The Up-Fixing a '65 VW thread

[bob deluke]

Great restoration job WD. I bought a 67 bug a couple years ago, all there except for engine/transaxle. Body in great shape, good pans, all parts were there. I spent one winter going through the car, installing sound deadening material, headliner and a few other things. Paint was decent, needed a good cut and buff. P.O. spent a lot of $$$ on disc brake setup, suspension upgrades. I bought a rebuilt engine/trans, installed it and it ran great. I posted some pics on f’book and some guy in VA. offered to buy the car for big bucks. Sold it and it helped finance a 2010 Cayman. Kinda miss the car, and I’ve been looking for another bug project but prices have gone out of site for rusted hulks. Following your thread with interest, keep up the good work!

[wdfifteen]

Part 5
In the past couple of weeks we’ve made some progress on the VW to report on, but I need to backtrack a bit to catch up with events of a few weeks ago.
A couple of weeks after the car came back from Dave (the painter) I discovered he had not painted the header above the windshield, in addition, the front panel for the ashtray was missing. Round trip transportation for the car to his shop and back home was going to be $215. Neither one of us wanted to pay it, and I was adamant that whoever paid, it wasn’t going to be me. He knew the header needed paint and just forgot it. We agreed it made sense for him to bring his equipment to my shop and paint the header and the ashtray here, as soon as we found the ash tray piece.




Dave forgot to paint the area between the square holes in the header.

The f*&##g ash tray.

A couple of weeks passed while Dave looked for the ash tray at his place, and I turned my shop upside down looking for it here. It was nowhere to be found. It’s such a small piece that I guessed it got mixed up in some of the upholstery pieces that I threw out and it went to the trash with them.



Hard to believe this tiny little piece of sheet metal could cause so much trouble. Between locating a replacement and having to paint it twice, it held the project up for nearly a month.

This is NOT a rare part. It was used on all VW bugs imported to North America and all Deluxe models sold elsewhere between 1957 and 1967 – there are millions of them out there. I thought it would be a piece of cake to find another one for couple of bucks. I looked on The Samba and eBay with little luck. I placed a “wanted” ad in The Samba and got a couple of offers. One guy wanted $100 for a complete “restored” ashtray, which he had simply cleaned up and painted the plated parts silver. Another wanted $87 just for the front plate. One seller had a rusty one for $35. Out of desperation I was just about to pull the trigger on that one when I got an email from a guy selling OEM parts from an old dealership. He fixed me up with a brand new ash tray front for $5. SCORE!!
We waited for a day of decent weather and Dave came out – it was a little cold but workable . Painting the header went fine, but he got too much paint on the ashtray and it sagged badly. He couldn’t salvage it that day so he took it back to the shop to sand it down and repaint it a few days later.



Once it was finally painted, I didn’t want to take the chance of losing the damn thing again. I figured the best way to keep track of it was to assemble the ash tray unit and bolt it into the car.

Once the header was painted and the ashtray was secured, I moved on to the windshield. I considered this a major milestone in upfixing the VW. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with windshields and it’s easy to break the glass, but I was determined to try it anyway.
In my life I’ve installed maybe 5 windshields, all were flat VW or 356 glass, which are fairly easy. Still, 2 broke on me. We had finished one VW and stood back to enjoy a beer and admire our handiwork, and a crack appeared at the top left and slowly crept its way down to the bottom center as we all shouted “Nooooo!”
So now after 40 years I was installing a curved VW windshield for the first time. It took a LOT of work to get the glass into the rubber and a lot more time to get the trim into the rubber. My fingers tend to go into spasms when I use them hard, so my hands are basically inoperative after 15 or 20 minutes of use, so this process took about 2 weeks.

The hardest part of installing the windshield is getting the rubber on the glass and getting the aluminum trim strip in the rubber. Some people use soapy water to make the glass slide in easily, but it also lets it slide back out just as easily. I use heat and a lot of patience to get the glass stuck into the rubber so it stays. Installing the trim is the same process - heat and patience.



The rubber still tried to come out of the concave part of the glass, so I held it in with some rubber straps.


I’ve learned some things since the last time I installed a windshield. First, use string trimmer cord instead of cotton chalk line. Second, use lots of silicone grease on the seal and the body. The plastic string trimmer line is a lot stronger and a lot slipperier that cotton string, and the grease lets the rubber seal easily slide around in the channel and find its happy place without sticking and stressing the glass.



If everything goes right the rubber seal miraculously snaps over this lip in the body and the glass is in.

Once the rubber and the trim strips were on the glass and everything was greased up, Vicki and I, along with the help of a friend of ours, bravely attempted to marry the glass to the car. The glass put up a valiant fight, it took a lot of pushing, pulling, nudging, and cajoling - not to mention a whole lot of bad language (fortunately Vicki can swear like a car mechanic when she has to) - but in the end we prevailed, and finally zipped it right in. When you are yanking on the cords, pushing and pulling the seal into place and the windshield is sliding all over everywhere fighting you all the way, it seems kind of miraculous when you pop the last ¼ inch of seal over the steel channel and the whole windshield quietly slips perfectly into place.



