***Just a note to anyone reading this thread for the first time: When I started this in 2018, I just wanted to fix this car and get rid of it. Eventually I did. Almost a year later it came back to me after being in a roll-over accident. That's when it DID become a build.***
About a year ago my youngest daughter was getting divorced (walking away with nothing) and needed a car. We found a 2000 Beetle that had recently had some good maintenance done. Manual with the 2.0, nice interior except for the door panels, and 'sporty' enough that it was fun to drive. We bought it, insured it, and let her have it.
The car was lowered and the seller said that he'd rebuilt the whole suspension. Very quickly we found out that these things weren't so good. He had somehow forgot to put bump stops on the shocks and with the car being more than an inch lower than stock, it was painful to drive on Oklahoma roads.
It also had a cat delete and custom exhaust. Basically a resonator and no muffler. My daughter loved the sound and we liked hearing of her pending arrival from a 1/2 mile away. My 6 year old grandson called it "Mommy's race car".
I promised to install the bump stops and put stock spring back on, but always had a few too many more pressing projects. Then one night, she tried a u-turn over a curbed divider. On these cars the oil pan is the lowest point on the car and this one had no guard, or plastic tray. She tore the bottom off of the pan. After the terrible bump and crunch, she kept driving. She called me at 11 pm from an hour away and explained, "Don't worry dad, I didn't drive it long. It stopped running about a minute after the oil light came on." ...I was speechless.
I trailered it home. Figured there was nothing to lose cranking it for a moment. It was not seized, sounded smooth. I didn't expect it to last long, but an oil pan and gasket is under $50. Ordered one and said she could borrow my tools. She replaced the pan, and the engine seems no worse for wear.
A month later the new pan had been scraped on a rough road and was cracked just enough to seep. No more delays, as a good dad and car guy, I had to put the stock springs back on and install the bump stops.
Over the next several months she drove it with no problems. Reliable, good gas mileage, and a little character. One day she noticed it was leaking oil and not from the pan. It turned out to be the oil cooler o-ring. Very common and not too hard to fix, I told her to drop the car off and let her borrow one of our Porsche Cayennes (This one was purchased salvage for $1,500 thinking I would keep it as a parts car for my other. When it arrived, the problems were fairly minor, so fixed for about $1k and decided I didn't need a parts car yet.). While I had the VW, I noticed that the clutch was starting to slip. It had been releasing high when we bought the car at about 135k miles, so not a big surprise. About the time she borrowed the Cayenne, she was also starting a new job. She was going from a minimum wage restaurant job to a career type job at a loan company. SWMBO thought that the Cayenne was a more fitting car for our daughter now. We parked the VW and let it sit, pending clutch replacement and eventual sale.
