Big Mods with big $$$. When Mods don't make sense. What did the CAR WIZARD do to this '66 VW Bug?

welcome back to the wizard shop let's take a look at this really sweet beetles you guys know i love beetles this one's no exception it's beautiful let's check this thing out [Music] so you guys have seen this car in the shop for quite a while it's been in the background it's a 1966 volkswagen beetle with the 1300 cc engine originally it wasn't in here for repairs it was in here for modification we're going to take a look around this beetle and see some of the small modifications we did do although originally we were going to do major massive modifications but before we dive into that let's go ahead and look around this thing it's it's so nice guys it looks like a matchbox car a little bitty matchbox car it is very clean it is a little bit dusty from it's sitting at home it's also been sitting in here so we don't detail the cars we leave that to the customer to do because that can be a very very particular situation where customer wants it done a certain way you need to make sure it's done that way we leave that to the professional detailers it has very very sweet wheels it's called speedwell london brm speed well and they look amazing they really look good on this car i also like that it has small wheels and tires up front and much larger ones in the rear it gives it a kind of a hot rod look we come around to the back it just has these little guys for bumpers which looks really good you can see it says 1300 on there has the dual exhaust coming out the back which is stock standard although the muffler on here is not stock the glass is all in good shape the paint has been repainted before it's not the original paint i don't know if it's original color or not but it has been repainted and they did a very good job you guys saw a video we did not too long ago on a white volkswagen beetle and there was lots wrong with it this one doesn't have lots wrong with it it actually doesn't have much of anything wrong with it like i said it was here for some major modifications let's go ahead and take a look inside let mrs wizard guide you through the interior so welcome back ladies and gents and here we are this is i'm just stunned i'm almost speechless this thing is in such amazing condition not a lot going on in a volkswagen bag but what we do have is in great shape it does have the original volkswagen am radio nothing's been changed converted there has this simple little ash tray oh sorry about that there's a big squeak again never looks like it's been used and you can tell there's no smell of cigarette in the cabin at all simple little emergency lever and then the two gauges gas and speedometer not a whole lot not even attack and being that this is a stick you don't even get a tachometer we can see it does say 46 000 not sure if that's 146 but i bet it's just the real 46 because this thing is such mint condition just have the beautiful emblem on the middle of the steering wheel and a lovely horn ring around as well as we look the floor the carpet i'm betting that that has been replaced that looks too perfect to be from 1966. door panels they're ivory looking really really really good the vinyl seats are amazing as well headliner matches we've got just a whole compilation of excellent excellent in throughout this vehicle you can see that we've got a little bit of staining marking on the visor but it's not overly bloated like we've seen in previous cars and as we move our way back this thing is such cherry condition which does match the outside as well we do see a little bit looks like maybe the piece of trim needs to be added to the back hatch area backed by the engine but that is it this back seat is truly phenomenal i mean there's there's just nothing wrong as we look at the driver's door panel even the elastic on the door is not stretched out it's still very very good conditions so this thing's amazing let's get this up thing up in the air i gotta see what it looks like underneath [Music] i don't know about you guys but the exhaust on this thing sounds amazing it's not too loud but it's not too quiet it has a really beautiful rumble to it a nice deep sound to it it sounds really really good but one of the interesting things is this car originally came in here to have all of that dumped like erased what i mean by erased is e v the customer looked into wanting to get an ev swap on this for one reason and one reason alone this car sits a lot of the time and once or two or three times a month that his wife would like to take this out and drive it it won't stop we all know about today's gasoline when it sits for a long time what does it do it evaporates and disappears it's gone you have to crank crank crank crank crank crank crank crank and eventually it will start but that is not a very pleasant experience every time you want to take this thing out maybe it'll start maybe it won't and finally you get tired of that we did look into an eevee swap from ev west and although they make very good equipment and a very good swap kit by the time you pay labor and all the parts and the batteries are really the expensive thing we were very quickly getting to 20 grand 30 grand the kit itself is almost 20 grand for the full complete whole shebang everything included look it up yourself guys look on ev west for the complete kit it's like seventeen thousand nine nine nine something and then you add multiple hours of labor we gotta remove the engine run all new wiring install battery packs and we're not going to do that for 500 bucks guys it's very expensive the customer started thinking about it and it wasn't a matter of whether or not he could afford it it was a matter of is it worth it and finally he came to the realization thirty thousand dollars possibly and will he ever get that back in fuel savings will he ever get that back and selling it nope not even half it would have been something to do for novelty or to just delete the whole idea of gas stations out of this car's life but finally he decided car wizard i i just don't think i want to spend that kind of money if it was 10 15 20 grand yeah i'd do it but it cost that much just to get the kit he said tell you what just figure out why it has these issues with starting and then fix it and we'll just take it as is it's a good car