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.