Buster - my 72 beetle

Been on here for a few years now & have never really put too much up about my beetle, have always wanted to do a build thread like a lot of other menbers have done over the years but have never gotten around to it.

Over the last couple of months I have been working towards preparing it in the hope of getting on the start line for the Nationals Supersprint, like a lot of us on here, I have let the project idle along too long until I was going day & night pretty solid for the past 4 weeks.🤪🤪
I have now come to the realisation that I am not going to make the deadline so I thought I would relax a bit & get this thread started so I can document what I have done thus far & what will get done in the not to distant future. Supersprint will be on next year & I will be there fully prepared.👍



Anyway the story starts now.........


My beetle "Buster Ramone" Is a 1972 poverty pack standard beetle which was in pretty much stock form when I bought it in early 2002 (i think), after my previous beetle sucumbed to the dreaded rust disease.😬

Drove it for about twelve months until I got the urge for a few changes.

I installed avis adjusters in the front beam, bought blank discs & type 3 front calipers, a set of of type 3 rear brakes & drilled & studded everything for porsche 5x130 bolt pattern, then bolted up a set of 15x6 cookie cutters. Got myself a personalized plate "VLK55Y'.


Here is the earliest photos I have, & pretty much explains the sentimental attachment I now have with it.

Here I am in late december 2003 arriving at Taree Hospital to pick up my 7 week old twins to take them home for the first time. I had spent every spare moment in the week leading up to this cleaning & polishing so it would sparkle.






Here is the precious cargo, note the custom made his & hers VW beanies & blankets









we'll that's it, first installment over, more to come in the following days, weeks & months as the story unfolds.

Cheers
Brendan

The story starts off perfectly. Fill us in

Best shape and love the wheels!! 🙂

Very clean bug, I wish my paint was in the same condition as yours.

dubster wrote:Very clean bug, I wish my paint was in the same condition as yours.

It's not anymore as you will see in the up coming posts.😠

oh ok are you going to respray it the same color or you thinking of changing it?

Going the same colour at this stage, lots of people don't like the factory mustard colours it, but it actually grows on you after a while.

Yeah I agree, it's different thats why I think I like it so much.
Hoping to respray mine next year.

Same with my Martini Olive beetle - hated the colour when I first got it - did for years. But it grew on me, and now I have had it re-sprayed the same colour.

This is the next stage of developement / degredation.

picked up an old school suction cap roof rack & on she went after I added a bit of height to the legs & narrowed it by about 150mm.

Alloy running boards were added as well after the originals became a higher percentage of iron oxide than actual steel.

You can also just make out the damage to the bonnet caused when I hit a roo at 100km (spun me through 360 degrees). this completely stoved in the bonnet & also pushed the front apron back until it made contact with the spare wheel. What you can see here is after I flogged it back out into rough shape.



The old mans lowlight is lurking in the back ground as well.

It's funny how first off you hate a color and you swear you will do a complete color change,
but then you decide to respray it the color you originally hated.
I couldn't see my bug in any other color now

just thought id post a pic of mustard up and show you my bug

yeah will end up the same basic colour but with a few "hopefully" taseful changes.


The roo incident prompted the next phase which consisted of the satin black bonnet. couldn't afford a colour match, & didnt want to paint it the straight original shade as I thought that would stand out like dogs ball any way.


Picked up a reasonable second hand bonnet & after a couple of rounds of fill / prime / sand, I squirted it with satin black. In the back yard of course.
























Here you can just see the edge of the black bonnet, at Maccas on the way to the 2008 BugIn at oran park.





I think this was also around the time I replaced the passenger side floor pan due to more rust issues. replacement pan half came from Wolfsburg Automotive in Victoria. Cant find any photos at the moment though.

nice work looking forward to seeing the progress on it.

Cheers Dubster

here is a few more pics of progression with mustard

Thanks mate.


Next up, painted white walls.........

Tyres were nearing the end of their usefull lives so I thought I'd see what whitewalls would look like. Once again the budget was evaluated & the decision was made to go with home brew painted on whitewalls.











These last 2 are a bit blurry but you get the idea.

pretty good job for a DIY i had a guy come around and did them all for $100

hellbugged wrote:

dubster wrote:just thought id post a pic of mustard up and show you my bug

&

here is a few more pics of progression with mustard

you have several threads about "mustard" keep YOUR pics on there! As Brendan has stated in his 1st post, it's taken a long time for him to do this thread, so leave it about his car!

the corteous thing to do would be remove them 🤓

x2

I was just showing Brendan my car for ideas.

Good stuff Brendan ..... Can't wait for the dyno story, it made some sweet numbers from memory

Shame you're not up to the sprints, you still going to spectate?

Thansk for the comments guys , all good, but yeah would like to try & keep most of the pics on here mine.

Damo, dyno chapter is on it's way soon. No supersprint trip for me, will most likely be makin a day trip to the show& shine on Sunday if anything.

Still ticking over doing a little bit each arvo / night. my caravelle is playing funny buggers at the moment though so spending a bit of time on it at the moment.

More later.

Cheers
Brendan

Found the floor pan pictures, & they have bought back some bad memories.


