Fit pretty well. They're just set in there right now, but I can close both door's and they don't touch each other.
it's amazing how easy it is to take out a beetle seat, no tools required just pull the lever and push it forward until it comes off the tracks
Would not recommend the delrin shift bushing, even after filling it down and compressing it with a hose clamp, I couldn't get it to seat before it broke. Ordered a stock replacement and will fit it this week when it arrives.
Also after removing the carpets, looks like a previous owner "fixed" the drivers floor pan under the seat with fiberglass. I'm gonna put the original seats back in, ignore it, and enjoy the car until winter. Then I'll actually fix it and fit the new seats
obviously the old bushing wasn't doing much, though
That looks like fun!
It was amazing how terrible my beetle shifted with a bushing that looked like yours, and how much better it got after a stock replacement. I didn't know about delrin ones, which is probably good because I would have tried that and probably had the same bad luck as you.
The seats look great!
The beetle runs great, but falls on its face when you give it throttle from idle. This screams accelerator pump to me. But before I could even get to that point, I noticed that the PO never wired in the automatic choke, so I went ahead and did that. After that, I saw that the accelerator pump wasn't acceleratoring. Haven't had a chance to dig into it beyond that, but my guess is that the nozzle is clogged, as this is supposed to be a new carb.
Cool car! Enjoy. I had an a/c beetle many years ago. We used to take it off road all the time. We had one trail the ruts were deep enough you barely needed to steer. More like a slot car.
gixxeropa said:....... but my guess is that the nozzle is clogged, as this is supposed to be a new carb.
You can just take the top piece of the carb off and pop off the brass squirter nozzle , then see if its the accelerator pump or a clogged nozzle ,
Just make sure you replace the nozzle and tap it so it seats in the carb , they can pop out and go into the motor (Oops)
Got the oem style shift bushing installed, I can actually tell what gear it's in, some people say they last 10 years, some people say they get a few months out of them. So I guess we'll see
also pulled apart the carb and took out the accelerator needle to clean it, then promptly dropped it down into the intake manifold. Managed to get it before it got anywhere dangerous, thankfully. But after cleaning it, reinstalling it, and making sure it won't pop out, the bug runs well and seems to come off of idle way better. We will see how it is when it's light out and I can test it better without making the neighbors hate me
Just cleaned up a bit today, vacuumed it out, put the original seats and rear cowl back in, mounted the louvers (with an adhesive mount kit from Amazon rather than the metal tabs it would have used originally)
next I need to mount the rear bumper. It mounts off the frame horns and the top strut mounts. After that I'll call it mostly done
got the rear bumper mounted, keep finding more rust on the underside of the car. At some point I'll have to make a call on if I want to keep it long term and fix it all or move it down the line. Until then, I'm going to keep my investment minimal.
Since I only need a few degrees of twist to keep the muffler from rubbing, do you think I could just heat the tubing with a torch and tweak it with a ratchet strap or something? Or am I liable to kink the exhaust rather than bend it?
I guess worst case scenario I have to buy another $100 exhaust lol. If I keep it long term I might move to the dune buggy style duals
Got the carb disassembled and in the dip. Gonna rebuild it tomorrow. Also got the oil temp gauge working, just needed a better ground. Was trying to figure out why the fuel gauge was reading 4% when I knew it was full. Turns out it's reversed so it reads 100% at empty. I tried to mess with the VW fuel sender to make it read right but ended up breaking it, so I ordered an Amazon unit that should bolt up directly and work hopefully. After that all the gauges are working! (Still need to calibrate the GPS Speedo, though)
I seem to remember the guy at the muffler shop heating and tweaking the exhaust on the Mustang I had to get the tips to line up and they didn't kink.
Got the carb rebuilt and somewhat tuned. I'm now able to floor it off of idle without the car just dying. Yay!
combination of a ratchet strap and shrinking the other side of the exhaust by heating and cooling it got me about 3/8 of an inch. Should be enough to not rub through my muffler
valve covers were a bit worse for wear so I repainted them with rustoleum metallic engine enamel. I used it on my rusted Kubota exhaust with good results so I'm hopeful here. Only question is how to reinstall them without scratching them. My current plan is to take a sheet of paper thin ptfe from work and use that to protect the paint from the bales while I slide them into the groove
also got all the gauges working, so that's good
Went and adjusted the valves. Most of them were fine, just had to do a couple. It's super easy on a Baja as the valve covers are just right there
Ptfe sheet worked a treat for installing the valve covers without scratching them (the blemish in the photo is just some grease)
got the new vacuum advance distributor installed and timed enough to run. Will get it fully timed in later. I had some confusion at first, because the PO built the engine, and got the distributor gear installed wrong so that the notch in the distributor points at the wire for cylinder 4 instead of 1, but I figured that out. Then I got it to start but not idle and realized that the headers weren't hot at cylinders 2 and 4, after which I deduced that I had accidentally swapped their wires. Swapped those back and it idles fine now. Calling it a night there
What a fun driveable project. If it were mine and it had rust underneath, I would run those tires until they are bald and I wouldn't spend the money to paint it. Cheap cars are often a bigger rabbithole than expensive ones because of the opportunity to $20 bill yourself to death and it adds up quickly!
Drive the wheels off of it and wait until someone loves it more than you do and is willing to pay!
In reply to Loweguy5 :
If I decide to repair the rust, I'll do it more as a learning experience/sheet metal welding practice than anything. Luckily patch panels for beetles are widely available and dirt cheap, so it's more a question of time investment than monetary investment
My brother had a kit like that on his VW in the 70's. No bumpers at first, not required, but the cops stopped him all the time for not having bumpers. Finally he made some bumpers out of 2x6 lumber with polyurethane coating and they left him alone.
He had wheel adapters on it for oversize 15" tires, F70-15's I believe. The car was slow as molasses because it had the 2 speed semi-automatic transmission and the taller tires.
He once came in 3rd overall in a autocross sponsored by the local Corvette club. It rained most of the day and the Corvette guys couldn't keep their cars on the course. Pretty funny really..
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