The Slowest Car Indeed

I've been missing a few of my limited chances at working on the Beetle, but I spent this morning in the garage from well before dawn until about 8:00. I'm at a point where I need to start spending some money and/or wire some 220V electric out to my garage to power a monster air compressor in order to make headway.

Today I tried to take out the door windows and mechanisms in preparation for a paint job, which went half-well. I also put several drops of Tri-Flow in all the hinges on the convertible top and managed to work the top open for the first time since the fire.

I'm still debating whether to figure out the body work and paint myself or have it done by someone who knows what they're doing. It gets tiring to work on something when you don't know what you're doing.

* * * * *

While working on the doors this morning I got to thinking about when my dad and I were taking the trim and rubber off the car before we had it painted. I was amazed then and still wonder at how removing one hard-to-reach screw or rusted bolt can easily consume an hour or more and make you feel like you haven't accomplished anything.

We both would get frustrated with this phenomenon to the point of walking away from it for the day or the weekend. Kind of like the last time I played golf, which was about 16 years ago. Dad and I both had a terrible day and he said, "I don't care if I ever play golf again," and I said, "Me neither." I doubt he ever played after that, and I still have no desire.

That sentiment is similar to how I've felt with the Bug for the past few weeks. Hard work, skinned knuckles. Dirty, sweaty, early in the morning. And (what feels like) little accomplished. But I guess I'll keep chugging along and see what happens. It may just be a matter of reminding myself that this is a year(s)-long project, despite my family asking if we'll be able to take it for fall drives. Fall begins next month.

Maybe next fall, I tell them, or the one after....

Get Ready to Be Underwhelmed

Yesterday I said any photos of this would be underwhelming. True to my promise but maybe useful for point of reference. I worked at it some more today and then hit some little crevasses with paint and primer still remaining.

Bondo or something built up on the bare metal, covered in rubberized coating.

I decided to leave well enough alone and only hit the areas that seem to be affected by rust.

Chipping Away

As I chipped away at the paint, primer, and rubberized coating inside the concave curves of the wheel wells this morning, I wondered about my intentions with this whole project.

I'm not entirely convinced that I'll want a nice-looking, drivable, convertible Beetle when it's finished. Am I still a Beetle guy? I'm not sure. If not, this is going to be an expensive date car.

A friend told me last week he can't believe I didn't get the Ghia I mentioned in an earlier post. The rag top drew me to the Beetle when I was 17. Fifteen years later a hardtop Ghia sounds really nice. Or even a Type 3 wagon.

So why not sell the Beetle, cut my losses, and move on? I don't know. I'll flesh it out more at some point, but I think it's mostly sentimentalism. In the meantime, I need to stop looking at Craigslist and stuff like this in the VW forums. Is it masochistic to be thinking about my next project car even as I drown in elbow grease and suffocate in paint dust?

But at the end of the day, I plan to see this thing through. I'm even considering doing the body work and painting myself, which could draw out the whole project considerably.

I talked to a paint guy this week, who came recommended, hoping to get a rough idea of costs, processes, and expectations. He was so nebulous and cryptic I couldn't help but laugh at his non-answers to all my questions. This is what partially inspired me to figure out how to do body work, which is something I've never attempted but always wished I could do. Why not start now, because what else would I have to blog about?

Any photos of today's progress would be underwhelming, so I'll keep them to myself. I'm back to the angle grinder, but with a heavy-gauge steel wire wheel to grind out the paint and rubber undercoating from inside the wheel wells, some of which had been flaking off from age. It's fairly slow-going and extremely messy. It's how I plan to spend the wee hours of tomorrow, and maybe tonight after the kids go to bed.

Strippin' Ain't Easy

At 4:53 this morning I sprung from my bed to my alarm clock sounding off with the hushed, cool murmurs of NPR voices and to the whir of my tar pot starting its hot drip; I was chomping at the bit – armed with a 15-pack of sanding discs, new-found inspiration from My New Favorite Neighbor, and a man-sung bluegrass version of “I Kissed a Girl” stuck in my head – eager to see the darkside of our much-loved Beetle after 5 long years and eager to attack that darkside with the clumsy oscillations of my corded drill.