Water had obviously been getting in for sometimebefore I discovered the problem during a big wet period & the passenger side became flooded. couldnt find the entry point even when using the garden hose in all suspicous locations. Too late to save the original floor by then anyway, so the hunt was on to find a decent replacement panel.

here's the damage.

front of the heater channel was rooted as well, so a rather large patch was welded in there as well.

holes were drilled & nuts wedled on the back side so the floor pan bolts had something the screw into. gave everything a coat of black killrust (both sides) except those areas that would be welded. Those ares were painted after welding (obviously).

A patch was also needed in the wheel well side fo the heater channel as well, but no pics of that one.

I had a problem with water getting in on mine too.
My leak was coming in from the drain hole just behind the dash, might be worth taking a look.

Cheers dubster

Flat screens don;t have that drain 😉

done a bit of research & finally opted for a replacement pan half from wolfburg automotive in victoria. These are heaps thicker than the usual pan halves that are available.

They dont have seat rails fitted so it's a case of cut my existing rails from the rust pan & weld them back in place.

You can see where I have drilled the holes around the inside edge for me to wedl though. also had to dress the sharp edges of the pan bolt holes.

Joel wrote:Flat screens don;t have that drain 😉

beat me to it Joel🥷

Oh ok I didn't know that

there is a few areas on these pan halves where it looks like they have to cut & relieve the metal to allow it to form properly. These areas are a bit rough, but were the only real negative about them.

these two are on each side about half way along the panel.

these next 2 are in each of the back corners. I had to give these a little touch up with the welder as there was a couple of small pin holes & cracks. Will probably give these two a bit of a re-jig some time in the not too distant future.

test fitting.

this shows measurements taken so I could reinstall seat raisl in the correct position once the pan was in.

killrusted both sides prior to fitting, masked of those areas that would be welded. these would be a painted after welding.

final fitting before welding.

after welding more killrust where needed & them sikaflex seam sealer both side of the join between pan half & pan frame. Aslo sikaflexed along the join between the pan & the heater channel (both sides) to help prevent any more water entering.

weled in seat rail, reasembled & away we went for a while.

That'll do for tonights installment.

Great looking bug! Eagerly await more pics!

Thanks mate, it's lived outside about 500m from the beach since I've owned it, so as you can imagine it has deteriorated a bit over time.


had forgot to mention that I got a set of rear pop-out windows off ebay & put them in at some stage of the time line.


The ride height that the front end is sitting at in the photos shown so far is basically a result of me having it initially riding lower & discovering that the ridiculously harsh ride was a result of me sitting on the bumpstops........... pulled the shocko's off & found that the suspension would only travel about another 5mm until the balljoints bottomed out.😬

Couldnt find a shock absorber the correct length to let me get it low & give the ball joints some buffer zone, so had to raise the front up a notch or two. 👎

next stop.......drop spindles👍👍

Looking good mate how hard was it to replace the floor pan?

not too bad really, would be heaps easier with body off.

with body on there are a couple of sections that where welding is not 100% accesible.

only did it this way as the quickest for my desired outcome. body will come off one day & i'll rectify a few areas that didnt work out 100%.

Brendan

Oh ok cool, I gotta say from what I see in the pics you have done an awesome job

Dubster

To overcome the shock / balljoint travel problems I experienced earlier, I found myself a set of secondhand CB Performance 2.5" drop spindles courtesy of the AVD buy & sell forum.

And as we all know nothing is straight forward with modifying the humble VW..........


Hardest part of the entire job was seperating the camber eccentrics from the ball joint tapers, I had to seperate them as I also had a set of eccentrics that have the extra offset on them to enable me to dial a bit of extra negative camber in later on. (Upper arms had already been "bent" by Richard at V-Force at an earlier stage).

Spindles went on & everything seemed fine until I went to bolt up the wheels.....

The bottom ball joint/trailing arm came into contact with the inside of the rim.

This was a major piss off moment as I had heard the rumours of this happening & made contact with 2 Australian VW shops & a US company to ask if this would be a problem with the wheels I was running (cookie cutters). No was the resounding response.

So out came the trailing arms & I linished some additional clearance on the trailing arm/balljoint, just enough to gain my self a tiny bit of clearance. (also radiused the front of the trailing arm to give myself just a little more steering lock).

pics are a bit blurry but you'll get the general idea

SFA clearance between trailing arm & rim



traing arm where i clearanced the balljoint area





front of the trailing arm







Thought I was good to go after this but......🙅🙅🙅

wheel still came into contact with trailing arm when the suspension went into compression. So back to the drawing board.

here's the inside of the rim after a drive up the road.

Turns out that your lower ball joint needs to be in pretty good shape to be able to run these drop spindles. Should be in good shape anyway I know, but these really highlighted the issue.

When the weight of the car is on its wheels the lower trailing arm is actually trying to pull away from the ball joint, therefore as the balljoint wears, the trailing arm moves away from the balljoint & closer to the wheel rim. Turns out mine had about 2mm of play in them.

New ball joints installed, everything back together & it was all sweet.......... kind of......

Apparently I didnt really know how to correctly check balljonts & tie rods for wear until this happened. I do now though.🤓