Removing the doors, gas tank, and steering wheel/shaft

The doors really didn't want to come off of the body of the car. A few of them were stripped and very difficult to remove and others were hidden and hard to get to. Some of the screws had to have bolt remover sprayed in them to help loses them up. The left door was especially stubborn.


The right door was much easier to remove.

The gas tank is in the front of the car This made it almost effortless to get to. There were a few bolts to remove and we had to disconnect the tubing. But other than that there wasn't much else to do.

The steering wheel only had two bolts holding it into the steering shaft. So we removed those and that was that. The steering shaft on the other hand was a little more difficult. We had to remove a bunch of pins and bra that were very hard to get to.

Removing the fenders

In the process of removing everything from the chassis of the beetle, we have to remove the fenders so that we can get to all of the other stuff that is beneath them. We will eventually take everything off of it, but we have to take the outermost parts off first to get to the innards and this is very much on the outside.

When we were actually removing the first two fenders, we did it on the same day as the dash. Because we were so unfamiliar to removing the cables and things from the lights and other pieces ,there was definitely a learning curve. On the first fender that we removed, the front right one, we took quite a lot of time. We made the mistake of jumping right into it instead of taking a step back and assessing the situation. We began removing all of the bolts that were holding the fender on. This caused problems after we got all the bolts off. The fender was disconnected from the body, but all the cables and wires were still attached to the headlight so we had to hold the fender up while we detached that. This made it so much more complicated than it needed to be. If we had removed all the cables before removing the fenders, we would have saved a great deal of time and hear ache.

I removed the two right fenders myself and followed the more efficient order. I finished pretty quickly and didn't have to deal with all the complications.

Dash Removal

The dashboard is an integral part of the car when it comes to the operation of the car, so this piece is also the nerve center. Most of the wiring harness, the cables that make all the lights and electronics work, is connected to the dashboard to make it easier for the driver to control what is going on. Because of all of these wires being connected here it is quite a task getting the dash out of the car.

The first step in getting the dash out of the car was taking out all of the screws and bolts that were holding it in. There were some on the side of the dash, some under it, and some inside of it. All of these screws and bolts were very difficult to locate and to remove. Even after removing all of the screws, we had to disconnect all of the wires and cables. Some were connected to the steering wheel, some to the radio, some to the controls on the dash itself. After finally removing all of these wires and cables, there was one step left. We had to remove the air conditioning parts. That was much simpler than the other steps, but it still took some time. After a lot of thinking and doing, we finally got the dash out.

Dash in the car.

Without the dash.

Overall game-plan

The first step to getting the Beetle back to its former beauty is to take it apart. In order to restore the car, we must first strip it down in order to fix the foundation of the car, the chassis.

To get to the stripped down chassis we have to take all of the outermost parts off first. First we took out the dashboard which was quite an ordeal.

The dash removal will be covered in the next post.

The beginning

The Volkswagen beetle project was thought up as a Father Son bonding project. My father and I thought up the idea to find an old beat up car and restore it so that I could drive it to college and what better car to work on that a Volkswagen Beetle. We decided on this model of car because it was the most popular car in the country s,"so there muse be tons of parts to trade out", we thought. After deciding on what the Beetle, we began our search for the perfect project car (if there is such a thing).

We looked high an low, and the car That we settled on was a 1973 Beetle. It was is pretty good shape. There wasn't too much rust on the body panels and it could actually roll. The seller also told us that if we bought the original one we had decided on, we could also get another that was not in as good condition for free. We immediately jumped at this offer.
We brought the cars home and put them in the garage. The day we brought them home was somewhere around late 2006.

During the first few months we got quite a lot of work done. We pulled out all the seats and the all the interior aside from the dash. None of the interior is very salvageable. It was moldy and most of it was torn beyond repair.

After this first portion of work we had a slow period of about five and a half years. We just didn't have the time or the drive to work on it.

During the past month or so we started working on it again and have been making some serious progress. This progress will be described in great detail in the many following posts.