Watch as Sam and Nate clean out the truck and dash of this 1972 Baja Bug build.

The teardown on Nathan's 1972 Baja Bug build continues with the further clean up and clean out of all of the wiring, dash vents, wiper assembly, switches and pretty much everything else that is bolted in place to the body. Cleaning out a car thoroughly is much easy when everything is out of the way!

Video Transcript

It's December 31st, we're going to work on cleaning out the trunk of this thing, maybe pull out the dash, do some interior cleanup, stuff of that sort.

Nathan, we never really got into how did you get the money for this car?

So, found a quad on the side of the road, like an Al Sports 90 quad. It was out for bulk pickup. I got it, got it running, cleaned it up, and then sold it for $1,000.

So, you found a quad on the side of the road?

Mhm.

How much did you spend for that quad on the side of the road?

Yeah, maybe about 65 bucks, maybe just getting it working.

You spent 65 on it, getting it working, but yeah. How much did you get the quad for?

Free.

You picked up the quad on the side of the road for free, put about $65 into it, and sold it for $1,000.

Yeah.

Quad you found for free, he sold for $1,000, and now you've got a bug.

Basically got a bug for free, kind of. Well, other than of course the money that we spent getting it running.

And the work that you did, yeah, get cuz you cleaned up, you got it, you did all the work. So, buy something, fix something, sell something, get a Bug. That's what he did. Now he's going to start working on just taking stuff off and throwing more stuff away.

Most this probably going to get cut off. I would concentrate more on wiring and junk up here .

So, is there a wire or anything that I should not be cutting?

I'll pull the sub harnesses for the ignition switch, the wiper switch, and the turn signal switch because those harnesses are not made new. So, I'll pull all those out and I'll set those aside, but everything else can pretty much come out. Uh, you can pull out the wiper arms and..

I’ll do that first so you can pull the important wiring. And let me guess it's a 13 probably for the wipers?

Well that’d be my guess. All right, so we have the wiring out of here, keep the arms, toss the legs.

Now take these off too?

Yep. I know what size they are, but see if you can figure out.

Maybe a 16.

16 is not very common at all on a Volkswagen, but give it a shot be.

15.

I mean that's the biggest not sure I have anything big enough.

It's a 17 deep well.

Well I don't got one of those.

Well I do.

That's better.

All right, so I've got the harnesses out, turn signal and wiper, and ignition sub harnesses since these guys don't come with new wiring harnesses, you want to save these if you're rewiring your old cars. Nathan is working on trying to figure out how to remove a wiper motor assembly. Guess what, nobody ever told me how to do it my first time, I just figured it out. So guess what, he's going to do?

Figure it out.

There you go.

Need like soft candy.

Well, is there anything stuck in behind it?

Oh yeah.

I don't know if that's behind. I want to pull that out.

Did that get it?

Yeah.

I wasn't trying to help him, but oh well. I just didn't want those things to get damaged.

Yeah, looks like there's more stuff behind.

Get it out of the way, buddy.

There we go, it came out. Yay.

Cha-ching. We'll save it.

Save it just in case?

We got to save it for the assembly. We have the new motors, not the whole assembly.

Oh yeah. We don't need that stuff. And then I'm guessing the same thing with this. I mean surprisingly though, the inside seals for the windows or at least that side, they're actually pretty soft.

Put the hardware back for that wiper. Oh shoot, grab the wiper assembly, grab all the hardware you took off. Where you put all that hardware you took off? Find it in the bin, put it on there cuz that's specialized hardware.

Don't throw any of the hardware away. You can put it back where it belongs.

Just a small piece, try not to want to damage this metal bit too much. So what I do a lot of times is I’ll just come in, beat the top of that, maybe a screwdriver, not a JBugs screwdriver.

A little bigger one, little hammer?

This one's straighter if you want to keep it and that one straight enough now. Clean them up and attach them to your headboard or something.

Okay, so now looking way better in here, lot more space up there.

Uh, there's a screw on the inside, Philips just here for the glove box release lever.

I see, one underneath bottom the one in the dash bottom of the dash, which one? There's a lot.

