5-Star Rating!
It's all come down to this, Sam has spent a good portion of the last 3 months getting this 1967 VW Sunroof Beetle cleaned up and roadworthy again. Watch as Sam heads out on the 94 mile journey to the Charles Whitlow Rodeo Ground in Florence, AZ for the VW Airhead Campers, VW Roundup hosted by Desert Dubs.
Video Transcript
Lots of fun over here at Nitrocross. Friday, November 10th. Tomorrow I'm getting up early and we're heading down to Florence.
Hopefully, hopefully the 1967 makes it all right.
This car looks familiar. Hey, this canopy looks familiar. Wooohoo. Let's do a walk around this guy.
And send it! Kyle got a heck of a start. Heck yeah, come on Kyle.
Well it's 6:22 morning of. I've got my oldest two kids, my daughter, and then my son are supposed to be going with me. I've got snacks, some drinks, and chairs for three people stuffed in this little car. Anyway they're not yet to be seen. However, we didn't get back from nitrocross till about 9:30-10:00 last night. I'm tired. Praying to the Lord that this car makes it there and back. We'll see how it goes guys.
I got the GoPro on the car. Figure I'll just do like a time warp the entire way down. See how it goes. It's going to be interesting one way or the other. See you guys on the road.
A little over 2 hours later and we made it. It's a beautiful breezy morning. 94 miles I think was the total from my house to here. And she made it without skipping a beat. I mean that she just ran perfectly cruising along at about 60 on the freeway. Not an issue, not an error, not a falter. I can't tell you how elated that I am that we got here. So we're going to sit back and enjoy the show now guys.
Didn't skip a beat on the way down here this morning. And it couldn't have gone as far as any better the drive down. I honestly I am just completely aghast at how well this car drove this morning.
So quite a few Volkswagen out here from absolutely stunning right-hand drive, um ‘53 thereabouts. I didn't look at it too long, but a beautiful, beautiful righthand drive early car. To just make it to the show, have some fun camp, and hang out. Lots of cool Volkswagen down here at the VW Roundup.
And that brings us back home. She made it there and back again, a Volkswagen's Journey. You got to love old Volkswagens. That's why we do this.
It's just amazing that you can take something that was neglected sitting in a guy's backyard. Thanks Kyle. When I got it the engine was locked up wouldn't turn over. I haven't changed the transmission fluid in this thing. Either way with 3 months of work, and that wasn't three solid months, I mean at the end it got pretty solid, but early on we started off kind of slow. There was probably a good 2 to 3 weeks where I almost did nothing on the car. New wiring, new brakes, some new suspension bits, new wheels and tires obviously so we could roll it easily.
There were some niceties that we did along the way we didn't have to have. These new wheels and hubcaps we could have used the old wheels and just put new tires on. We didn't have to have you know a brand new TMI interior. We didn't have to have floor mats and tar boards. We didn't have to have a new steering wheel. There's a lot of things that we didn't have to do, but honestly that just made that, you know, hour and a half, two hour drive pleasant as opposed to completely uncomfortable. All the new window seals and hood seals and fender beading, stuff of that nature, those weren't necessities. Those were niceties, which you guys asked for and I was happy to deliver.
But either way, at this point this is a running, driving, functioning car. I mean I drove this car maybe 250, 300 miles over the course of 3 days and other than those couple issues at the beginning with the fuel pump and the electronic ignition there's been no issues since. This thing has been flawless.
I want to give big thanks to the guys from VW Airhead Campers and from Desert Dubs for putting on and hosting the VW Roundup. Awesome people supporting our hobby with events for Volkswagen owners to go out to and enjoy and just genuine all-around great people. It was nice talking to all the guys out there at the show.
So where do we go from here? I want to say those pieces for the sunroof came in so I'm definitely going to go through, pull that whole sunroof assembly out, cover all the pieces how they're installed. But other than the sunroof, it's really not up to me what I'm going to do with this car. And I'm sorry, it's not up to you guys either. It's up to the owners and where they want to go forward with this car.
Personally I'd like to just paint it back to the original 1967 VW blue. That's the original color of the car and I'd like to go basically back to stock on this car. As far as interior color combinations. I mean, I already did so with a lot of the trim and everything else. It's all back to stock. Sure we did lower it and put disc brakes on it.
But along those lines, lowering it and then driving it around with a full load, I've noticed that our tires do rub. Believe it or not, with that much gap, when I'm sitting in the car, me and my kids and everything else, as I'm turning my tires do rub the fenders just a little bit. And switching to a 135 it might take care of that problem. But I know it would definitely fix the the problem, a 4-in narrowed beam from air cooled which we do offer. And that's going to be something that I'm going to pass to the higher ups and see if maybe that's something we can't throw on this car. Show you guys that whole process on a ball joint car and show you just how high quality those air cooled beams are.
Other than that if we don't decide to paint it. I don't know. It's not up to me. It's not my car. I want to fix that hole in the dash and then from there this car is either A ready for disassembly and paint or B ready for a headliner and carpeting to finish off the interior. With the dash fixed we could put a regular radio in there. Maybe just put a simple stereo system in the car and then it's done.
Engine wise, I do, you know, it does have some leaks. It's a Volkswagen, they leak. So let's take a look at the cardboard here. After sitting for 24 hours that's how much oil she's dripped. And let's take a look at the dipstick. We've got oil dripping on our apron now, but you know maybe a pint low. Everything is as it should be. The car ran well even after driving on the freeway. Pulling off the freeway, never mind the little bit of oil on my fingers.
Those of you familiar with Volkswagens, you're getting off the freeway and putting the car in neutral and letting it post up to a stop light at the offramp. The oil light would flicker just a little bit. Nothing major which tells you that your oil pressure is low or that your engine's running a little hot. After I switched out to that fatter idle jet, no issues driving all the way down to Florence. Pulled into the lot, or just you know pulling off of the highway, put it in neutral, wait for instructions on where to go into the show, oil light didn't come on one time. Driving all the way back home and at certain times on the way back home, since I was a little bit more confident in the car, I had it up to 75 miles per hour at certain points. Pulled off the freeway, put it neutral, let the engine idle, oil light still was not coming on. At that point I was questioning whether or not the oil pressure switch was working. When I got home, stopped the car, let it sit for about 10-15 seconds, turned the key back on both the oil light and the generator light came on. So the switch is working. This car just was running perfectly. 1500 single port good power and obviously still reliable.
So other than, you know, going through and you know doing maybe a little bit of resealing on there, it doesn't need anything. Actually I don't say it doesn't need anything, I would like to try and find some thermostat veins and flaps and all that system to put back in the fan shroud. Just to make certain the cooling system is back to original. But these aren't for certain going to happen. It's not up to me. These are just things that, or ideas, that I'm considering.
I don't know if this is running too long or not but we'll see how it goes. I can't say this project's done because there's still work to do, but I just don't know what else we're going to do so we'll get back to you on that.
This isn't going to be part of our Vlog Series. This is going to be part of our regular series. The engine 1600cc empty unassembled long block that's now an assembled long block with couple bits and pieces on there that we've been test fitting. And in our regular video, not as part of the Vlog series, and by our regular videos that's usually where I'm in front of the camera, cameraman behind the camera, and I'm not shooting at all by myself. But that'll be going on.
Jaime, if you remember Jaime, if any of you have watched any of our other videos, Jaime came along and did some of the disassembly on the car and Gia we did a couple months back. He's interested in doing a German look build similar to my blue Super Beetle that I did with the ‘73 Super Beetle that we picked up from Kyle.
And I'm in the talks of getting, or I should say my son Nathan who helped me load up all these cars and help me get this engine running, he's in talks with the owner about picking up a Bug for his first car. I think I've narrowed it down to the ‘74 with the fully rusted hood and a crushed front quarter panel, or a crinkled front quarter panel. I think that's a prime candidate for, forgive me, a Baja Bug. It's a ‘74, typically a less than desirable car. With the damage on the quarter panel, this far back on the car this is where the damage is, just in front of the fuel door on that car. The damage to that body is not in a place that's easy to get out.
Whereas the ‘68, yeah the ‘68 does have a crushed front end, but that can be repaired with a front clip. So that's also another video that's rolling through my head as far as part of a vlog series is maybe getting that front clip on that ‘68. Getting a new front clip installed, showing you guys that process.
These are just ideas rolling in my head. Nothing's set in stone. Nothing's for certain. So as we're coming to the end of this project. Well, it's not the end. As we're kind of wrapping up this portion of this project, this series, I don't know what the future is going to hold other than a sunroof video. But in the meantime the world's full of good people. If you can't find one, be one. Later guys.