I moved the junk out from under the car, found the hydraulic floor jack I stole from my brother several years ago, jacked the car up from the middle, and rolled it out to the center of the garage.

Front quarter panel – yellow. Door – bare metal with surface rust. Rear quarter – mostly bare metal with surface rust and remnants of factory primer. Not much yellow is a good thing. I coated the yellow front panel with what’s left of my old can of auto stripper and went to town on the door and rear panel. Made good headway on those, while the stripper did its job as best as an aged stripper can (there’s a joke in there somewhere). I scraped the bubbled paint off the front at about a quarter to 7:00 and should have that panel to the bare metal in the morning. All in all, today has been my most productive day of stripping yet.

I found my groove, so to speak, with the 5-inch adhesive-disc sandpaper attached to the drill. That’s the best method so far, but I’ll keep working to figure out the sandblaster for the wheel wells and door jambs.

More work tomorrow. I might bust out the blaster after finishing up the front quarter panel. At this point, I plan to just rough up the interior paint instead of taking it down to the metal. None of it is bubbled or cracked from the fire, so no need to go whole hog on the inside.

* * * * *

Previously I said that my parents had agreed to match however my brother and I had saved up for a car. I don’t really remember how much I’d saved up, but it wasn’t a whole lot, so I was pretty worried about going way over budget with the Beetle.

After taking it out for several jaunts and enjoying its as-is condition, we took the car to our local VW mechanic for an in-depth evaluation of the mechanicals. Pretty sure we dropped around $1,300 on that visit, but Dad said it was money well spent for peace of mind.

Thinking back, I’m surprised my dad and I didn’t make a go of mechanicals ourselves. I had no mechanical experience at that point but back in the day my dad would soup up and drag race old American cars, so he must have had a good knowledge of cars and engines. Then again, most of the American motor heads I’ve encountered seem to have a general mistrust and/or mild disdain for internal combustion of the air-cooled variety.

I remember starting to break a sweat at one point as we tallied up the mechanical receipts, the upholstery receipts, and the parts-catalog receipts, just before we took it to get painted. “Dad,” I said. “This is gonna be a lot more than twice what I’ve saved. I uh…”

“It’s okay. Mom and I are gonna take care of it.”

“But I’m paying half, so can I save up and pay you back for the paint job?”

“You mom and I are paying for the Bug. No, not half of it. All of it.”

“Are you sure? But what about…?”

“We paid for your brother’s car, too.”

My mom brings this up a couple times a year and is convinced it was a failed lesson in economics for me and my brother.

I call it a good lesson in grace – I was given something I didn’t deserve and couldn’t earn, and I couldn’t pay it back myself.

* * * * *

Here are some photos from this morning....

The dark side of the Dub.

Front quarter panel as it was found.

Old stripper applied.

Old stripper stripping.

After first pass with the scraper.

Currently my preferred mechanical method.

Door after sanding.

Rear quarter panel after sanding.

My New Favorite Neighbor

Not much real progress on the Beetle to report as I've been out of town, but yesterday I was working from home and my dear wife had just left when saw this Beetle being towed past our house, followed by a VW Bus that we know parks around the corner. She thought it was in crappy condition like my Beetle so she called me and I rode my bike over and talked to the guy as he pushed it into his garage.

Turns out the Beetle is in great condition, just customized to look awesome. The car was also the main character in this 8-minute film, which was entered in the 2009 48-Hour Film Project, an annual St. Louis event where teams of filmmakers are challenged to write, shoot, and edit a film in 48 hours or less.

I don't know if I enjoyed the film so much because it's great, or because I'd just met the Beetle and its owner. I'm pretty sure it's great. Not suitable for children -- look out for a few f-bombs.

Double-click to view larger:

Sand blasting, Take 1.

So I was giddy with anticipation this past week thinking about the sandblaster on its way to me. I had several day dreams about the paint and primer flaking off in huge swaths, revealing pristine body panels smooth and tender as a baby's bum. Friday night I opened the blaster, took it apart to examine its parts, put it back together, read the instructions and read them again. I couldn't wait for the morning.

At go-time, I put the suction hose into an old bag of play sand we've had sitting around. I sipped my coffee while the air compressor filled its tank. Then I sat on an old paint bucket and fired away at the front wheel well. At first it was pretty sweet. Paint flaking off, check. Primer flaking off, check. Violent sandstorm to my face, check.

