I was poking around my beetle and doing a cleanup with the shop vac. Removing 30 years worth of dust and crud. and i vacumed up half (ok not half but far too much) of the heater channel at the front. (after ripping out the carpet)

where is the crying smiley...

so now i am faced with a few choices, but pretty much all of them revolve around buying another car.

a) buy a mini to drive and fix the beetle.
b) buy another beetle and wreck the first for parts.
c) drive it untill it dies. - which i really don't want to do.

mechanically it's sound and the rest of the channels are decent. (i.e. the bit's not at the front).

trouble is i have to have a car to drive, so just replacing the channels is not really an option.

oh man, i am totally bummed out.

totally.

any advice/comisserations?

oh hey, there it is. :cry.

i have just taken some pics so if someone knows where i can host them you can all see why i am miserable.

Do youo need to drive the car over the weekend, cause maybe someone can replace the heater channels over the weekend, spray it with primer, and then the next weekend finish the job! Just a thought! Dont be bummed out, these things are found everytime!

you can drive your car while this damage is there u did before u even knew about it!! just get someone to do it over the weekend like unity said!!!
cheers
rhys

i go to http://www.villagephotos.com  to load my pics on. but theres a 20kb limit per pic i think.

cheers VW1976, i'll sign up now.

driver side channel



passengers channel



i know it's not *too* bad it's just a nasty surprise i didn't really want.

any vauge ideas as to the cost of repair.

they look fine everywhere else (besides the directly outside bit from there) so i imagine fitting a new set of channels (or repairs) wouldn't be impossible.

No worries
Just weld some patch's in, nearly every old Beetle has patch's in those area's, well the ones that are driven everyday and left out in the weather anyway. thats not very bad at all! it dosen't need complete new channels.
Rob....

Ummm, for a start, give it a good hard scrape with an old screwdriver (get agresive with it) until you find some metal and spray it with some "Cold Gal" (ask your local hardware store). That'll slow it down at least and give you a chance to think about it.

Actually, it doesn't look bad at all, but could be a lot diferent after you've cleaned it up.

the photos don't quite do it justice, i know it's not too bad, but with some 'agressive scraping' there will be a strip about an inch wide with no metal. but i'll give it a shot tomorrow morning and reassess it then.

from the looks of it it doesn't need a new channel it's just a surprise i would rather have not had. i'll post pics on the proper (body i guess) forum when i have cleaned it away.