Saturday, November 12, 2011

Change of plans, again!

First off I would like to apologize to my cousin and brother in laws who have helped me thus far. I might be changing my mind again. So I was trying to find different doors that had wing windows. A lot of people said that the single windows look better and that I wasn't wise getting rid of them but I really like the wing windows and their functionality. So after searching for a couple of months I found a pair. Unfortunately they were still on the body and the seller wanted to sell everything all together. I got him down to a good enough price that I could almost scrap the body and get my money back for everything. But the body is in better shape than my other one. So I am going to swap them out to see if this one will work. The only thing is that it is a super beetle. I have researched and hear that they work on standard pans so if this works then I will try to sell the other body. Here are picts of my progress today.





Thursday, October 13, 2011

Stripping!!

UPDATE: So I decided that I wanted to strip the body down to the bare metal. I big effort with a grinder. So I had an idea. I enlisted my brother-in-law Jared to help and in return he would get the mere pleasure of working on the baja (which he was very excited for), I will teach him how to drive stick, and I will help him on his bug when he gets one (because I know that he will get hooked on bugs and get one for his first car after working on mine). So here are some progress pictures of the stripping.



Saturday, July 23, 2011

Day 2

Scotte and I worked on the bug some more today. It was all stripping paint and welding up some holes in the front. We looked like smurfs from stripping the paint since the sweat and hair trapped it onto our bodies. We still had issues with the welder but got the job done. Well not all the welding was complete but at least what we wanted to accomplish for today. One quarter panel was sanded and ready for paint. Just have the rest of the body to go! I have learned that stripping paint is not the funnest thing to do. It just gets exciting to envision what it will look like. I think I am going to paint the baja silver. It was between silver and metalic blue like my last bug. But Silver hides blemishes and scratches better and since it is a baja those are inevitable. So for now the plan is silver. Here are pictures of todays efforts!










Saturday, July 16, 2011

Baja Update

Ok so let me update on the baja. Everything in the blog thus far has been sold except the motor. As I was getting into the project I realized that I may never finish the bug when something happens and I have to sell everything and not even have the joy of driving it. There was so much work to do I feared I would put all this time into it and not even enjoy it. And the kicker that set this off is that I started to find a lot more rust than I wanted to repair and it was in places that it wasn't even worth repairing. So I sold everything and started to look for a running bug that I could fix along the way. Well I needed to sell the Elantra to get $$ to buy me something. It took about 6 weeks to get the car sold. As I was trying to sell the car I found this baja on craigslist that was a great package. And to everyone's shock it was another project. Meaning it isn't even running. But the package pretty much came with everything and just needs to be put together. Seriously it had so many new parts. Like I always do, I got in the I have to have it mode where that is all I think about. So the moment I sold the car I called the guy up and made him an offer he accepted. Two days later I brought everything home.




First Day Working


So Scotte and I started working on the baja today. We didn't get much done because the welder wasn't woring properly. We just got the front bumper sanded down. It was rusty. And started to strip the paint with aircraft paint stripper. Not much but we have started. Here are some photos.




Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The Power!!!

So this last weekend I purchased my motor for my baja. I got it for a great, and I mean great price! It is a 1835 cc and I am way excited. I am not quite ready to put it in and get it running, but I needed to buy it before my friends son bought it. Here it is.



Saturday, March 5, 2011

Bug Update

So I made a little more progress this weekend. Only worked a few hours. I have been busy with other projects in my garage trying to get it ready to work on my baja. I first added 5 more wall outlets since the area I am going to build the baja had none. Thanks Fulton Homes! And then I built some shelves and a workbench out of wood.



I know I still have to organize everything on it. Then I built a platform on wheels so that I could put the shell on it and roll it over the pan so I can get all the cars in the garage.



I know it looks funny but it works great! So today we were able to finish taking all of the tar insulation off the pan which is not any fun. Then we took the front beam assembly off (I am going to get a custom linkpin front end that are widened with taller towers)



And then we took off the motor. I think I am going to try and sell it. I am not sure if I can get any money for it. I do know it is not seized up at least.



So I think I will finish getting the pan stripped down so I can get it stripped or sand blasted so I can repaint it all. Then Bugzyla here I come!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Beginning

I thought I would start a sub-blog to my wife's about my baja project. I am really not doing this to share with the world but more to keep a record for myself. But I figure since I am doing this might as well let other people see.

So my brother told me about this bug that his father-in-laws, mother's roommate had sitting for 15 years in their little side garage. The price was $200 and I figured even if I don't do anything with it I should be able to get more money by turning it around and selling it. So I bought it. I had to fight with the MVD to finally get the title but everything is now clear. So this is what I brought home.


My cousin Scotte and I are going to work on this together since he has way more of a mechanical background, although has never touched a VW. But we will get through it!

As we started to tear into the bug we noticed a lot of rust. In fact the shell was collapsing on itself. So we found a shell that has integrity and was already chopped for a baja. So we started to take apart the body so we could pull it off the pan. We didn't have a big enough phillips to take the doors off so we called in some youth from our ward to help us out.



So here is where we are at now.


We have started to tear/chip off the insulation on the pan which is a long task. And actually haven't touched it for over a month now. I had two garage projects that I wanted to complete before I worked on the car. If you notice in the last picture the baja project is taking up two car bays of our garage. That means at least one car is in the driveway. So the goal is to get the project into one bay, which will be the single garage door. I wanted to put in 5 more electrical outlets in the garage since the dumb home builder only put in 2, in a three car garage. Dumb right? Well the single door is where the baja is going to go and there were no outlets anywhere near there. So that was job #1 and it is complete. The second project is building shelves and a workbench so I have a place to be organized and work on my baja (and my mountain bike). That project is still ongoing and I hope to finish in a week or two. And actually is taking up the third car bay so both our cars are in the driveway when we have a three car garage. Not very smart right? Soon though.

So check up on this blog for updates. I hope after the next couple months we will have some good progress on the baja.