to do a little work on it.I promised myself I would do a body off rebuild starting this fall but I happened across a complete running 1974 standard bug for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I mean who could say no, right? The car was in great shape, little rust, 78,000 original miles. But... What to build? I had restored or mildly customized all the previous bugs and I have the '73 for a daily... Have to build a Rod!
__________________
"I used ta do drugs... I mean I still do drugs, but I used ta to." Ricky, Trailer Park Boys
Last edited by BugTower; March 10th, 2013 at 04:33 PM.
Reason: Update
Finally got some free time to sit down and post my build project!
I have always enjoyed the tear down part of the build, (who doesn't?) and at the same time have that deep down feeling of dread at what I am going to find underneath and how deep I have gotten myself in this time...
Surprisingly the rot factor was no too bad! The car had been sitting in a compound behind an RV lot for ten years. After removing the artifacts and OTHER leavings of what appeared to be an entire rodent civilization I found a few issues...
- Heater channels rotted with a little hillbilly patchwork applied in various sections. (have not identified the material or bonding agent as of yet... waiting to hear back from NASA)
- Front beam shock towers rotted through.
- A bad rear quarter panel replacement by a small town GM dealership?? Judging by the ultra chunky brass welds, performed sometime during the late '70s early '80s era...
- A few small patches of cancer on the quarters.
But all in all not too bad!
All that I had time for in 2011 was stripping the bug down and getting it stored for winter. Buying the house in 2012 so garage renos, including heat, will be coming in the future! Planning to start the chop come spring...
Planning a 4" hybrid Capella chop as I could not find a second roof to use, but I managed to find a second set of doors. I will keep all the body parts I strip off the bug and use as much as I can in the rebuild. Some kinda weird ocd compulsion to keep the car "original skin".
Oh yeah, cool fact... the one door I got was the driver side door of the old Saskatoon Volkswagon Restore race car... nice piece of local Veedub nostalgia!
Spring 2012... Ready to chop!
- A pillar losing 4"
- B pillar and door frame losing 3.5"
- C pillar losing whatever it needs to until the roof has the line I want! (NO RAKE!!!)
I also welded in a support bar of square tubing just under the front corners of the quarter windows and clipped the nose and tail off.
The first cut is the deepest! When I cut through the first A pillar I had that last snap of panic! "Sh*t! What am I doing?!"
No turning back now! I proceeded to have a few more rum and cokes and continued cutting.
I cut on the high line of each post and through the sides of the rear quarters and around the firewall.
That was it... she was topless.
T O P L E S S
I then cut the posts at the bottom line. I also cut the firewall off the roof.
I decided I did not want to relief cut and tweak the pillars so I figured I would just split the roof and line up the A pillars. Once the A pillars were lined up I clamped them in place, then measured and welded in supports. I then tacked the A and C pillars.
Time for a break!
Time to deal with the doors and B pillars. I measured the top portions of the B pillars to cut and move back to line up with the bottom portions attached to the body and tacked them in place. I used the original front curved pieces of the door frames, then measured and cut new longer corner sections out of my spare set of doors and tacked those together.
This whole process seemed fairly daunting at first but all went smooth!!!
Time for another break...
Now i had to figure out a good way to tie the C posts together and recreate the quarter window frames.
Being a newb at this I was stumped... Until one late night, really late night, (running out of build season, late September 2012 already and chilly at night) while sitting and staring at my pile of parts in a bit of a rum haze, I had one of those moments!
The front bottom corner of the door window frames had the exact curve I needed to rebuild the quarter window rear corner!
Now just have to cut strips to weld over the seem inside and recreate the window strip in that corner and cut panels to tack over the vent holes!
Time to reattach the roof halves! I cut a couple strips wider than the gap in the roof out of my spare door skins. Seeing as the metal would already have a bit of natural curve, I figured this would avoid any heat kinks or flat spots from the tack welds. I used some lengths of wood to hold the strips in place and cut and arranged them to keep the roof shape while I tacked the strips in.
I also had another "Ahaaa" moment! How to fill the gaps in on the front and rear window frame sections! With a minor amount of manipulation pieces of the A pillar cut offs were basically the same shape!
Time for a couple more things before winter 2012.
Tack in vents, tack together grill cut out and fab and tack in the gas cap area. Then get the bug ready for storage, and wait...
Plans for the spring...
Got house renos planned so project time maybe short, but the garage is part of the deal, including heat! That will be a fair trade!
Unlimited build season... Sweet!!!
When time allows, I plan on grafting my oval skin and grill into the back window, smoothing in door window gaps and other little body holes. Taking the body off and fixing up the pan, doing the beam extension and rear suspension work, and cleaning up the heater channel rot on the bottom of the body.
__________________
"I used ta do drugs... I mean I still do drugs, but I used ta to." Ricky, Trailer Park Boys
Last edited by BugTower; March 10th, 2013 at 04:47 PM.
Soooo... Probably done the only thing I will accomplish with Ava this summer... moved her ten feet away from the garage so I can start stripping stucco... Weak!!! Oh well, all for the greater good...right?
Decided to go with early model decklid to match the oval, am currently sourcing that piece...
__________________
"I used ta do drugs... I mean I still do drugs, but I used ta to." Ricky, Trailer Park Boys
Ok, so funny story...
This spring our next door neighbors decided to create their own landfill project. Bags upon bags of garbage began to pile high in their backyard. Since there was no fence between my yard and theirs when the fire inspector payed a visit he figured I owned both properties and so left me a letter in the box with the threatening contents of a rather large fine. Upon learning this my "better half" promptly freaked out and decided my car must be the cause of all the concern, even though it was neatly wrapped in a tarp. Well after sorting things out with the city inspector and taking the heat off my property my wife still figured it was best if I put the car in the garage... and who was I to argue?
So even though I am still in the process of massive house renovations my project rolled back into the shop!!!
__________________
"I used ta do drugs... I mean I still do drugs, but I used ta to." Ricky, Trailer Park Boys
Hey all, been gone for a while, just had time to check in. Haven't gotten squat done on Ava, but just scored a super cool free boat. A 1968 Lane wildcat, will post some pics soon...
__________________
"I used ta do drugs... I mean I still do drugs, but I used ta to." Ricky, Trailer Park Boys
BugTower Project "Ava"
I found a few issues... 
? Judging by the ultra chunky brass welds, performed sometime during the late '70s early '80s era... 
(NO RAKE!!!)
Re: Project "Ava"
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