After swearing 'no more', Glenn Torrens bites the bait on another bargain-buy Beetle
Five hundred bucks. Three minutes from home. A bloke I knew. How could I resist? That’s the short story of how I came to own another VW Beetle!
Do I need another project? Umm… No. Regular readers may recall that I have another project Beetle right now, plus plenty of other things, but for the price and location I would have been crazy not to take the lure on this one!
The original seam sealer has deteriorated and cracked away from the body. After proper prep, I will apply new seam sealer
The bargain Bug wasn’t a complete car; instead, it was a body sitting loosely on a rusty chassis. It had no engine, doors or guards. But anyone casting an eye around my garage and backyard will quickly spy enough spare parts – engines, doors, guards – to assemble a Bug or two!
My bargain-buy Bug body was bought bare, but ‘dressing’ it with a few panels convinced me I should build another ‘outlaw’
My plan for this VW Bug was to rebuild it as a… well actually, as I loaded the bitsa Bug onto a trailer, I had no proper plan. But my mind was swirling with ideas: How about an off-roady Baja Bug, like my mate Tony’s camo-covered outback charity trek car? Maybe not… This body was too nice to be sacrificed as a Baja bush-basher and I already have another car set aside for a ‘Baja’ transformation.
Another brown bomber takes up residence at GT’s
How about a full-factory, skinny-tyre, chrome-hubcaps, shiny-paint restoration? Maybe not… With its original engine missing, the car could never be ‘numbers matching’ pristine and I really could not be bothered right now with a bare-metal, all-new paint job. Plus, I like my Bugs fast, not fuss-pot.
So, what was I to do?
Open wide, there is rust inside
Amazingly, one spare engine lid and a pair of rear guards I had stashed at home were the same colour as my ‘new’ bodyshell. Loosely installed, those panels made the Bug look almost road-ready! That prompted me to consider how I could quickly create a simple patina Bug and have some fun without too much effort or expense. That’s the theme I followed when building a ‘wrecker racer’ motorsport Bug a decade ago and is of course the theme I followed with my recent farm-find Commodore.
No, this hole shouldn’t be here. But thankfully this common Bug rust area is an easy fix
As always, I started the process with a thorough high pressure clean and inspection of the body. Being more than 50 years old, many of these late-1960s Beetles have been patched-up several times but thankfully this one had no previous repairs and not much rust.
Perching the body on this trolley makes various restoration tasks – such as welding rust – considerably easier
The arches and the sills – the stiff side-members of the body that, with the chassis spine, give the Bug its rigidity – had been sprayed in a bitumen-type ‘car tar’ goop so before I could begin any repairs, I had to remove it using oven cleaner, steel wool and a high-pressure washer. Wearing gloves but working in the shade of my carport on a hot springtime day, this messy task was quite enjoyable!
Amazing what a bit of time and effort with a Gerni will do to unearth the true state of the Beetle
With the body washed, a couple of mates helped me lift it from the rolling chassis onto the little trolley I use for my Beetle builds/restorations.
German Racing brown colour revealed and not much rust to be found at this end after the clean
So with the last remaining stuff – such as the wiring harness – removed to reduce this body to almost nothing, I got busy…