The latest upgrade on the bug was rebuilding the headlamps.  I’ve never been a fan of sealed beam headlights, so the first thing to do was upgrade them to H4 enclosures.  Rollie suggested European Bosch lights, which aren’t exactly legal in the states…meh.  

I tore apart the housings, cleaned, wire brushed and repainted them.  Ordered some new rubber odds and ends from Wolfsburg West and bought a couple H4 housings from Bus Depot. The cool thing about the housings is that the only way to get them into the US is to stamp “motorcycle use only” on the glass lens.  

Next up, to give it an even more European flare, I applied a yellow vinyl headlight tint to them.  It looks pretty cool sitting behind the Porsche style glass enclosure (which was available on Bugs through 1966.  

To finish it off and give an “outlaw” look, I purchased Porsche 356 headlight grills.  Those are on a boat from the UK and will be installed later.  All in all, I’m pretty happy with finished look.  

With the nice weather this last weekend, I figured it would be a good time to start painting the wheels!  I was going to spray them my paint gun, but decided to take the easy way out and prime/coat with rattle cans.  I heard good things about Ace’s Rust Stop paint, and they had satin black so I bit the bullet.  The price tag of 4.95/can didn’t hurt either! 

Back brakes are done! I also finished up running the rear brake lines, what a pain in the ass! I cleaned up the drums and painted them silver too, kind of gives the aluminum drum look found on Porsche 356s.  Eventually I’m going I’m going to buy aluminum drum covers, they look pretty cool on vw hubcap wheels when you run them with no hubcaps, kind of an outlaw look.  

I installed the turn signal and brake lights a couple weeks ago, it keeps looking cooler and cooler as I add the little odds and ends.  I really like the contrast of the bahama blue body color with the red brake lights! Now I just need to hook the battery up and test my wiring job!

Installed a pair of swing axle drop plates, should lower the rear a few inches! The cool thing about using these rather than just adjusting the spring plates is wheel camber isn’t affected as much, plus my shocks still work normally. It was a little unnerving cutting the rear shock mounts off!

I got the engine back from NWCR the other day, it’s a lot heavier now! My goal with this project was to try and do as much of it myself as possible, but there were some engine building things that were a little above me.  Jerry at NWCR was going to show me how to do the rocker arm geometry, but he was too busy so I had to leave the engine with him and he did it.  Anyhow, he took care of some other stuff too, ported the intake manifolds, bolted on the flywheel and gland nut, assembled the rocker arms and some other little things. 

All that’s left is to bolt on the remaining cooling tin, alternator, fuel lines, carbs and carb linkage, plugs, wires and some other misc bits and pieces. 

I figured since I’ve damn near replaced every bushing, seal, rubber gasket and all the other stuff that was rotted out, that this car should be practically brand new when I’m all done with it.  So I decided to reset the odometer to 1 mile!  Besides, it has probably flipped a few times since 1966! 

While I’ll have it apart, I’m going to clean and detail everything.  The “gel” inserts for the turn signal and hazard light are wasted too, I think the red insert completely disintegrated.

I spent the last couple days finishing up the wiring.  It looks like a rats nest now, but I’ll clean it up with zip ties now that 99% of it is all connected.  Let’s hope it works!

I spent Sunday reattaching a bunch of the little items.  I’m about half-way through re-wiring the car, but still waiting for a couple components.  I finished polishing the outside of the car last week.

Here is the breakdown and why I think I have tendonitis in my left wrist…

1)      Search car for drips, runs and sags, correct by slowly dragging a razor blade over the run like a planer – I had a lot of these

2)      Wet sand entire car and misc components with 800, repeat with 1000, then repeat 1500 and if you’re feeling OCD, hit it with 2000

3)      Time to break out the buffer!  Buff car with Cutting Compound, then repeat with polishing compound

4)      Machine Polish – luckily Griots sell 3 stages of polish, so three more round of polishing! 

It was worth it in the end, but it will be a cold day in hell before I paint another car in my garage!  I also took the time to polish the dash and other surrounding areas.  With the polishing done, I started to install some dash components and the exterior trim.  It’s coming together now!