Bug Restoration (Official Full Version)

[Music] [Music] yes we picked it up uh at a farmer's field for 250 i believe it's a 1968 beetle uh bug not a super beetle but just a standard bug one of the fun things i think we're going to start in the next couple of days is and see if that motor will fire up because i'm excited to see if that motor will actually run i did just crank it over by hand and it seems like it's not locked up and there's no rod knocking so we'll prime the carburetor with a little fuel put a battery in it and see if it'll start and if it starts it just it just let us know how far in the motor we have to go we will remove it and clean it out of course but whether or not it totally needs a total rebuild or not is yet to be seen there's years of leaves and dirt and dust and debris in there and we'll clean that out remove all the carpets and throw all that away because we won't be reusing it we can terminate that rust immediately to stop it if there are holes we'll have to do some sheet metal work on the floorboards so your feet won't fall through so you're not doing the flintstone thing all the windows are busted out so we need to replace all those it appears that it originally is red but i don't want a red bug i'm thinking we're going to have to do something really cool maybe with an avocado green or something in the white interior it's got high back seats now so we're going to remove those and do low back seats gives it a much sleeker look on the interior i think the project time on this probably be since parts are readily available by the end of summer we should have that thing pretty much back together again i don't have a key for the ignition so we'll have to somehow hotwire it until we find the key for it it'll be a month before we even start thinking about reassembling it at least the fenders all have some minor denting but that's pretty simple to do and if that's too big we'll just buy new fenders for it it's they're not that expensive the bag i think um it's a piece of junk i'll be excited when i get to drive it backseat was easy to remove didn't know if anything was living underneath it thank goodness nothing was there something jumps out of here i'm dead there was some standing water in the floor bed floor bottom which tells me there was no rust holes which was a good sign we spent probably four hours yesterday just cleaning it up and cleaning out the interior we removed all of the carpet so we continued to remove both the seats all the carpeting and mostly glued down pad there is some spot rust but doesn't i don't it does not appear that there's any rust holes through the floor pans of the car so today we uh remove the tires so i can get access to the bolts for the fenders because we're gonna do a complete teardown of the car other than that the next thing would be to next day or so remove the broken windshield start taking out the headliner completely gutting the interior with all the pads and everything so i can sandblast it and then start removing all the fenders the hood the deck lid but overall pretty pleased with what i see so far because it doesn't look like there's major rust pockets that are going to have to be you know cut out and replaced so very very happy right now you ever moved the fenders everything went pretty smoothly their bolts weren't rusted in they came out pretty easily as far as the fenders go uh i don't know that we replaced some of them some of them have just got some minor denting so we'll go ahead and do the body work on those and strip them but remove the step boards between the two fenders that worked out pretty good started to remove the deck lid and the front engine hood so now it's exposed to the weather i took the old windshield out i basically just cut the rubber and knocked it out onto the ground doors were a little challenging because you know the hinges were rusted and that passenger door did not want to come out i had to wind up drilling out most of the bolts on the door which means i'll have to go in and replace the nut plates that hold the doors in when i go back to put it back on same with the one bolt on the driver's door i had to drill it out but doors look pretty good other than i've got to replace the hinges and as far as tripping the car down about 90 within maybe a few weeks we'll be ready to start putting a coat of paint on it and then start working on the bodywork and the fenders and hood and start reassembling took the carburetor off bought a carburetor rebuild kit and i've already rebuilt the carburetor the carburetor is the device that delivers fuel to the engine for proper combustion that atomizes the fuel and it still had fuel in it from the last 20 years but it was all varnished and gummed up it was never going to run the way it was and it took some cleaning to get it all cleaned out so right now my total investment in the car with the cleaning i'm up to about 36 dollars in parts so far so still staying under the radar because my wife doesn't need to see the bills as they start rolling in soaking some parts right now and super purple to get them clean so we're using the chemical stripping method for the paint uh basically your walmart special strip paint uh i've tried different paint strippers but i had to go for the hard fast one that strips it in 15 minutes sometimes it took a couple of different applications to get the hard paint off about 90 done i still need to do some of the interior um but we're pretty close to that and then of course i'll end the chemical strip and then go for a little bit of sandblasting some of those areas that i cannot get to easily with paint stripper finally took the motor out that was pretty simple only four bolts hold that in we were able to drop it onto the floor and i'm not going to do anything with that for a while because there's a lot more to do ahead of that we took the front end assembly off that was pretty easy there's only six bolts that hold that in place get them out of the way so we could drop it to the floor last week last saturday we removed the body from the frame [Music] do [Music] we took the frame to work sandblasted everything off the frame down to bare metal including all the rust we just applied the primer sealer which is a two-part epoxy primer sealer which should seal out any more rust from getting in the body or the body shell and here shortly we'll be putting on the top coat a gloss top coat to beautify it even more and that should protect it until it's fully assembled and ready to go so pretty excited about that today was a big day we got the transactional all painted and put back together with new seals and syncro rings and we were able to put it back on the frame get it bolted up with the axle halves installed so the next thing will be brakes of course and then we were able to put the front end back on which went together really well cleaned up again not much rust and not much wear in the components so we painted it and mounted it back on the newly painted frame so excited now to get the rest of the is put together so we have a good rolling chassis well we had a lot of fun last night we got to disassemble the motor and trying to find a reason for this bug to be parked for 20 years and i'm still