With some trepidation on my part, Vicki passed the beers around and we stood back to admire our handiwork – and it didn’t crack.

[Evans, Marv]

Beautiful! I'll be jealous of you driving that around when you get finished.

[jdlowery]

Good write up! I'm in a similar situation as you. I have a '70 Bug that desperately needs to be painted. Also some light body work is needed. I think I've found a painter but I will strip the car and then reinstall all the parts. It should be fun and frustrating.

So far your build looks like it's going well. Good luck with the rest of the project.

[wdfifteen]

Progress is being made. It seems painfully slow, but I'm on schedule to have it finished by early summer.



I had to re-attach the headlight sockets after cutting them out so I could remove the wires for the painting process. I like to use metal crimp connectors, solder them, and cover them with 2 layers of shrink tubing.



I'm going with LED lights all around. The headlights look more like stock than the halogens did.



The wiper assembly was rusted all to hell. I sandblasted and painted it, too bad I didn't get a photo of it before I installed it.



Upgrading the wipers to 12 volt is stupid easy nowdays. Wolfsburg West sells a 12 volt armature for SWF motors for around $40. It takes about half an hour to switch them out.



Best I could do for a photo of the newly painted wiper assy. I shot this through the hole on the dash for the radio.



The wiring was a real rat's nest, with 12 to 6 volt converters for the wipers and the radio. It took a while, put I got it all sorted out. The fuse block diagram is a handy guide for identifying and replacing the fuses. It shows what the fuse box looks like from the other side, so it takes some translation to identify the connections on the business side.



I got a smoking deal on 40 square feet of sound deadening (free). So I didn't spare any. The piece in the upper right was a learning experience. I hope this will make the VW sound less like a tin can.



Something about the sight of neat, clean wires and fresh paint makes me smile.



There was no reason to install the trim at this point, but I was anxious to see some real progress so I added a little bling.

[herr_oberst]

Sheesh, the flood of memories that came back to me looking at the snakepit behind the dash! This is going great! Thanks for the images, thanks for bringing us along.

(Do you still have the cardboard glovebox insert and the molded cardboard panel for behind the dash? I can imagine that 60 years can really take their toll on parts like that.

[Evans, Marv]

"Something about the sight of neat, clean wires and fresh paint makes me smile." I did that before reading your comment below the picture.

[porsche tech]

Wow! Really starting to come together and looking good. Looks like Dave did a really nice job with the paint. Nice work!

[rcooled]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

I like to use metal crimp connectors, solder them, and cover them with 2 layers of shrink tubing.

How'd you get the shrink tubing on after the wires had already been crimped together?

The car's looking really great! Once you start driving it, you'll have all sorts of people coming up and telling you their own VW stories. These cars were part of so many people's lives over the years.

[oldE]

Originally Posted by rcooled

How'd you get the shrink tubing on after the wires had already been crimped together?

The car's looking really great! Once you start driving it, you'll have all sorts of people coming up and telling you their own VW stories. These cars were part of so many people's lives over the years.

That looks like heat shrink tubing lurking back there where the wires enter the headlight bucket.

Best
Les

[rcooled]

Originally Posted by oldE

That looks like heat shrink tubing lurking back there where the wires enter the headlight bucket.

Oh yeah, I see it now. At first I thought that was the outer covering on the wires coming into the bucket. Should’ve known that wd wouldn’t have forgotten to put the shrink on there first

[Bill Douglas]

WD you are a gentleman putting that much work and energy into an ole VW.

It sure is looking good. LOL it makes me feel guilty how I treated various VW's over the years.

[wdfifteen]

WoooHooo!

Got my radio back from the rebuilder today. I had it converted to 12 volts and added an FM tuner. I was really excited to see how this was going to work out. I love it!
I hooked it up on the bench and it sounds --- well, it sounds like a 55 year old VW radio, which is good enough for me. I tuned it to THE radio station teenagers listened to around here from the early '50s to when we discovered FM. "High Flyin' WING 1410 on your dial." Sadly, it's a sports talk format now. BUT we have a great FM station in SW Ohio that plays music from the 60s and 70s. In a few months I'll be driving around in my VW listening to the Four Seasons and The Supremes blasting out of a 6" speaker in glorious full monaural like I did 50 years ago. Can you dig it?



When I first connected it I couldn't get any sound. Turns out you have to ground both the ground wire AND the case to get it to work. Strange.



It looks just like a stock Sapphire I radio. Turning the power off and on toggles between AM and FM. To find an FM station you have to turn the tuner knob and listen for the station you want. As soon as I get the chrome faceplate back from the plater I can install it in the car. That may be a few months.

[DonDavis]

Really great work, Patrick.

And a great looking work space. I know you've worked hard to create that. Enjoy!!

Looking forward to more updates as summer approaches.

