Wolfie: Finishing Touches

Wolfie, the 1957 ‘Oval’ Beetle has made significant progress since my last post in the Restoration Gallery.

I purchased Wolfie about three years ago on the Samba website from a nice gentlemen in Michigan. Here’s how it showeds up.

Wolfie had extensive rust and numerous attempts at painting, however, most parts were there in some form or another.,.

With my erstwhile friend, I did the body-off dance. Then after some basic structural stabilization it was sent out for media blasting and a coat of epoxy primer.

While that was going on, I rebuilt the chassis with new floor pans and a host of other goodies.

After that I shot Wolfie with a single-stage urethane in a era-specific VW black.

It’s far from perfect but color sanding did wonders for my poor painting skills.

Marrying the chassis to the body was fairly straightforward, although the ‘captive’ nuts that are supposed to hold the bolts from the bottom that secure the pan to the body were far from perfect. However that seems to be the state of the art with a lot of the aftermarket VW parts these days.

Decided to splurge on a ‘Sew Fine’ interior package, which is indeed so fine. I was able to resuscitate the period tube-driven AM radio.

With a lot of help from my daughter Claudia we did the seats and door panels, which came out great. The early VW Beetles did not have a fuel gauge. You just turned a valve when you ran out of gas, ran on a bit of a reserve and tried to find a petrol station ASAP.

As usual The Girlfriend helped pop in the glass, which was surprisingly difficult for the front windshield, which is odd since it is flat. After cracking the first windshield we eventually got it in.

All in all I’m happy with the restoration. Some carb tuning and clutch adjusting is still in process, but Wolfie idles well, turns, stops and starts.