failing to find anything wrong with anything i had to take it apart because it wouldn't be fun to put it all back together and then find out that the butter was toast [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] god damn i didn't move any of that my wrench i know more than that i just screwed up my my wrench is that made for that yes look at that look how many much [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now i'll be just inspecting all the parts and micing them and make sure that they're all in compliance so that we can start to reassemble here real soon finally got the engine together today that was pretty exciting had to see what we have to do we had to put new rings on it the barrels and the pistons were in really good shape just cleaned up rod bearings main bearings of course and then we installed case savers which is really important on vw motors and so that the stents don't strip out of the block we were able to redo the heads put new uh and it doesn't take valve guide seals which is interesting so the heads are all done everything looks clean things should run like a bomb when we get it started after we got all the parts in from my vw parts supplier we were able to put the monitor together in a day basically it took a full week cleaning parts and reassembling and honing the barrels and measuring everything out so it's a 1500 cc engine with 1600 barrels on it so i guess that makes it a 1600cc model [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] this week we finished the uh the assembly of the motor i took the original tins off the engine we did a part cleaned them and repainted them didn't need to replace any replaced a bunch of the screws that were there [Music] [Music] no leaks from any of the gaskets that we put together didn't take much to get it going so i did have the fuel pump hooked up incorrectly at the beginning the inlet and the outlet aren't properly marked so i had those reversed but after we got those done they started to pump fuel to the [Music] carburetor [Music] i was really skeptical whether the carburetor was going to work after it sat there with sludge for uh 20 years and it appears that we did get it all cleaned out and it worked fine so i was really happy with that [Music] started the motor up in the finale and everything runs well so we're really pleased that carburetor seems to be working good this was probably one of the more difficult or painful things to do with sandblast all the little nooks and crannies i couldn't get off with the stripper went through about three eighty pound bags of sand had sanded my shorts and in my ear canals the most difficult was was fighting off the bees because as that body shell sat out here in the hot sun summer sun bees were wasps were setting up nests [Music] we replaced the whole front clip on the bug after a careful examination after we stripped off all the paint turns out that i had been in a front end collision sometime in its life and someone had done a pretty lousy job of pounding it out for 95 dollars i bought a whole replicated front clip and matched it up with a swoop on the fenders and the hood and then welded it in place clean the welds and they've got it to fit [Music] so after we got that new front clip all welded on sand and body work done on it we were able to primer and seal the metal and repaint it so it's painted to match the bottom of course but now with it being painted we can lift the body and put it put the new gasket on the pan and then match the body and the pan together and that'll be our next uh next thing [Music] it was a little harder to put the body back on the chassis than taking it off because we were more concerned with scratching any paint that we did on the underneath side so we screwed in some eyelets into the roof rafters and used pulleys and then lifted the body up high enough that we could gently set it down on the body on the chassis so one of the things i wanted to do to this bug when we first bought it was i wanted to put a retro sliding rag top in it two ways to do that one is to harvest one out of an old bug or buy a kit online from a company that makes them and so i bought the kit online they did give a template we had to modify the template to make it fit [Music] right [Music] cut it out with a jigsaw worked out very well and with the bodywork and everything it'll look like a factory job [Music] so [Music] yeah so we painted the bug today and so with the body painted and then the all the other non-visible areas painted we can start to do some minor assembly on the on the body itself no runs bugs but no runs some little naps or flies flying into the paint but they'll be able to be sanded out [Music] so i cleaned up the steering wheel in the steering column and repainted it using an epoxy white paint and to save money of course and the key switch had no key for that so i took it to uh local loft shop and had a key made for it the key fits the door so we're pretty fortunate with that then we installed the steering column hooked up to the gearbox [Music] when we took the gas tank out it still had fuel left in it from over 20 years so needless to say it was varnished pretty bad the fuel sending unit was no longer able to work so i did harvest another one from the wrecking yard that is in good shape cleaned out the fuel tank put a new kit in it for the fuel sanding unit [Music] so after the steering column was installed we re-ran the wiring harness from the engine compartment back through the body into the trunk area [Music] so we insulated the inside of the bug today using a foil backed roofing rubber tape that i bought at a local building supply store i actually saw this being used on other bugs in the past it's inexpensive it's about 16 a roll and it took about three rolls to do the entire inside of the bug started with the you know the the floor pan and then the back where the carpet is and the package tray and it's very sticky sticks very well and it looks like it's going to do a really good job of course when we sandblasted the entire bike we removed any sound decking that was there from from the factory [Music] [Music] it was quite exciting to hear the engine start no leaks no drips although we did have to adjust the timing a couple of times to get it to fire properly the carburetor seemed to work real well again and it roared right to life and quite pleased with how it was running i was able to put it in gear and move it a few inches with a clutch and since i don't have any tires that hold air right now i really can't drive it anywhere once the engine roared to life i felt like i was having way too much fun for an old man to install the sliding rag top we had to line up the securing holes in the back bow that doesn't move we had to drill about six to eight holes and attach the screws to hold the back bow on fabric install you've got to literally stretch it over the two bows and make sure that it's taut enough that it looks like a professional installation in the instruction pamphlet it says you might want to be left to a professional and i tend to agree with that i struggled with that for four hours to get that fabric taut enough so that it looks like a professional installation and i think