(First Posted September 29, 2013) Some cars have all the luck; other cars, not so much. Some cars come home every night to a cozy garage, and others sit outside, forgotten and forlorn. The upturned bumper on this 70’s Beetle reminds me of a brave attempt at a smile.
This bug is parked next door to the house where I grew up.
Welcome to my hometown of Raymond, Washington, population about 3,000. This is small-town America we’re talking about here; a car parked out in the yard is almost a requirement, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. If those snobs from Seattle don’t like it, they can go home!
The bug has been subjected to the Pacific Northwest rain for several years now, and the owner lives about a three hour drive away from his parents’ house where it is parked. We all know how life has a way of getting in the way of our little projects, and a long-distance relationship with a car can get particularly difficult.
From the color of the paint, you can tell that it’s a newer model, from 1975 or later. I’m no VW expert, but I know Malaise Era Golden Brown when I see it! If I squint and use my imagination just a little, I can see some dude sporting the then-trendy Suede/Denim look as he proudly waxes this car when it was brand-new.
A quick peek at the rear shows that once upon a time, a fuel-injected mill resided here.
However, if you pop open the hood, a dual-carb setup is what you see.
A closer look reveals a pretty bad case of rust cancer, particularly by Pacific Northwest standards.
A sideways close-up of the C-pillar indicates that this particular case may be terminal. And look at all that moss! Any car left outside in rainforest country will collect moss on the windward side. I suppose my favorite thing about this shot is the cutesy outhouse-window for the flow-through ventilation.
This interior shot just makes me say, “What the heck?” (Or something like that.) Why did he remove the wheel? Planning a conversion to right-hand drive, perhaps?
The saddest part of this exercise in weather-driven entropy would have to be the Jack-in-the-Box antenna thingie. Hasn’t the poor guy suffered enough?
And which one of you did I steal the phrase “weather-driven entropy” from?
Some antenna thingies have all the luck, too. My DQ Blizzard has spent most of his life indoors, and it shows. Talk about a dying breed! Along with the disappearance of the antenna, these decorations are getting rare, too.
Maybe someday, this beetle will run again. Stranger things have happened. Sometimes, it just depends on the skill, fanaticism and dedication of the owner. But, for the time being this is one garden that remains bug-infested.
With the metallic gold appearing to be the original color coupled with the style of the front seats I’m going to say this is a 1976 model.
If the paint is original it is a relatively rare “Sun Bug.”
Sun Bugs had brown interiors, and I think all bar the convertible had cloth seat inserts.
I know EXACTLY how that Bug will smell if I open that door. 10 years of standing slimy water and mildew. Maybe rodent odors too.
That rust is terminal, it’d be easy to find a cheaper project in the southwest that has a less wallet-raping vibe than this one assuming it can be fixed without structural issues. It’d be a good donor if you can buy for a couple of hundred, but I’d bet the pan has two and possibly more than five fist sized holes in it, under the battery and down the heater channels are probably gone, too. Bug sunroofs leak badly BTW, because the felt seal around the opening will disappear in the wind at some random point if you like to drive with it open.
I think it IS a Sun Bug because of the paint and sunroof. I can imagine how hot it would be to drive in the summer without A/C and pop-outs. Pop-out windows like to leak, too.
I didn’t open the door and sniff around, but I’m sure you’re right about the interior smell. There was water on the floor, and the fact that the headliner was completely gone tells me that the sunroof was leaking more than just a little.
When I talked to the owner’s father, he was very confident that his son would eventually get the car running and looking good again. But that was obviously a father’s pride talking! I’d love to be proven wrong, but I could have put my finger though that rust spot on the C-pillar. It’s a parts car and a conversation piece, and not much else.
I don’t know which is worse:
A) Being a newbie fiddling with the Bosch fuel injection or
B) Trying to finesse two Webers to run (and idle) in sync and stay that way:
1) low fuel pressure what with forcing the stock fuel pump to feed two carbs
2) hanging float bowls and vapor lock from being over the hot pistons on short inatke manifolds
3) worn throttle bushings
4) different jettings for each carb to keep the #3 exhaust valve from burning out
5) one carb throttle opening faster than the other
Both are nightmares to the novice mechanic. Plus I don’t see a header system to take advantage of the extra carburation.
What a FUBAR!
Makes me thankful for the single Solex 30PICT that was on my single port 1600 ’70 Ghia. All I ever did was put on a 4 into 1 muffler system, K&N and a bosch coil. Nowdays I’d do the same plus a Pertronix electronic ignition kit to get rid of the points.
As Wes said, those are Kadrons. Even with a little wear on the throttle shafts, they still run well and stay in tune. Interestingly, the old steel intake manifolds were mildly subject to vapor lock, but the newer aluminum intakes were less so. However, mine always started without much trouble, even on steel intakes.
There are a variety of Weber carbs that were used on VWs. Weber IDFs were, and still are, quite popular. Different jetting is not needed for #3 cylinder. IDFs also stay in tune and sync as long as a decent carb linkage is used. My Gene Berg linkage never came out of adjustment, and most decent hex bar linkages are also reliable. I never had vapor lock, no matter how hard I ran it . And with 2110cc of high compression engine, it liked to get run hard!
Those carburetors are Kadrons, not Webers. They run pretty well when new, and setup properly, but they wear out throttle shaft bores pretty quickly. The pop-out windows don’t leak if you have good seals in them.