there's nothing wrong with it except for this issue when it sits a long time it doesn't want to start that can be said for any carbureted car with today's gasoline when it sets a long time you're going to have this issue so let's go ahead and get the hood open check out the engine bay and see what we've done in there there's the beautiful beautiful engine it's in very good shape we didn't have to do a whole lot to this thing the generator all this stuff was working fine what we did was we put a new carburetor on the old one just had varnish from gas from sitting a long time these things are so cheap fully brand new i can't even rebuild the old one for half the cost of what it takes to just buy a whole new one so it has a brand new carburetor on it that took care of all that issue and there is something missing here i'm gonna give you guys a second to figure out what's missing if you guessed the fuel pump you are correct we have a block off plate there this has been converted to an electric fuel pump it also has some additive in the fuel tank to solve the sitting issue with the fuel system let's go ahead and show you what we added to the fuel tank then we'll look at up front in the trunk i'll show you guys a few other things up there someone test you guys's knowledge of air cooled beetles again being this is a 1966. we just did a walk around of the car did you guys see the place to fill up with fuel no you didn't because it's not visible every time you fill up with gas you always have to open the front bonnet i'll show you why the reason why is the filler neck and the filler cap is right here there's no little magic doorway or anything on the side of the car in these years you open the front hood or bonnet whatever you want to call it there you go you put gas in it one thing we have added to the gas speaking of gas is stable storage this is what actually jay leno uses on all of his cars because his cars do a lot of sitting this car does a lot of sitting in order to ensure that the fuel that they put in it stays fresh for months at a time if it need be without gumming up the brand new carburetor we're sending along several bottles of this to the owner when he picks up the car and each time they fill up with gas they'll just add the proper amount of this to the fuel and fuel condition will no longer be an issue with starting so we've eliminated that issue with this and i'll show you guys a little bit of wiring and a few things we did to install the electric fuel pump right here here we have a fuel pump relay ran off of ignition power and we also have an inertia switch you guys have seen this on several other cars i've done electric fuel pump conversions you saw it on the austin healy that huvey has from hooves garage i will never install an electric fuel pump on a person's vehicle without some sort of safety mechanism so that if they get into a rollover crash or just a crash in general it doesn't sit there and spray gas all over them especially if there's a fire if this thing hits an impact this will trigger and shut off the fuel pump so now we have the relay and a safety device let's go ahead and get this thing up in the air [Music] so go ahead and check this thing out to know obviously there's no radiator up here but one thing i do want to show you guys is very interesting is this is before the super beetle era which had mcpherson strut front end this has torsion bars that's what this is called torsion bar front end as you can see it has two little control arms i guess you'd call them and they hook two torsion steel kind of bars that are inside of here torsion springs and there's your shock absorber that's it it's pretty simple these are very easy to adjust the ride height as you can see right here these are adjustable you can loosen up these and move them where you want them you can raise and lower the vehicle very very easy to do here's our steering gearbox which is also very small and very simple and obviously it's not power steering you don't need it on this right here is our fuel pump two to three psi is what the system needs for a carburetor it's tucked up out of the way so it doesn't drag or hit anything and it's very close to the fuel tank because these pumps don't pull from long distances very well so you always need to locate them near the fuel tank which we've done and then it feeds all the way back through the normal fuel line that was already there to the engine this has had disc brake conversion up front you can see the empty spindles you can see the empty stamp there it's a very common name and aftermarket volkswagen beetle parts so this has much better stopping power and very easy to work on you'll have to fool around with drum brakes just taking the pads out nothing loose there one thing you'll notice right here is this cable it's like that goes to the middle of the wheel what's the purpose of that that's your speedometer cable it does not run off the transmission or the rear end or anything like that it's off your front left wheel as far as wheels and tires go you can do whatever you want to this vehicle but giant off-road tires little bitty tires but the front left wheel always has to stay a stock size if you're wanting to keep an accurate speedometer i'm sure you can put a gearbox or change some of the gearing or do different things or different speedometer head to adjust for different sizes but with the stock speedometer you have to also have stock front left wheel which means very likely both front wheels are going to be stock size the rear wheels being so much bigger doesn't change the speedometer at all because it comes off of this wheel this looks like a supercar mrs wizard it does i was looking at all that paneling it's actually the body actually the frame of this is the center portion here and across here these are just floor pans that are welded in as we move our way back this also is the frame these are the frame horns this these two horns alone hold up the engine and transmission out in the middle of the air there's no other items holding the engine or transmission up in this vehicle except for these two horns right here is the outer portion of the body these are actually heater channels it's hollow in there if you listen you can hear there's actually air that flows through here and goes up to the front for your defrost and everything