i did a good job but for the average joe that is a real problematic area is stretching the fabric and getting it to stay over the bows so we painted the fenders today a lot of bodywork involved i've got about four hours in each fender the biggest challenge was suspending them from the ceiling so that i could paint them properly inside and out things turned out very well as a beautiful day for painting early in the morning very pleased with the bodywork and how the paint [Music] so the doors were painted shortly after the fenders and the doors came out really nice again a lot of bodywork there weren't very many straight panels i did manage to booger up the driver's door came out very nice once we get all the new rubber and the windows and everything doors will come out very very good so [Music] interesting enough the the farmer i bought the 68 bug from went purchased another bug for bug parts for his own and it turns out it's a 68 as well so i offered it money to buy parts for my bug i needed the rear quarter windows and the rear windshield and the speedo which was faulty in the bug i bought and so he gave me a screaming deal all the parts are in good shape no scratches in the glass all the glass will get new rubber and cleaned up of course installed defenders today and one of the most difficult parts of the installation is making sure that the beating seats correctly against the fender and the body i struggled more with that than anything else but the fenders all fit good we installed the doors i was able to get most of the old rusted bolts out that i had to drill out to remove the doors in the beginning and those that i didn't i drilled out and re-tapped with the proper tap so i was able to get them all lined back up again originally the door hinges were frozen shut and i had to use a little heat and finesse and oil to work them free again but now they work very well and fit very well [Applause] okay okay so this evening we managed to install the padding kit for the headliner once we cleaned the bug off and we sandblasted the interior we removed all the existing padding there's an online reseller that sells the padding kit unfortunately it doesn't come with a lot of instructions on where the pad goes and how to fasten it to the car so through trial and error we found a good headliner adhesive and it's stuck fairly well and i think it'll be a good addition to the headliner once it's installed [Music] [Music] final piece to be painted was the hood for the bug and uh the reason for that is i didn't have a hood that actually fit the bug until near the end and i spent probably pretty close to seven eight hours of body work on the hood i did have to cut and in a few places so that it would drape properly over the front of the bug and it did have quite a few dents and i probably have uh six to ten hours just in body bodywork and making it smooth enough so that we could paint it it's an original bug hood which is nice because it does fit the hinge area the paint came out nice still need to cut and buff on it [Music] for the 250 dollars i can screw up a lot of headliners firstly there's no headliners made for a bug with a sliding rag top so i had to use a standard bug headliner and modify it to fit the sliding rag top the whole project took me about four hours very pleased on how it came out there's some small imperfections but overall i give it a b and i'm really pleased on the outcome and saved myself a lot of money in the [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] meantime [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] we started with a rear window of course purchased all new molding to get a good seal and it went really well very difficult in that this rubber fits extremely tight which is nice for a good seal but it made for a lot of aggravating minutes to get it to wrap around the window frame the quarter windows all have new molding on them and they went right in no problems installing those just trying to find the screw holes was a little bit of a problem [Music] uh the windshield however was another matter after a devastating first window broke and i still suspect there was a flaw in it because i know i didn't break it oh i just broke it no just admit that you broke it just a minute that was your fault you didn't know what you're doing it may have been a couple of too many beers at 11 30 at night and i may have slapped the rubber a little too hard but i think obviously there must have been a fracture in the corner there that i propagated when i smacked the corner i can't i can't accept the fact that i broke it so the front windshield took us a little longer to get it in but it fit really well and after knowing some of the tricks about lubricating the rubber uh we i was able to get it in and it fits nice and snug and seals well and it looks good that's the main part [Music] [Music] today finished the installation of the door windows with all new rubber one of the difficulties i had in the installation was i forgot to put the window crank in first that must go in first before any other components of the door go in because it's tucked up underneath the wing window frame and i found that out the hard way and installed it tried to install it after the fact and wound up having to take it all back apart again [Music] the carpet kit we got is a salt and pepper meaning black with white has the woven fabric around the edges pre-planning the layout of the carpet certainly helped and took a lot of frustration out of the assembly the hardest part of the whole thing was just gluing it down and suffering with the glue fumes [Music] overall results really positive looks very very good can't wait for the rest of the interior to show up this next week and the interior will be brand new so it'll be a very very nice car when we're done when we bought the bug someone had mentioned that they had redone the interior before they had parked it and it was obvious the interior hadn't seen a lot of wear but because it was weathered we needed to replace it i watched a video on how to install the upholstery on the seats but it didn't really tell you how much foam you were going to need and i bought two different types of foam from an upholstery supply shop and some hog rings and installed the interior and quite pleased how it came out today we installed the new tires on the bug they turned out really well the correct size everything fit well the old tires were the original tires that had been sitting for more than 20 years they would hold enough air so that i could drive it in and out of the garage and that was about it [Music] when the interior kit came in it came with the door panels we chose a two-tone color gray with off-white and bought new door panel clips and receivers for both the doors and the back they were a little difficult in that you have to line them up and when you put on the arm rest into the into the door it became a little challenging [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] what you see now is about a 99 complete bug [Applause] all right was wasted space it was ugly it was a piece of junk but now it's pretty cool it's the bug of my dreams i can't wait to drive it wilson likes it [Music] too [Music] ah you