[wdfifteen]

I've been slowly plodding along on the '65. It's been slow mainly because I'm working on the headliner and I get cramps in my hands and hip joints after an hour or so of crawling in out of the car and pulling the vinyl into place. I am way out of my wheelhouse doing this headliner, so there is a lot of stress too. Happy hour comes early on the days I work on the headliner.



So far so good. Not too many wrinkles. Some of the "wrinkles" in this picture are shadows. I had the passenger side looking pretty good until I tightened the window latch down. Arghh!




Every now and then I take a break from gluing vinyl and do some wrench work. I finally finished converting the old single master cylinder to a dual master cylinder system and put in a new steering coupling.



When I'm REALLY down about the slow progress I work on something shiny, in this case the dashboard. Nothing like some bling to make it look like I'm getting somewhere. Still waiting for the chrome radio plate to come back from the plater. Shaun? Shaun??




I installed a new clutch cable when I put the pedal cluster back in. Thanks to the days I made my living working on VWs I still had some special VW tools in the toolboxes. These clutch cable jamb nut wrenches haven't been used in 50 years, and really came in handy. Ignore the wing nut.




This won't mean much to anyone who hasn't changed a VW clutch cable. I dropped the acorn adjusting nut for the clutch cable and could not find it.
When I used to replace clutch cables I never took the adjusters off. They were usually rusted on, so I kept a handful of new nuts in my toolbox to replace them with. I dug through the boxes of old parts in the barn and BINGO! An acorn nut AND a wing nut! They're 50 years old, but not rusty. (Up to 1965 they used an acorn nut. Then switched to the easier wing nut in '66).

[wdfifteen]

I’ve been steadily (and slowly) making progress on the VW. Over the past month or so I worked on installing the headliner – task that is still in progress – rebuilt the seats, and rebuilt the vent wings.

I have never had a VW vent wing assembly apart before, so I had no idea how they worked, what the components were supposed to look like, etc. but hey, it’s a vent wing. How complicated can it get? I started on the driver’s side vent and had all manner of trouble getting the glass and its frame to properly fit the rubber seal. I was stymied.

I decided to take a break from the vent wing and turned to the passenger side seat. I rewelded and painted the broken frame, cleaned up the springs, and attempted to put the seat covers on. I had ordered really nice looking molded seat padding and seat coverings from two different companies. Big mistake. In a nutshell they weren’t compatible, so I had to order different padding. I struggled with installing the covers for a bit until I learned that you really must have a good heat gun to work with vinyl upholstery. After putting the heat to it, the seat coverings went on without much drama.



A few weeks of reflection brought me to the conclusion that I ought to look at the passenger side vent assembly, because it was working perfectly. I discovered there was good reason I couldn’t get the driver’s side to fit together. Apparently someone had tried to break into the car through the vent. The frame was bent out of shape and some of the working mechanism was broken.



A close look would have told me that this frame was bent.



Straightening it was an iterative process of tweaking the frame a little and then assembling it (with screws instead of rivets), checking the fit, and bending some more.







I had no idea these pieces were supposed to be one part. As you can tell, I'm not a great welder, but it ought to hold.






I bypassed the hassle of driving all over Western Ohio looking for the correct glass setting tape and chose a different path. I put some RTV on the edge of the glass before slipping it into the frame and used toothpicks to center the glass in the frame. Then I used a razor blade to pack RTV into the crack. I basically set the glass with RTV instead of tape. This worked great except I failed to get all of the RTV off of the chrome before it cured. Acetone will take of RTV if is hasn’t set too hard, but once it is fully cured it is a bear to remove. Paint brush restorer has a formidable list of ingredients including acetone, tolulene, methyl ethyl ketone, xylene, ethyl benzine, and probably fentanyl and rat poison, but it does soften RTV it to some degree.



Once I got all the pieces together and the wing was moving smoothly and sealing, I finished it off with a factory-style rivet in the hinge. I set the rivet with a grommet setting die and it looks like it just came out of the factory.

As with most of this project, once I hit the top of the learning curve it was a smooth slide to success.

[herr_oberst]

That looks outstanding. The seat looks brand new, and the factory rivet is the only way to go. So much better than a pop rivet.

That's going to be such a nice car when you're done.

[cantdrv55]

What a wonderful project. Congrats on the progress. Can’t wait to see the finished car!

[Zeke]

Looks great.

I'm sure you know this, but for the archives, RTV, silicone and epoxy can all be tooled with soapy water and any number of plastic tools or your finger. It doesn't even stick.

For future reference, I would have used the toothpick method (genius) with small dabs well below the edge. Once cured and secure, you have access to the entire length of glass to channel and should be able to tool it perfectly.

[billybek]

Love the 67 at the top of this page! I am not sure why but I always liked the 67 body for some reason.
You doing some fine work, Patrick.
This thread brings back some memories of me working in the garage with my dad on what ever old vw I was driving or fixing at the time.

VWs I have owned.
74 Thing
72 Super Beetle
67 Squareback
68 Beetle (1200 ccs of raw power)
68 Campmobile
73 Standard Beetle
Might be one that I am forgetting...

Up here, project cars are riddled with rust and the 73 made me swear off rusty vws forever...