There's one, oh behind the dash. Should be moving back behind the dash up at an angle. I can't see what you're touching, Nathan, so screw it. How about that? And realistically, if it's a screw on the bottom of the dash, it's got to come out. That's the one, yep. Save the screw.

That should I put on the bucket seat?

No, right here. I'll take that screw with this bracket and then I'll try and find that original screw from there, and we'll screw that back together in there. All right, um. You got the ashtray, you got two screws right here. You can pull the tray insert from the inside out, push the tap down on the backside, and pull it out. There you go.

So now just all of the screws, um, we save the inside stuff for when we filming on the inside. You come in here and do bang bang and get all this stuff out here. You can pull out the speedometer, pull out that aftermarket gauge. Well, do these two screws for the ashtray.

What is that mess of?

That is a defroster hose.

Windshield. Oh wow, it's actually coming off. Wow, it stayed together for more than 30 years. Oh well, there's also a piece of metal. I'm guessing that we don't need this entire thing, dad.

No, okay, it's called a gripper strip.

Windshield be gone. Boom, now the dash can come out.

No, it can’t. You got to pull out the grab handle, speedometer, dash trail plate.

I'll get working on that. Look at that, see some progress up here.

Man, there's a hubcap in the way.

Hubcap in the way of what?

The speedometer cable.

This is fun. I love it.

Cut that. Take those screws, screw in that bracket.

Only 4,888 miles on this thing.

Oh wow, that's actually too bad.

It's a really low mileage car. Wonder if they're all original. All right, you can pull out the gauge, and then you can pull out those little twist tabies got to be twisted off, so you can pull out those gauge panels.

It's looking a lot less wirey.

A lot less wirey.

Well, that's why it wouldn't run, it was missing two fuses.

We could have just put two fuses in there. Just that simple, yeah, but oh well, now we have to rebuild the whole car.

All right, got a couple of screws there and there. Put that buttress on the reservoir, then get that out. Put that wiring harness down.

Okay, so this red and black starter, white and red, white and red main battery power, black and red which is brakes, brakes, black and green, right rear turn signal, right rear, black and white, white, the other turn signal, left turn signal, yep. We have a gray and black, is that the brake light? That is a runny white for the left side or the right side. Gray and red, would that be the opposite side running light? Black power to your coil, black and green, oil pressure light, blue, generator light, generator.

So there's no brake light, or is that just back there?

Black and red, brake light, was one ofthe first ones we identified.

Now we know.

You want to grab that horn wire harness.

This looks so awesome not having this junk.

We forgot all this junk over here.

All right, well, my phone's almost dead, so has we're just going to do more of this stuff and clean it up, and I'll charge my phone some more. He's looking for a hubcap.

Now this is like the only one without a dent in it.

The non-dented hubcap. For why, I don't know, maybe you'll clean it up, paint it up, and hang it in your garage or hang it up in your bedroom.

Yeah.

Ooh, you can get a clock mechanism and turn it into a clock. Drill a hole and just put the arms through, and there you go, and you got a Volkswagen clock.

Sound like a good idea.

Yeah, awesome, let's do that.

All right, well on that note, I'm going to kill the camera and probably throw some of this stuff away, and we'll probably continue some of this cleanup and junk and whatnot.

I mean, we could probably turn all these into clocks. I don't know, what do you guys think? Plus, find clocks, just some this.

What do you guys, what do you guys think? Should we turn all four of these into clocks and then just sell them to YouTube viewers? What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments below.

Bucket seats.

Wait, do we have to remove the um, this box?

Uh, we don't have to, but we can pull the dash out around.

Just like that. Yay, pull the dash. BOOM, that dash is probably trash.

So far today, guys, we have pulled out the wiring, removed the dash, cleaned up the trunk a lot, removed the hood seals, yeah, that's pretty much it, right?

Yeah, a whole bunch of general cleanup in the front of the car. One step closer to completely stripping out this car and making it a clean platform, a clean canvas for our well, for his Baja Bug build I'm going to have a heavy hand in, so I will say our Baja. Yeah, I mean, we're building it, so building it. So our Baja Bug build.

So on that note, we're going to wrap it up today. We'll be back maybe with some more cleanup work on the interior tomorrow, just stripping out some of the rest of the headliner, pulling out the back with the rest of the windows.

