Recently bought a 55 oval beetle and transported it from melbourne to sydney. Was looking for an oval that needed a bit of TLC and work but just short of a full ground up restoration.

I ended up with this beauty to work on.






Since then i've pulled out the semaphores in hope to get it working again.


Both semaphore lenses were painted over and i broke one of the lenses when i was dismantling them to check its condition.


I removed the front and rear signal lights that were added on by the 1st owner of this beetle, need to trace the wire back to the b pillars and get ti wired back up to the semaphores. If anyone has any idea how they work and where the wires run from and how they get to the semaphores, it would be great if i could get some advice and tips of getting it working again. Its the first time ive seen one up close.

I removed the carburetor and air filter and gave them both a good clean today.




And just for motivation, i put of the correct engine lid.


And a speaker installation.


I was also mocking up a list of parts i'll have to order for this project. I'm thinking of ordering a large lists of parts straight from wolfsburg west and ship it all in one go.

Im looking at keeping it as stock as possible with a few minor mods like the abarth exhaust, maybe a aftermarket roof rack and lowering the car futher. The rest is getting refurbished or rebuilt.

looks good good to see the tralier lights gone.

So i've been working on the beetle over the past couple of weekends, I dont get much time between work, uni and some club activities so i dont get much done on the beetle. Luckily ive got 2 week holiday so hopefully the engine gets done by then.

The engine got dropped and stripped apart. Its currently sitting on the floor while i wait for parts to arrive. All the stuff are getting cleaned.






I got a rebuilt distributor in so i'll probably clean up the original one and see if it could do with a rebuilding.


The exhaust has a lot of rust although its not rusted through completely, might see if its salvageable. Will be fitting a new exhaust on though. The heater boxes are gone though... One side has a hole in the box and the other one apparently had some work done to the J-pipe.



I check vwheritage and they are charging $340 per side? Is that a bit much? Bit of a buzzkill when i found out its going to take a chunk out of my budget. :/ Also, does anyone know if there is somewhere in australia to get the ivory colour the interior has as a high heat paint?

I had a little fun in busselecta and generated the look i want to mimic in my signature, MOAR MOTIVATION!

Looks good mate. Have fun and good luck with it.
Have you got a plan as to when you want it to be on the road?
Rob.

Good car to start with

Is that a clock or 3 in one gauge set on the dash

I dont really have any rush to get this oval back on the road as much as im just aching to drive it around, but im thinking hopefully i get it rego'd by about august or so. Seeing as i dont have a boss telling me what to do though, i might take my time and end up finishing much later than that.

Its a 5k rpm VDO tacho on the dash and a radio tuner at the bottom Pretty cool but neither of them are wired up, so more work to do.

Let me just say, I think that tacho and radio setup looks beautiful, what a find. All the best getting it going.
Rob.

Ok nice Tacho 5K and Blaukpunt Radio

I did notice the 120K speedo nice accessories

Have a look at the back of teh Tacho and see if its still 6Volt

What an absolute beauty, congrats on the purchase mate, cant wait to see it on the road soon

Very nice beetle i was watching this on ebay
Congradulations
Keep the updates coming

Had a relaxing 2 weeks off uni but i didnt do as much work on the beetle as i hoped i would. So far, i've cleaned the engine and painted all the bits and bobs, rebuilt the carburetor and fuel pump. Tossing up between the colour to paint the tinware.








Can't wait to get the engine back in, tuned up and running again.

Love your work mate, keep posting!!

Did you check tighten the 6 main crankcase bolts while you had it stripped down so far ???

I did not think to do that, thanks for giving me a heads up. Would have skipped my mind if it weren't for that.

Took a pretty long break from this project, between leaving Sydney for a month and work, I've finally got a two week break to get myself back into it.

Most of the tinware has been painted up and theres like 2 other tinware thats been sitting there since i last worked on them unpainted for now. Theres some of the tinware i've painted up sitting on top of the engine.


All the parts i ordered in from cip1 has come in as well. So i've pretty much just got all the work ahead of me to be done.



While working on putting the engine back together last night, after torquing in the cylinder heads and slotting in the push rods, i noticed an issue, one of the push rods was rubbing on the push rod guides inside to the point where the valve will not return all the way. I've pulled the head back off and pulled out the push rods on that side for now to see if anything can be done to fix this.

For now, the plan is just to press on and put the engine back together, replace the gearbox mounts and chuck the engine back in. After that, i'll move on to the brake and suspension work.

Thats sex!

There was a plan to get me to finish up all the engine work by the end of Monday. That would mean the whole engine assembled, tuned, gearbox mounts changed etc.

I would say everything was going smoothly but as we all know, something always happens. The J tube replacements i ordered to temporarily fix the rusted pipes and heater boxes were too large.

So with that annoyance, the engine is almost completely assembled. It will most likely be sitting aside for awhile till i get my next order of parts from US to fix up this issue as well as the interior.

Until then, here she sits. Oh and that sticker is just for fun, its definitely coming off when i get the correct one.

Looking good.

Interesting choice of color for the tinware, Is it white, or ivory? It would have been cool if you color matched it to the car. BTW, I think I remember this one on eBay a while back, the ridiculous indicators burned into my memory, wtf were they thinking when they were putting those on haha!

looking forward too seeing this finished! How's the progress going?

Quote:

Originally posted by 56 VDUB ..... .. the ridiculous indicators burned into my memory, wtf were they thinking when they were putting those on haha!

Been a while since I've been on here and working on the bug. Bought and sold a few cars over the years and kept the beetle on the back burner for quite a while but after I sold my mini, I finally got back into the beetle to get it going. The engine had to come back out, the barrels and pistons were replaced with a new set, the top end was rebuilt again and put back together. There was a change of mind again with the colour of the tinware and I decided to go back to satin black. After a long month and a half getting parts and working pretty much every chance I had on the engine, it was finally put back together and placed back inside the beetle. To my relief, this time, there were no problems and everything was running beautifully (at that point in time). Do excuse my lack of photos over the course of this entire process, I tend to get ahead of myself before remembering to take photos.










So after the long awaiting revival of the engine, I had a once over all the electricals and breaks before taking it off on its first drive straight for a blue slip. This also meant that the ugly trailer lights had to go back on for now until I work out a much neater solution to that issue. Passed on the first go and got it registered within the day, t'was a very delightful day.



2 weeks of running it in and sure enough, I had a breakdown. Turns out it was the fuel pump that failed, since it was sitting on the side of the road, there wasn't much that could be done so off it went to the shop to get fixed.



Now in the process of running the engine in still and enjoying the drives around town in it. Working on getting some new bike indicators fitted on the bumper and a nice set of roof racks to go on the top as well in the next week or so (hopefully). Now that it back on the road and being my only car, there should be more consistent work being done on it from now on.

Awesome. Love your work!

Good to see you back at it Bugkid.
Will be following your progress.

Fully registered and using it. Well done

Check these out....
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4x-Bullet-Motorcycle-Chrome-Turn-Signal-Light-Indi...
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4x-Chrome-Motorcycle-Turn-Signal-Indicator-Blinker...
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4X-Universal-Motorcycle-Motorbike-Bulb-Turn-Signal...
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4x-Motorcycle-Chrome-Mini-Turn-Signal-Indicator-fo...
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4x-Metal-Motorcycle-Bullet-Turn-Signal-Light-Indic...

I've been looking at some of these for one of my projects as well.