Even without PNW moisture, old German cars that have been sitting closed up have a certain aroma inside. I think it is from rotting rubberized horsehair padding in the seats.
This one does not appear to have pop out rear windows, I had a sunroof and the thing that made it dump rainwater inside was plugged drain passages in the body. New seals didnt fix that.
There is no reason a dual carb setup will not work on VW engine, it worked fine with the Corvair engine as a factory setup.
In the Corvair setup, the carbs are even nearer to the cylinder head than this VW setup.
The flat engine (two , four or six) is happier to have dual carbs and dual exhausts, thats the natural setup for these engines.
The problem with dual carb kits on Bugs (from what I saw during my garage days) was they were usually installed by people (meaning kids) who didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t have the tools to set the carbs up correctly, namely a vacuum gauge. Over the years we saw quite a few, mostly second owners of the vans. We would convert them back to stock.
An English friend has twin Webers on his 66 van 1530cc built engine it still runs but two years on NZ hills has completely knackered it, rebuild is coming but first he needs to finish assembling his 63 Aussie CKD Beetle,
This is toast, sad to say. I think it started out as a 1976 as Adam stated. Sun Bugs were imported in 1974 and were not fuel injected. For 1976, only standard Beetles were offered and a sunroof was optional. In any event, it’s too rusty and it would be much easier to spend some time and find one in better condition.
About 10 years ago a neighbor had a 1976 just like this that he inherited from his uncle, and I remember seeing the car around town from new for many, many years. Though wearing a terrible repaint of the same color, it was in far better condition than this featured car. Unfortunately, the car got too difficult for him to keep running properly and one day he drove it to the junkyard. I wish I’d had the means to have saved it. I don’t think the Bosch L Jetronic was that difficult to keep going other than getting parts.
I hate cars like this. I see them, and want to take them home and love them and make them all better. I tried it once, and it ended very badly.
By the time the car has settled this far into the ground, it’s a cinch the pans and heater channels are gone, too.
It’s all fixable, but not to the point where it makes financial sense…
What a bunch of wooses. A bit of Bondo on the C pillars, some polishing compound, and this thing is stylin! I’d buy the thing just for its Empi wheels.
Laughing at the comments that say this rust is terminal. Come to Iowa just once and the body of this car wouldn’t even register as rusty to you anymore.
But agreed, parking on grass – no matter where you do it is a recipe for disaster. Agree with Ed that the pans and underside are likely pretty crusty.
Wow, there’s even moss beginning to form on the door of the first-gen Tacoma in the background…
I would say just get it running again, make it safe for the roads, drive it and enjoy it as-is. I agree that it’s not worth the cost of a restoration, but I’ve seen much, much worse still being driven around.
Darren (“Mustie1”) would have this running in no time, but he’s an aircooled whisperer.
What dooms this car is that it is not worth much because it’s a Superbeetle, which are not seeing the appreciation the older Beetles see.
It appears completely repair/restorable. But it’s likely never going to make economic sense… but then few old cars do.
Breathes there an American Boy®️ with a soul so dead that he has never said,
“I could fix that”
The ’76-77s had almost all the features bundled into the earlier spring specials (of which the Sun Bug was the ’74 edition) standard; this one was missing one of the most distinctive, the Lemmerz GT styled steel wheels. This color was discontinued for ’77 though, and the seats were changed to the Rabbit style with separate headrests. Weirdly, gold in ’76 was paired with a black interior even though there was a tan one with lime green paint.
Minor rust for that era beetle, by then ours had become imported from OZ and the assembly quality was abysmal, surface rust would appear 12 months from new but leave one out side on the lawn and you;ll be pestered with buy offers all day and night the same goes for pretty much any visible outside stored classic now in this country, a mate of mine had several I got em now anything worth keeping he has in his shed and his paddock is growing dead Japanese imports their mythical reliability doesnt hold up for as long as you’d like, I have reserved some paddock space out of sight from the road for my Minx when I move away but it looks like I’ll have to go soon his sons penchant for Subarus is starting to take up lots of real estate
In 1982, my dad had his ’67 VW Bug repainted in Alpinweiss (BMW color). It looked great. Had a highly modified engine displacing about 2100cc. Quick and looked sharp.
In 1983, he had a spot of engine trouble and parked in the driveway until he could get around to it.
From 1983 until 2018 it sat, unmoved, in the driveway.
In 2018, my brother trailered it to his house and started a restoration project on it.
In 2019, he told me the paint was the only thing holding the rust together…oh, and it would have been nice if the battery was disconnected back in ’83!
I’m surprised the battery didn’t drop thru the pan!
Haha, me too! I went to look under the hood one day…and it just sort of lifted off in my hand. Hinge still attached. At that moment, I realized this car probably wasn’t going to be on the road again.
My brother ended up selling it for parts. Oddly enough…the brightwork and interior were in great shape.
This is sadly a parts car now. But maybe it will harvest its organs so someone else’s old bug will ride again.
I just had the steering wheel off on my ’81 project Vanagon. I was fixing the horn contact. Under the wheel is a thin metal contact ring that wears out over time. The Vanagon got to a point where the horn would randomly start blaring and wouldn’t stop until the wheel was turned. A new contact ring and some dialectric grease fixed it up good as new. Maybe this guy had been working on a similar problem.
Might this be a La Grande Bug? Maybe not…
http://veedubclassics.blogspot.com/2013/12/la-grande-edition.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zPOqWNL5K84