We got some spectators.

How's it going?

That's good enough, buddy. Yeah, let's go inside and pull it out or push it out. Just push, just like so. Son's working on getting all the pinch welds out, or we're getting out all the headliner insulation and stuff around the windows. We got some uh parts soaking and uh some Purple Power, not that we'll be using most of them, but got our engine case cleaned out, got most of the case savers out, soak that in that tub as well. Just get the engine place all cleaned up before we have it inspected.

You done yet?

No, not yet.

Just got to pry that all those grippers up. Who's going to win, Nathan, who's going to win? Me. Nathan's going to win. Now you got to do the other side.

Yeah, so can we start pull this up? Boom, way easier. Guessing that you um, just like um, hit those back when you put it back in.

Yep, bang the grippers down like we did in my '71 Super Beetle when we did the headliner install on it. Almost there, this was way quicker this time. You figured it out, buddy. Just hit the top and then just work down to the bottom, down to the ground. Who won? Nathan win.

All right, and the easiest way to get rid of all that fuzz is just take a wire brush, scrub it all down, and that way it sticks to your brush, and you just peel it off.

I'm going to go through and I'm going to pull out some of, well, that little plastic plug there, back seat stops. I'll pull those stuff out while you're working on that stuff. I got most of it above the rear window on either sides, but there's that section right above, right here. You going to come down and then down this side as well. Yeah, scrape that and then hit it with the wire brush.

Interior much cleaner now. Still got some work to do underneath the rear seat, pull off our vents, pull out the rest of the cables, pull off that vent, but uh, I need to grab a 13 wrench and then disconnect the wire from the starter.

But I mean, you got 13 wrenches? I'm not sure if I have 13 wrench.

I don't know, check your new toolbox. Dude, we got some wrenches in here.

Uh, I'm sure. Oh yeah, we do, 13. What do you think about that tool present?

It's awesome cuz now I can work on my bug with my tools.

Nice, getting there. Yep, a little more cleaned up, got a little bit less junks in the way. Disconnecting the old voltage regulator, door hitting. There, all right, and I'll hand you a pair of wire snips so you can cut that main wiring harness. All right, snake that wire out of that front heater channel. Have to push pull on one side and push on the other as you get it through. It's usually a two-handed operation. Push me, pull you. There you go, round a little bit.

Yep, that's why in an off-road car, I like to go through the roof, yeah, up, yeah. There, that way the wires are tucked out of the way and a little bit safer.

Boom, wire out.

Now put this?

Yeah, oh don't pull it from the engine. Actually, you know what, just's pull it from the engine, pull the whole thing out. We ain't using none of that.

Is that rubber supple or dried out? It's kind of dried out. We're going to toss that, that all right.

Um, push or pull?

I don't know, let's see.

How about we do both?

This is always a fun one with all that foam in there throughout the years, trying to get this thing broken loose. Um, there we go.

Oh gosh, look at that, got some foam on it.

That harness is always a pain to get out. There we go, dude.

We're uh bit closer, huh?

That much closer to being completely stripped.

Looks awesome so far, huh?

All right, let's do some cleanups, do some vacuuming, some sweepings, and some whatnots and so forth.

So, so far today, guys, we have gotten a lot of the interior and the door seals and stuff to um taken out. We have cleaned up the inside, got all, got the main wiring harness out, and yeah, just did a lot of vacuuming and cleaning and, of course, put out the glass on windows and the rear window.

Everything's all cleaned up and looking a lot more uh clean,

Clean and more close to body work and stuff. Body work and stuff, yeah.

I'm not too concerned about body work yet. I'm more concerned about chassis and driveline, but you know, we'll get there.

Transmission and of, and of course, a one-piece front end.

One piece front end, anybody got a line on a one-piece front end, let us know. Same with jbugs.com cuz one piece front end is going to be a big one. Uh, 091 bus box, we need to get one of those. He's paying for it, so we're trying to do this on a budget, but either way. This is not my car his car. Trying to make him pay as much, pay for as much of this as possible. I'm going to help him out on like everything pretty much, but either way, it's his car.

On that note, people,

Life’s full of good people,

if you can't find one, be one.

Later, guys.

overall rating: my rating: log in to rate