George’s Cars

Well she is gone to a new home. But again she is not going far, only about 3 miles so i should see it again….

Well, i’m a little a head of schedule, i got the buggy painted tonight. It went well but i do have one problem to fix, despite cleaning the body 5 different times i missed some dust in the rear light and naturally when i went to spray the it came out. I have 7 little dust speckles in the paint but i’ll fix that when the rest cures. I’m really pleased that i have no runs. This was my first full car paint job. I have done panels before so over all I’m happy.

I do have a few pictures but these where taken in bad light with a phone camera so they only give an idea of what she is like. In the pictures it looks more orange than red but in person it is a beautiful shade of red.

And my makeshift booth!! Only took two roles of plastic!!

With all the work on the buggy I forgot to tell ye all that the red 70 beetle is gone to a new home. There was a few jobs to do before it went. The front suspension had to be rebuilt. The previous owner had removed the grease nipples allowing moisture into the beam, thankfully the beam was still solid but the bearings inside had rusted and the front solid was solid. A few new bearings, a few grease nipples and two days got that sorted.

I had some rewiring work to do also, not that there was any major problems but the new owner wanted a few changes so i agreed.

Last thing she needed was a good clean and a polish. She was repaired about 10 years ago so she needed a little freshen up. When she was finished she looked savage.

She hasn’t gone too far, Alma’s sister Amanda bought it as her first car so I’ll see the car quite often plus it will be nice to have another beetle on the roads of Galway as a daily driver.

Well got a few more bits done today. Spend about 10 hours in the garage so I should hope I got a few bits done. Dad also spent the day with me so there has been 20 hours more work gone into the buggy.

Dad got the fuel lines sorted at the rear, the coil mounted on the rear cage, the accelerator cable connected at the rear, the handbrake cables connected and the HT cables all tidied up. He also helped me with some of the jobs I had to do.

So for me it was a day of more sanding, a little filling, more sanding, a little filling, a lot more sanding, a little bit more filling and even more sanding. You starting to get the picture!!

First job was sanding the front wings. I spend a lot of time yesterday working on the front wings and last thing i did yesterday was give them a really really thick coat of filler primer so that had to be sanded.

Next I moved on to the rear wings, I started with the passenger side rear wing, it was easier to get it flat than i expected. The drivers side was a different story. The last time I attempted to do them I put on way too much filler so that all had to come off before the real work could begin. Overall I’m happy with them I would say they are about 95% but i’ll get them even closer when all the filling and sanding of the primers is done.

Once I was happy with the topside, we flipped it over and starting sorting i out the underside, i had a quick change of heart. I was going to paint the underside red also but decided against it. Instead its stonechipped in black.

Finally we flipped it again and I got it primered again. It will need to be sanded again and primered once more but I ran out of primer.

This one is a bit dark but you can see the wing.

Oh and finally i got the cage primered also.

Sorry for the slightly blurring photos but Alma has a shaky hand with a camera.