Monday, January 4, 2010

1971 VW Beetle Restoration

The bug is finally done! After hours and hours and hours of work by the Lord of the Manor and a few hours here and there on my part, it is finally done and running like a finely tuned watch.

Whilst the Teens slept in on New Years morning, the Lord of the Manor and I tinkered with the last few nagging issues: brake lights, aligning the steering wheel, spraying on undercoating, and timing. But we totally missed the boat on the timing and it continued to buck and snort the next day so I Googled VW tune up and found this great page. It was wonderful to see that strobe light finally flashing on the correct timing marks and hear the roar {ok, purr} of the newly rebuilt engine.

So little Hidalgo {that's what she named him} is all clean, fresh, and new from his tiny trunk...


to his license plate which has also been restored. Did you know you could carefully scrape those stickers off and reuse them? Just be gentle and stick them back on with spray adhesive or double stick adhesive-on-a-roll.
So keep an eye out for this little yellow bug zipping around Amongst The Oaks and give Teen1 a honk and a wave. She'll be the one grinning from ear to ear.

6 comments:

travelbug said...

Wonderful!! It looks just great and I know Teen1 will be happy not having to walk to work anymore but to be in her darling little labor of love from Dad and Mom.

Hugs!

Lucy said...

That is so great that you finished it for her! I'm sure it will be an ongoing project and never truly 'done' but for now you can start thinking of the next project car?

Stickhorsecowgirls said...

I think this is great! I would not have a clue how to go about it. Wayward husband and I had a Beetle as our first car--a green 1970 one with a peace symbol added by us on the back windshield! We later traded it in on a VW Rabbit--remember those? C

Gillian said...

That is a fantastic achievement. It is really gorgeous.
Good thing you aren't here with it, you would have had to dig it out from under the snow each day for the past three weeks. England's Victorian housing areas were built without garages!
Happy New Year!
Cheers Gillian

Barbara said...

It looks brilliant and great fun.

Martha said...

Oooooh...I've got to show Zuddy this! He's a fan of the BUG!