Greetings all. My name is Alan Dalman and I just recently acquired a 1974 standard Beetle (a Sun Bug actually) that is in fairly decent shape. I plan on eventually turning it into a bit of a volksrod with an extended front beam, dropped front, etc. The basic plan will be to fix the minor rust, extend the beam, get it running and driving w/o front fenders and then see if I want to chop the back and get more radical. The idea is to get it to a certain point, drive it for a while, then maybe take it a step farther.
I manage a small shop in Michigan that services and restores old cars - mostly British stuff (MGs, Triumphs, Jags, Healeys, etc.) and pre-war Fords + other hot rods. We have several VW/Porsche customers and the guys that work here all have Beetles/Busses so I've had a lot of mechanical experience with the aircooled stuff of late. I also have 2 aircooled motorcycles, a '71 Honda CB350 and a '66 Norton Atlas. My daily driver when it's not snowing is a '73 MGB/GT.
Anyways, here's the car as I got it. It had been disassembled and someone had just barely started the process of turning it into a Baja when they gave up. It has some minor rust issues to deal with, although the pan has been pretty well gone through already. I'm missing a few sunroof bits, front and rear glass, seats and it didn't come with an engine.
The guys in the picture is one of my "advisors" on the project - he has 2 busses and a beetle and TONS of spare parts. I think we're going to piece together an engine from his spares over the summer. This picture was after a short but snowy/slushy tow from where we found it to the shop I manage. Here is how we found it:
Intro - Alan aka krafty and my '74
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