About 30 seconds into it, something strange happened. I'd read about it in the manual. The sand was a little damp, which caused it to clump up inside the hose. I got another bag of coarser sand that seemed drier than the first and went back at it. Maybe too coarse to be ideal but it still blew through pretty well. This time the sandstorm to my face had bits of glass and, as far as I could tell, shrapnel. A few minutes into it, I had water blowing out with the sand -- another condition from the manual which means there's water in the compressor tank. After filling and draining the tank a few times and still getting water, I put the blaster aside for the day and went back to sanding.

My sandblasting daydreams did not come true -- at least not this weekend. I poured the damp sand into a bucket in my brick-oven of a garage, hoping it'll dry out before Saturday.

I went to the store and found a 5" flexible disc for the drill that uses adhesive-backed sandpaper, which I tried after the lame attempt at sandblasting. It works awesome for the first few minutes, and fair after that. So after a couple hours on Saturday and a couple more on Sunday, I think I have all the primer off the hood and much of it off the deck lid, and several other areas are cleaned up as well.

In a couple weeks I'll need to do a 21-point turn in the garage and see what the other side of the Beetle looks like -- I haven't seen that side in 5 years.

* * * * *

I can't remember how long I had the Beetle before we started fixing it up. I'll track down the repair records and find out.

I have just a handful of memories driving it when it was blue-ish. One of which was taking a friend and her parents for an evening jaunt around Neosho, to show off the old beast. The top was down (because it made tearing noises when we tried to put it up). All I remember is how they commented on what a surprisingly smooth ride it was for such a small car, and then when we got back, after I took the key out it sputtered long enough for us to all get out and walk around to the back and watch the engine turn.

Another time, my friend Bryan and I drove it up to a soccer tournament in Joplin. We took highway 86 back to Neosho, and I sped up to about 75 approaching one of the highway's big S-curves and said something like, "Let's see how she corners!" Bryan tensed up and grabbed oh-crap bar on the dash. I put both hands in the air above the windshield as we hit the curve, and as he inquired as to my intentions, we blew straight off the highway and onto a side road -- my plan the whole time.

A Bug's Death

If our subtitle is A Bug's Life, there's gonna have to be a resurrection, because Saturday morning I got to thinking the Bug is plumb dead. And I don't mean no four days dead like Lazarus -- it died and was dismembered about a decade ago, and has been in decay ever since. Being a '71, it's been dead at least a quarter of its life.

In high school we used to name our cars. I’d call this one Lazarus but that might be jumping the gun. Maybe one day.

I'm still trying to figure out this resurrection business, though, at a rate of four hours per weekend and making progress at a rate of what feels like little to none per hour. I found an old can of auto paint stripper about a month ago and have been brushing that onto yellow parts and letting it soak in while I sand away at the grey, off-white, blue, and Bondo-colored parts. Did I mention it's slow-going?

I’ve spent time in my garage every Saturday and Sunday morning since I started this project, save a couple weekends of being out of town. I worked on it for a couple hours this past Saturday and then overslept on Sunday.

After finally talking to a sandblasting guy, I decided I'm too much of a do-it-yourselfer (tightwad) to go that route, though I may eat those words in the coming months. Offering a glimmer of hope, my brother told me last weekend that he owns a sandblaster. So with that and the big air compressor I stole from him several years ago, I might be blasting by next weekend.

I also saw a blaster on YouTube that's hooked to a vacuum, which eliminates much or all of the inherent sandblasting mess, so I might hit up Harbor Freight this week and swap a little green for a little convenience.

* * * * *

I got this car a few weeks before I turned 17. My older brother and I had the same “deal” with our parents about our first and second cars. When we turned 16, we each drove a brown 1987 Mazda B2000 (The Turd) for a year, and at 17, our parents would match however much money we’d saved up for a car.

Since the age of 13, I’d regularly scanned the Big Nickel and Auto Trader for cars, and by age 17 had narrowed the search down to old VWs, MGs, and Triumphs. One day around my 17th birthday, my dad and I test drove a blue Karmann Ghia hardtop, with a 1776cc engine and dual carbs.

