A Bug's Life: 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.

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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.

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Here are some photos from this morning....

The dark side of the Dub.