Project Beetle: Year 2019, Week 25

We picked up the car this week, first used car we've owned in about 10 years. We are really looking forward to this project.

Here are a few photos of what it looked like on the day we got it.

{{< img src="images/front.jpeg" alt="Picture of VW Beetle from the front" >}}

{{< img src="images/rear.jpeg" alt="Picture of VW Beetle from the rear" >}}

{{< img src="images/engine.jpeg" alt="Picture of VW Beetle engine" >}}

You may have noticed that this is meant to look like Herbie The Love Bug.

The work we did

Remove Vinyl

This might be touchy for some but we bought the car because the engine seems solid, it is the year we were looking for, and there was a small amount of rust that we could handle. The Herbie decals were way too flashy for us. In the first hour I was looking at the car there were six people who stopped to ask about the car, recall their memories of the movie, or took pictures. One person even stopped to offer the full price on the car. They were pretty drunk though.

So, decals had to go. We did that on the day after we got the car.

Removing the decals revealed some hidden flaws as well as problems caused, probably when the decals were put on. What we found:

  • A huge scratch in the hood. It looks very much like someone attempted to cut the vinyl on the car but went way too deep. Then they cut a larger vinyl to cover the problem.
  • Rust on the trunk and engine lid ends. The vinyl seems to have held the water at the lip of both lids causing them to rust. It isn't the worst but it is a problem we didn't forsee.
  • Clear coat is broken at the edges of every vinyl. It would seem that each vinyl piece was cut on the car. I base this on the fact that the three vinyl stripes (yes, white stripe was vinyl) have two grooves between each colour.
  • The black and red vinyls all dyed the paint!

Remove bumper rust

A small, simple fix but it really brightens the car. Picked up some Simoniz Rust Particle Remover and used that to remove the surface rust. It did a really good job! We then sealed the bumpers to reduce the amount of rust that came back.

Clean the interior

So much mold! Headliner had mold all the way around. The driver's side also had lots of mold on the doors, rear quarter, and the sun visor. Did a steam clean and then scrubbed with Simoniz All-Purpose Cleaner. This did the trick for now but we wan to pull the headliner out because the mold is likely underneath.