Channel: Max Willson

Views: 7,920,610

Rating: 4.8127527 out of 5

Keywords: VW Bug, Bug Restoration, VW Bug Restoration

Id: WNv0fI-qzP8

Length: 48min 38sec (2918 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/victoriousjustin]

The end though...

[u/peewy]

Oh come on.. They probably took months restoring, filming and editing and couldn't wait for the bumpers and badges to arrive? :(

Pretty cool job, would've loved to see it 100% complete

[u/relevant__comment]

I guess this will hold me over until /u/badobsessionmspt finishes Project Binky.

[u/IronMew]

I appreciate the work in general, but that foldable roof makes me cringe.

Also, what's the point of heat-insulating the bodywork when you're going to carve a huge hole on top of the car for all the heat to escape out of?

[u/chriszimort]

That was great. Lol, the dog's name is Wilson Wilson.

[u/mcdronkz]

This is not artisanal, this is a hobby restoration.

In all fairness, you can't expect a single person to master each and every skill needed to carry out a car restoration.

For example, sheet metal work is an art in itself. It takes (tens of) years of experience to become truly skilled. This thread is a good example of such a master.

Still, I have huge respect for people who undertake such a project and actually finish it. It's no small feat, and considering that the guy did most of the work himself, the end result is pretty impressive.

[u/roofied_elephant]

That is so insanely cool. It is my dream to rebuild a junker like that one day...