1972 VW S-Bug, It lives again!

The two cars together. The wagon is for sale if anyone is interested.







Oh, and the tatty old carpet from my old bug is in the Superbug now, too.

It's time for an update of pics! I've spent the best part of today polishing up the paint and bumpers, polishing up a bonnet badge and putting it on, and getting a few other little things done. I thought that this deserved some photos, especially since I haven't even taken a photo with the front bumper on yet!



Why on earth do so many people put running board trim strips on with the protective plastic still on?! My last car had this as well. It infuriated me so much that I took the whole trim strip off after taking this photo to get all the plastic off properly. The trim clips didn't go back on as tightly and will never be the same again, but it was worth it!









The interior is still a work in progress. Currently stripped out with no sound deadening or rear seat, and only the front carpet in place. I've swapped the stock steering wheel for my leather Formuling one, and made up a new centre from aluminium plate to replace the missing horn button. I don't have it hooked up yet though, as I couldn't figure out a good way to connect to the factory horn ring contact arrangement. On my old 1500 the horn wire just ran up the centre of the steering column, what on earth was wrong with that arrangement? A much better design in my opinion.







Everyone loves a VW bonnet badge! Hopefully nobody else will decide they love this one more than me.



Here is the shot which best shows my current biggest problem: wheel fitment. The wheels I have on it at the moment are definitely 14x6", in pairs with two different offsets. The front pair has a greater offset, which leaves only about 2cm clearance to the spring, but the 195/70R14 tyres still stick out of the sides of the guards by a couple of centimetres. The rear tyres sit further out and are way off, perhaps 3cm outside the guards. I'm sure that going down to narrower section tyres would help, but I don't know whether it will be enough to get these rims to clear the stock guards. If money wasn't an object I'd like to keep the wheels and get wider guards, but this seems a bit of a waste of the excellent paint on the current guards.

Thanks for the kind words, volvo544 and sinky. This thread is long overdue for an update, but I don't have any pictures to add just yet.

The last month has seen a flurry of activity on this car. Thanks to my uncle David's help, it's had the rear suspension lowered roughly 30mm back to stock height, with new bushings and the Monroe GT Gas shocks off my old 1500. David also helped with fixing the steering intermediate shaft and replacing all four tie-rod ends with brand new ones, as well as fixing a number of small fuel and exhaust leaks and other small issues.

After all this work I booked the car in for a wheel alignment at the most VW-capable wheel alignment shop in SA. Unfortunately the numbers which came back weren't good. With a couple of the adjustments are maxed out with more needed, so I may have to replace a few parts soon.

In terms of modification, the most exciting news is the purchase of a new exhaust on eBay, which will hopefully arrive soon. Pics to follow!

Time for an update! I have now cut the excess off the tip of my exhaust pipe, so it sits just under the bumper. More interestingly though, I've been making some purchases.



I've bought two of these!



And all of this!

The Webers are a matching pair of 36mm IDFs which I bought out of the For Sale pages on the Aussieveedubbers forum. All of the rest I got from Vee Dub Parts Unlimited in the USA via the magic of the internet. They offer pretty reasonable postage. I got the whole package of CB Performance manifolds, 'Original' hex-bar linkage, air cleaners and a Pertronix distributor for well under $450 including shipping. I'm going to have a play around with them on the weekend.

any updates on this ?

Here it is! Just under 2 years and she's back. It fired up for the first time tonight. During the VW's time in the shed I had a WB Holden ute, which was good fun but also very heavy on the steering and the fuel consumption. I have now sold the Holden, so it's time to get the Beetle going again. I picked up a used single Weber 44IDF kit from an ad on Facebook (either AVD or VWCSA group) and today I fitted it with help from a couple of mates. Unfortunately the air cleaner is just slightly too tall and the engine lid won't fit.



The next job is to unbolt the sidewinder exhaust and seal it all up so it won't backfire as much. Then it needs a good tune and a battery so I don't have to steal one from my daily driver!

Stand-offs are one option, but I think it should just fit under the lid if I use a shorter air cleaner. Something like a Ramflo would definitely fit, but I don't think they're too good at filtering the air.

Some update photos.



The S-Bug is currently on hiatus in the shed, but I did manage to get to one motorsport event in it! After working until about 2:30am the previous night, we made it to a bitumen khanacross last year. The car barely passed scrutineering by the good grace of the club, and some hasty modifications were required with gaffer tape! At the end of the day we did have a lot of fun, but the car is not fully up to scratch and needs a lot of work done to it. I'm not particularly keen to get the work done at the moment, as I am distracted by other cars. One of which is my 1990 Toyota Celica ST185 GT-Four, which I plan to use for motorsport instead of the Beetle. It cost me about the same as what it will cost to fix the Beetle up properly, but with a GFB electronic boost controller set at 13psi of boost it's definitely much faster! If I ever get off my backside and wash it, then I might take some photos for a thread!