'71 Beetle

Picked up this project off the Samba and pleading with the wife for about 3 months. About 75% complete when I got it- and I did make one of the worst decisions of my life and bought it without the engine because I didn't think I was ready to work with the monster of an engine that was running hot...Live and learn, but this thing has been a pure joy (most of the time) to tinker with and is always a blast to take out and watch the heads turn.




Will try to begin loading what I have done as time permits.

Looks like a cool car!

May take me a bit to sort out my pictures for posting as I worked not his project for about a year and then had to take a 2.5 year hiatus. Back stateside for about a 8 months now and just starting to get back into working on my projects again.

One of the first things I wanted to get to was the cracked windshield of which size is apparently not correlated the price...it took three attempts to get the cut right and the price tag was almost $800.

A neighbor guided me on the body work which I actually found as very therapeutic, but very time consuming. Just take your time with thin layers and a large sanding block.



And the spots that I wanted to fix kept expanding.

I finally stopped finding more spots to repair when I got to the rear apron.



For the paint a local body shop covered the rear quarter and back for ~$300, which was well within my budget and no complaints on the quality....too bad I would mess part of this up later when I shipped her cross country to a friend's house while I was away.

Decided to get some better headlights and picked up some jeep headlights off marketplace for $80 with the running lights in the headlamp. I would have liked to picked up something with the turn signals, but I haven't found one I like yet so these will have to do.



I did have to swap some wires in the connector, but that may have been my doing on a previous install- other than that it was a direct connection just like an OEM headlight.



For the running light, I want to also use it as a turn signal. This allows the running light ring to flash when the running lights are not on, but is overridden (and will not blink) by the running/headlight light circuit. Not perfect, but easy to make and install as it is only two diodes.

At some point, I will get around to making the running light ring flash with the turn signals....and I did get around to putting something together... just haven't found the time to install it yet.



This was a bit more cumbersome than I wanted using two relays, but I struggled with a way to do this using solid state components for the same price. Below is the schematics.

Here are a few pics of my fuel pump install. This was a project I thought I would be able to finish over the Christmas break, but took me until almost April to finish with constant trips to the hardware store for bolts, washers, grommets, etc. and multiple extra orders for more connectors, check valves, tubing, etc.





This was the best setup I could come up with. Interested in hearing your suggestions on what I should have done differently.

The rear oval looks cool, but one of the things I would change is that part- you can see anything out that window. Hence, I wanted something to give me a bit more situational awareness of what is behind me and decided on a larger rearview mirror.

....I admit it takes a bit of getting use to and it is not perfect, but it is so much easier to see what is behind and beside me with.


Got a hole where the old rear view mirror was and I am working on a template to turn that into a middle bracket- it has proved to be a challenging task, but more so because my 3D printer has been acting up lately. I will get it figured out...eventually.