Labeling, Boxing, and Bagging

This past weekend we did a lot of cleaning and organizing of the items we'd been taking apart over the past year. My method is to clean and then bag and label the items and then pack them away in a box for later use.

Our goal with this car is to salvage as much as we can of the original car, if we can't salvage what we need from our car, we will try to find original used parts from the same approximate years from other cars. Only after everything else fails and we absolutely have to have a particular part or piece, then we'll go to new replacements.

So maintaining and cataloging the various pieces that came with the car is important to us. So, that's what we did this weekend. It was rainy and cold and it was a good thing to do inside the shop.

Here I am documenting how a front blinker assembly is put together. I then cleaned it and bagged it...put it in a box. (I should point out that the PO of this car must have lived on a dirt road because the car is coated with a layer of kaleechie dust..all the underneath and such.)



Here's the horn...front and back, before cleaning...see the kaleechie?





And here it is, after cleaning. I sure hope it works!





Here is one of the straps that hang down. Gross!



Here it is, after cleaning. That little piece is supposed to have a hook on it for you to hang your seat-belt up on, since the belts don't retract...the hook is broken off and will need to be replaced...I'll check at the salvage yards for that little piece.



Here's the passenger side rear taillight. It's not boxed up, because it hasn't been cleaned yet, but the hardware is bagged along with instructions on how to re-assemble it.



Here is the back kick panels...this goes down behind your heals under the back seat. Heat is supposed to come through those little round holes. We're considering sealing up that heater vent when we go to put everything back together, so more heat will flow to the front of the car.



Bagged.



Here is Steve, cleaning the little chrome ashtray that goes in the back seat area. He got this chrome cleaning stuff from a pollution collection event and it worked great! Made that little 36 year old ashtray look brand new!



Bagged and labeled.



Here is a box of stuff, labeled with it's contents.



Much of what we've worked on is just preparing for the Big Event.

We have got to remove and replace the heater channel on the driver's side.

See, if you look at this picture, you will see that the heater channel is rusted completely through where it attaches to the cross support in the back and also where it attaches to the front cross support. (See blue arrows.) That basically means that the heater channel, the main structural part of the car along the side, is only attached at the points where the two pink bars are. Not good. The car sags on that side and the door doesn't shut well.

Note that bolt that runs clear across the door opening? Steve jacked the car up where it was sagging until the door shut properly and then bolted the door in that position. We hope that when we cut that channel off (the entire channel must be removed), the door will maintain it's position. We'll be able to tweak it as we go along, hopefully.

Also, a fun thing...when we first got the car, I found the original horn ring and button in the back. I put it aside and when we were cleaning up, I went ahead and re-attached it, just to see what it looks like. You can see it in the picture above. I think it looks pretty good!

Company!

This weekend, we had company! Tom and Joan, some fellow members of the VW Club, drove up in their red New Beetle "Chigger" and checked out my Bug. Tom gave Steve lots of information about how we're to proceed from here.

It comes down to this...to get to the areas that need repair on the body, we're going to need to remove the body from the chassis. Also, the front end on the car is almost worthless and we'll need to replace it.

So, the next few weeks are going to be focusing on removing the body from the chassis. I started by removing all the fenders. Ugh! It doesn't look all that great with all it's fenders on, but without them, it looks just awful!



So we're planning on eventually maybe having a party...a "Body Lifting" party...and inviting the club over for hotdogs or something and getting help putting the body up on heavy duty sawhorses.

But first, the plan to get the new tires on remains the priority, at least for me. Steve finished grinding the rust off the other two rims, I got them coated with rust encapsulator and then primed and painted. Here's one that's primed, one that's painted.



After I get the new tires on these rims, we'll be able to roll the chassis out and back in to another section of the shop. We did a lot of cleaning and rearranging of the shop to prepare for that eventuality. Here's a bunch of stuff removed from the shop while we were rearranging. I bet my neighbors were worried we would leave it like this! Ha ha! No, it was all put away by the time we shut the shop up for the day.



Speaking of cleaning...I do that a lot. Steve likes it kept pretty clean in the shop, so I do a lot of sweeping and vacuuming with my little Dirt Devil handheld vac. We really need a shop vac but that will have to come at another time.

Steve was giving me a bit of good-natured ribbing when I got behind on the sweeping. See, cleanliness is very important to Steve.


Heh heh!!

I also tried to really clean the interior of the car...cleaned it with some Armor-all. It did a good job and Joan even asked if we'd replaced the door panels! As far as I know the interior of the car is original, except for one window knob.

New Tires, Irish Music and Hobbits!

Wow! What a weekend.

A friend of mine planned to come to Tulsa to hear the traditional Irish music group, Lúnasa. Since I was expecting her visit and because I was also expecting to get new tires on my two prepared rims...I waited till she got here to get them put on. I figured she wouldn't want to miss out on the fun!

So, after she managed to shovel down a turkey sandwich, we hit the road with my rims and got the tires put on. I was so excited that I immediately got to work and put them on. Here, you can see that I put them on my car's "good" side. Don't they look nice?

That's Diane. She's a member of The Hobbit Hole.

I should take a moment to tell you about these guys...they're great.

These are friends of mine that have a great cause...getting much needed knives and other useful items to our troops. If you could make a donation to them, it would be much appreciated.

They also gave my husband a graduation gift that enabled us to purchase the tires, the keys, the tax and title and the floor pan for our Bug. So when I say "Let's Roll!" I can say so because of the Hobbit Hole's generous graduation gift.

So click on this to check out the website...

Time to get to work!