Well I’m just finished in the garage for the weekend. With the two new bugs home we wanted to give them a once over and make a start on the work for them. That reminds me I must start a file for each of them now.

First up was the blue 72 bug. The wheels where the first thing to go there were standard and didn’t suit the beetle at all. I had a set of empi8′s in white lying around the garage so they got new shoes and went under the car. I put 195/65/15′s on the rear and 195/55/15′s on the front just to keep the low look to the front.

This saved me another job. The car was lowered all round, the rear was fine but the front was too low for Irish roads. You may get away with really low cars in the UK or in Irish cities but in the country the roads would just destroy the front panel so it had to come up a bit. Also with the slightly higher profile it will mean she is more comfortable to drive. Don’t get me wrong she is still low,but just not crazy low.

Next up was the brakes, the passenger side calliper was ceased so that needed attention. We stripped it off the car and managed to get one pot out fine, the second side refused to move. I think we found the problem. The only way we could get to it was to split the calliper into two parts. We then used air pressure to get the second pot out. However if you ever to this make sure the calliper is facing the ground before you to it. With the outlet ports blocked on the calliper all the air pressure from the compressor when into the one pot and out she flew, right at my chest. In case you don’t know what these are like there is a picture below.

So it bounced off my chest an landed about 6 feet away. I’m lucky all it did was bruise my chest but it could have been much worse.

Anyway with the piston out we could clean it all up, reassemble and put it back on the car. Success as everything is working normally, but we couldn’t bring it on a proper road test as the wheel bolts weren’t long enough to secure the wheels adequately. When we put the new alloys on the wheel diameter is larger than what was on it so I’m not 100% happy with the wheel studs. Its secure enough for rolling it around the garage but I wouldn’t like to drive her on the road. I’ll order longer studs for her during the week.

So now she is mechanically sound we have to turn our attention to the interior. The wiring is a complete mess but I didn’t even start that today. I’ll leave that for a night during the week. I think that is something that I need to be left alone for. Someone replaced some of the wiring already but it looks like they only had a roll of red wire so half the wires under the dash are red which is not going to make it easy to chase the wires.

We did make some progress on the interior, the one piece windows were sticking, so we took them apart, cleaned and reassembled them, and now everything works as it should. We managed to get door cards from the scrap beetle we have, so they just need a good cleaning and we will then put them in the car. The only other big job for the interior then is she needs a new parcel shelf, also there are two 6×9 speakers in the rear door cards at the moment that will need to be moved to the rear shelf. I know this is adding to my workload but it will look much better when its all finished.

So thats the progress so far, we will be doing more work during the week so I’ll update ye as we are doing more work.