It was fast and awesome.

I was about to pull the trigger on the Ghia, but then we saw an ad for a ‘71 convertible Bug for $1,800 in need of paint, a top, and rubbers. (My dad and I laughed about it needing rubbers. Come to find out, they meant window seals, etc.) It was an hour and a half away in Parsons, Kansas, but we figured we should go have a look to rule it out.

It was an oxidized metallic blue with a white top that was so deteriorated, the weight of the back window had caused the window to rip completely out. The front seats had faux sheepskin covers. The back seat and seatback were lacking upholstery but had been lovingly wrapped in an old bed sheet, which was ripped so the original horsehair padding was exposed.

The stock 1600cc engine ran fairly well but would spit and sputter for several seconds after killing the ignition. The convertible frame mechanism seemed straight and functional. The body had no rust – the owner said it had baked in the Arizona sun most of its existence.

I knew I had to make a decision on it before we left that day, because of the long drive from Neosho. My dad and I drove it around town and then stopped at Dairy Queen to kick the tires some more over ice cream. It was a warm but not hot September day, a great day for a convertible.

For some reason I was drawn to the Beetle even over the sexier and faster Ghia. I think the soft top was the deciding factor, and at this price we could afford to breathe some life back into it with a tune-up, paint job, top, upholstery… and rubbers.

I didn’t know this at the time, but I like to make things new, to give things a second chance.

So we bought the old Beetle and drove back to Neosho, taking turns driving it, taking turns passing each other, flying our hands in the wind out the window, and generally smiling the whole drive home.

* * * * *

Photos -- the second one is the paint stripper at work. The video at the end is a couple seconds of the paint stripper in action before my camera batteries died.

Week 2

I survived my second and third 2-hour paint-removal extravaganzas this morning and yesterday, and I estimate I'm progressing at a rate of .5 SF per hour. Well, maybe half that. Or less. Honestly, I'm pretty sure paint was growing back onto areas I'd just sanded.

I will soon be calling around about sandblasting.

In the meantime, though, I'm gonna read up on how to rewire the car, since I tore out all the wiring after the fire. That's one of many overreactions I committed when I started cleaning it up; another one (I suspect) was rebuilding the engine. Live and learn.

So after the Sisyphean sanding this morning, I moved the kiddie pools, bike tires, and other miscellanea off of and out of the car to make some working room for the rewire project. That is, if a stick of dynamite doesn't mysteriously blow the car up in the next few days.

My mom e-mailed me some photos from just after the fire. I'm not sure I'd seen these before this week -- check out the heat line on the framing in the second picture. I think the Beetle sat outside for 3-4 years after this before I started fooling around with it.

It's about dang time.

Today, much to my surprise, my children's bewilderment, and my wife's delight (to the tune of "you need to do something with that thing or get rid of it"), I spent the hours of 5:00-7:00 a.m. removing paint from my old Beetle.

Let me unpack that. Why to my surprise? I haven't worked on this car since summer 2002 (coincidentally, my daughter was born said summer).

My children's bewilderment? They had no idea that the Beetle was a car until a few months ago. To them, it was a big storage bin/high-tech garage shelving system. I'm not kidding.

My wife's delight? I guess I already unpacked that, but I'll also soften the statement by saying she's always been very understanding about the Beetle.

5:00-7:00 a.m.? On a Sunday? I have three kids and some conviction about selfish pursuits during their waking hours. I realized lately that if I ever make progress on the Beetle, it'll have to be in the wee hours on the weekends (I already spend the wee hours of the rest of the week biking, swimming, or lifting weights (after all, it takes a lot of work to look this average)).

Old Beetle? It's a '71 VW Beetle convertible that I restored in high school, and which was in a fire when I was in college. A few years later, I towed it out to Colorado to work on it. After much inhalation of paint-stripper fumes and many skinned knuckles, we moved back to Missouri to start a family and put a halt to all of our hobbies.

There's a back-story to why I still have this car, there was a near-death experience for me and my friend Jeremy while towing it to Denver (if you'll pardon the hyperbole), and there may be other bits and pieces to add besides the actual physical transformation of the Beetle itself.

Speaking of which, here are some photos.

Before:

During:

After: