Watch the video to see the latest progress on our 1967 VW Beetle restoration.

Video Transcript

I don't like that wire. I don't like that wire. I don't like that wire. I don't like any of these wires. All these wires are getting out of here.

So this is something I have said I'm going to be doing since the very beginning and today is the day where I'm actually going to get started. And we'll start by completely removing all of these wires. Well, except for the dome light harness. We're going to keep that because that'll help us pull the new harness through. And we'll keep the main harness in place through the rear fender well, again, because that will help us pull the new harness through there. But other than that, every other wire in this car is going bye.

Oh and the wires for the turn signal switch, I'm keeping those wires.

All right now that I've got all the wiring in the trunk cut out I'm going to pull all the wiring out of the inside of the car. And you know what sometimes it's easier just to, then it is to go through and try and pull out old wires. And oh, we got a melted wire in here. We’ve got a couple of melted wires in here. Yeah, we definitely had some prior damage on the wire. And this is, actually looks to be our coil wire, our main wire from our ignition switch back to the coil. Which isn't fused, so it's a good thing we're replacing all this wiring, isn't it.

As for the voltage regulator and the generator we're just gonna ixnay it and we're going to put in an alternator. There's just no reason why not to upgrade while the charging system's out, along with the entire engine. And it's not a matter of if that generator is going to go out or possibly this old regulator, but a matter of when. We might as well just preemptively pull those guys out and upgrade while it's easy.

I got no more use for this guy.

This guy, I got used for it. We'll use him to pull our new harness in from the back. Oh and uh keep a dome light wire one wire at least from here down to there because if you have a headliner in place it's very difficult to run away from here to there if you don't have the wire to pull the new one through.

Since I already went through and pulled all the stuff off last week when I had cleaned up the engine compartment, not a whole lot to do besides a couple wires on the transmission. And of course the main starter wire. And honestly, the positive battery cable looks to be relatively new and in good shape so I'm going to leave it. No sense in replacing that. So now all the old wires are out I can work on putting new wires back in.

I forgot to yank out the headlight harness and the turn signal harnesses from those old fenders so I'm going to take care of that real quick. And you know what, I'm just going to leave them. I'll take care of them when I get up there. We'll cover that later.

I've got the tape up the front of this harness nicely enough to get pulled through the corner here. Doesn't have to be fancy. Just has to be nice and tight. And this is the point if you were going to be running aftermarket gauges any sort of, you know, extra wires, etc. you would want to wrap those wires in with your harness currently. That way they're ready to go at the front of the car when you need them.

This harness is taped up and then tape them up with this guy. Let's cross the two. This portion I want taped very well because if this harness comes free in the middle it's not much fun running new wires and drag lines, etc. to get the wires pulled through. That's wrapped up.

The middle of our harness. This would go to our voltage regulator. This needs to be wrapped up as well nice and tight. All right, silicone lubricant, one of your best friends when it comes to restoring cars.

So all of this wire, basically up to this point where it branches off for our left tail light, our engine, our right tail light, and starter, all this wire has to get pulled up to that point right there. That's what I'm going to start on now by pulling from in here.

Let me flip you around so you can see where I'm working on the inside.

You see our connection here between our old harness and our new harness. And we're going to keep on pulling this to this point right here comes out roughly right here. And we'll go take a look in the engine compartment and see where our split in the rear is at.

And that's just about perfect. I can actually go through and push in a little bit more pull in out. But this is our starter and our right tail light harness is right here and all of our engine wiring right here.

Alrighty, let's go inside and unwrap that stuff. Also I gotta see if I got some grommets. I need to get some taillight wire grommets. The grommet there looks in good shape. I wonder if I actually have any of the chassis grommets through there. Hopefully so. If not I might have to come to a standstill and get some of those on order.

So, all these wires here can be unwrapped. We're going to keep those wrapped up because we still have to feed that up into the front of the car. So, these wires come from our generator. So we've got those those, those, those, and that's going to come out here. However, I got to see if I actually have a new grommet here because this one was absolutely destroyed. Bear with me a moment.

So yeah no general rhyme or reason now. It's just do what I can while I can because I'm waiting on stuff and things and yeah.

All right, back here is easy enough. That's going to go to the engine. That goes to our left tail light. It's a beautiful tail light, don't you think. This goes to our right tail light. This goes to the starter.

Now for some reason, and don't ask me why, to the best of my knowledge reverse lights were a factory option in 1967. When Wiring Works went through and started putting together his harnesses way back when he never installed, or never decided to include, the reverse light harness. So when we went through and we made our replica harness we didn't include it either. I think it's kind of a silly idea and probably should be included for those at least want to include it, but at this point this harness doesn't have the reverse light harness. Which is kind of the bummer. I'm going to pull one from one of our prototype harnesses and install it, but just keep in mind those don't normally come with 1967 harnesses. And seeing as I've done so many wiring harnesses you'll very rarely find me go back to the instructions to wire them.

That's good. That's good. Let me go steal a reverse light harness from something.

Okay, a little bit of hook and a little bit of crook, I pilfered for this harness. This will attach to the nose cone which I'm not going to be able to show right now because like the nuts that held the engine in place, the switch is covered and just absolutely all sorts of stuff that I can't even get to right now. But I can at least run this harness through.

All right so with that I can put all this hard work back in place.

Awesome, all right.

Reverse light, reverse light, tail lights, everything for our engine. Much better. Still need to put in a firewall seal and a rear engine seal, but at this point I think that's going to wait till tomorrow.

All right so just kind of an interim update, it is day two on this particular video. I'm just kind of putting together a list of all the parts I need. Rear engine seal, firewall seal, random stuff throughout because I don't want to come into a point where something like a little rubber grommet is going to stop me from working like it did yesterday.

So like well, I want to get that hinge pin out so I can put some mirrors in there so I gotta get to work on that.

I've confirmed that the wiper motor works. The wiper switch doesn't. I've got to test some of the other switches. I've got some other components I need to test as well.

I've got to also locate some items like that 67 only emergency flasher switch and knob try and come up with something to work for that.

I still need to figure out what I'm going to do with that hole in the dash, eventually. We've got a repair section, but it doesn't quite cover all the damage. Yeah we've got this, however with the amount of damage that they did to this thing, unfortunately I'm going to need more just to get past this lip. So I need a dash section for this from a donor car. Honestly, that's going to be the easiest way to repair this section. You can't do anything about it other than fix it at this point.

Anyway that grommet stopped me in my tracks yesterday on that section, but I've got a lot to do. So like I said I'm making a parts list and I'm gonna go grab a whole bunch of parts. Get the other parts that I need on order and then I'm going to get to work.

All right so, I've sprayed the engine down with some degreaser and I'll let it soak for a little bit. Hopefully that should uh make things a little bit easier to work on. A little bit cleaner to work on anyway.

I do have everything capped off. Even that little guy there I took out the T fitting there so let this purple power zip industrial purple degreaser do its thing and then I'll come back and spray it with a whole bunch of water.

All right, while the engine is soaking in degreaser I'm gonna get to work beating this pin out so I can put a mirror mount hinge pin on here and eventually have a passenger side mirror. They're pretty nice to have. These things are unbelievably hard to get out so what I did was I just put some penetrating oil in there beat it on the bottom, beat it on the top. Bear it on the bottom, beat on the top. Come back a couple days later, same thing a little more oil, beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it. Punch, hammer. Anyway, I finally got it protruding out the bottom a little bit so I'm going to keep on driving it out.

I'm trying to get this guy out of the way and it's just not really cooperating. I wonder at this point if I could unbolt the door hinge from the door jamb and possibly get it free. I don't know. I'm gonna take a look. Well it's missing a screw there. Then we got one there, we got one there. I don't know if I have my impact driver here or not, but we'll take a look.

Well the answer is no to an impact driver, but oh geez wow. Okay well, that would have been very overkill for an impact driver. Could be just all the beating on that hinge that I did. Either way, all I know is I want to dang passenger side mirror.

All right, let's see what we can't do.

One last time. Straighten this guy out a little bit.

See if I can get that bottom hinge out. It's not looking good. Don't force these because without an impact driver if you don't know, all you're going to do is destroy the head of the screw. I got to bring my impact driver in.

Mainly I just want to be able to get this sump off without any of that junk on the engine so I'm going to keep on scraping and spraying and see what happens.

All right so this is where we're at. This thing is just coated in all sorts of gunk and like I don't even know what, but with a zero degree tip on a pressure washer this stuff still ain't budging. How many years of road debris is this? Well probably, let's see uh about 56 years maybe if this is the original engine. And uh you know based on the fact that it's got a VW stamp on the clutch. That might be an original clutch and hey this engine may not have ever been out. But it’s better than it was. You guys remember the before pictures? Before I mounted on the stand. So well worth the time cleaning and degreasing before I get into it to at least get the generator off. Swap that out to the alternator. Get rid of that 009 distributor. Figure out what's up with that little adapter and how that mounts into there and we've got some work to do.

So now I'll go from one pain in the butt job to another one. Firewall seal, rear engine seal. Silicone is your best friend on these guys.

All right real important, once you get the seal most of the way in place, should be pulling it through as opposed to prying it in place. Make sure that you pull it back and forth. Relieve any tension. It might be stretched in. Just make sure it doesn't pull back over time. Now that we've got our seal pulled and relaxed cut it on this side to match the other side of the lengths. Just a razor blade.

All right now the fun part is going to be putting in this seal which doesn't usually go in as easily as the firewall. So watch me struggle with that.

There. That's all done. Wasn't that so much fun. Firewall seal replaced. Rear engine seal replaced. In the groove top and bottom all the way around cut to length. Ready to rock.

I still got to replace the clutch cable, the accelerator cable, uh throw out bearing. Those are all on my list. Those are actually all in my cart.

I've got to get in there and do those swing axle boots. I've got those in my cart. And then I still gotta get into those drums and make sure everything's good inside the drums, but we'll see what I can get done tomorrow and go from there.

All right so if you guys know 67s you'll know that this isn’t a 67 hood. This is a 64 to 66 hood. However as opposed to using two different body molding kits just to get a wider hood molding, I got sneaky and I cut down some molding clips. So this molding clip is what normally goes in that hole and I cut it down so I could slide it into this hood molding. Now, does it look kind of silly with the rubber grommet hanging off the side? Yeah, but it's nothing a razor blade won't take care of. You can't even really see the aluminum molding with all the patina and stuff, but at least the holes are filled.

I've got a new hood emblem. Obviously you saw me working on the mirrors. I want to be able to put both mirrors on. I will put all the side molding on just kind of finish it, but not finish it, like we do. Got that piece of molding in place. Hey, you got to do what you got to do.

I'm going to call it a day. Didn't get everything that I wanted to get done today done, but that's the way projects go sometimes. You do what you can when you can. I'm still waiting on that rubber grommet for the main wiring harness before I can get that run all the way through, but I got a lot of parts pulled and ready to be installed. And obviously I've got some more work to do with that mirror hinge pin. No rhyme or reason, just get done what we can get done. So that we can make sure that we can make it to the show on time.

Ciao.

overall rating: my rating: log in to rate