from the engine we'll show you guys that here in a minute these are in good condition they're not rotted and rusted out so as you can imagine this sits in here kind of like a porsche 911 and it's also air cooled it's a four cylinder not a six cylinder the engine's back here the transmission is right here with two tubes that come out with a there's not really a cv shaft it kind of is like there's a boot here and this that's called a swing axle the whole thing moves up and down you can see spider webs here's it's kind of like a blade this is your control arm i guess you could say trailing arm and here's our spring a torsion bar inside of here this whole thing just goes up and down and flexes only right here at this joint that is why when we raise the vehicle that the wheels move inward it's because there is nowhere other direction for them to go that is their their range of travel these are heater boxes coming off the exhaust and they run to this big pipe and that runs up to the front and provides heat for the defroster and inside the cabin that's how the heaters work on these we still have the drum brakes in the rear which is fine and it has a parking brake here parking brake cable looks like fairly new hoses everything's stock back here as far as suspension nothing really has been changed there's some very minor seepage here there we're not going to tear apart the whole car and fix all that it's nothing to worry about at the moment the valve covers were leaking very profusely however we did take those off we did a valve adjustment and then we put new valve cover gaskets on on both sides and that took care of the massive leak that it had well it wasn't massive but it was a pretty good size and then here's our aftermarket muffler that sounds so good so go ahead and lower this down and i'll show you the new way of starting this vehicle it's a very great [Music] advantage so no we don't get to do an ev swap unfortunately but i don't blame him it's almost really not worth it but we did improve the starting on this dramatically it's going to make his wife very very happy let's take a look i'll demonstrate so before we did the electric fuel pump conversion and some of the upgrades in the new carburetor to start this vehicle to get the fuel pumping the engine literally had to be cranking so what you had to do is one press of the accelerator pedal which we'll do now that sets the choke and then you had to crank and crank and crank and crank and crank to bleed the system and get the vaporized today's crap gasoline out of it and fill the bowl back up and hopefully it would start now this procedure is the same as far as one press of the gas pedal but then we turn the key on we don't crank the engine we just turn the key on you're going to hear the pump run you guys hear that we are purging the system of all vapor everything and filling the fuel bowl as we sit so i'll demonstrate it will be one press of the gas pedal turn on the key for literally five or ten seconds let it purge the lines and then this thing starts amazing now watch this guys i don't even think the engine turned over one full revolution and it fired up instantly i mean right now that is what they're looking for they want to get in the car start the car right now and hit the road no bs no games just go and it will be able to do that now so we have accomplished that for the customer very happy about that okay so today's gasoline is way different than it was 20 30 40 years ago we even see this at the marina where our trojan yacht is docked we've gotten to know several people in that little community there at the marina one of them is actually a retired engineer from standard oil he worked with the oil industry for many many years and i was talking to him about it one day and he looked at me said car wizard today's gas is almost nothing like it was in the 1950s 60s 70s especially with lead obviously the lids there's no more lead but there's different properties different chemicals that they experiment with that they can add more of this more of that and make the gas cheaper to produce and yet charge you guys the same amount it still runs fine in a fuel injected car but these guys these carbureted guys they they really don't like it and we've seen it in some of the boats at the marina when they've been on a long hot cruise on a hot day they shut the engines off to go swimming and play and have a good time and the engines vapor lock it's like i didn't have this problem when this boat was new 1999 2000 2001. over the last three or four years these problems are prevalent all over the lake it's the gasoline guys i don't know what we can do about it but this has been solved we've got this taken care of where now it will start up even after sitting when the gas boils out of the carburetor which it will can fill it up really fast just turn the key on we also have stable in the fuel to keep it fresh so if it sits for all month and never gets driven no problem so those two problems have been solved the other problem i haven't solved is finding time to get onto the 308. come on wizard i've gone back to school i've got two jobs going down i think you can pick up the pace yeah i might have to we have made some small progress on it but it's not enough for a video we're waiting till we get several small things together so we can show you guys around the car again and show you some of the upgrades and updates on it we're getting there guys we're getting there if you're curious what kind of tools we use to fix this cool little beetle check my amazon affiliates link in the description below we get a small cut and we really appreciate it make sure to hit the subscribe button because that video is coming up guys i promise don't worry oh and i forgot to say thanks for watching [Music] i should have said thanks for watching thanks for watching i'll come back and say that oh and i forgot to say thanks for watching

Channel: Car Wizard

Views: 253,678

Rating: 4.9292336 out of 5

Keywords: car wizard, david long, hoovies garage, tyler hoover, car issues with tyler hoover, omega auto clinic, car repair, car maintenance, Hoovie, mechanic, Car issues, BendPak, Car trek, vw, volkswagen, beetle, bug, 1300, mods, modification, ev, electric swap, fuel injection

Id: 4B9HcpNWonQ

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021