The life and times of Robs 1971 Canadian Super Beetle

Here is a picture of my Bug one month after I bought it in 1987. The location is in Penticton BC, where we drove out from Calgary, Alberta. We almost made it all the way back to Calgary, but the engine died about 80 km outside of the city. I threw a connecting rod. Only one month after I had bought the car, it was getting a new engine and the restoration process had begun!

This is a shot of my car fresh from the body shop where it got a good squirt of Glasruit Epoxy Primer. $400 just for primer! I had done almost all of the bodywork myself, and was about to start the 3 month process of wet-sanding the primer down to a glass-like finish. Ever sanded primer with a 1200 grit paper before? Ever seen your reflection in your primer? That's how smooth this stuff needed to be sanded.

This one shows a small area of rust I found after the car had been primered.

This one shows the rusey bits after I removed what I could. Time to let the pro's take care of this one.

And this is how it looks with the shiny new panel that was welded into place. The bodyshop cut out all of the rust bits and welded in a new replacement panel. I re-prepped the area, smoothed things out, and had it re-primered.

Finally painted, here is my Bug right after it left the body shop where it was painted (in a down-draft booth, of course!). Talk about a shine! I had never seen mirror-like reflections in white paint before this day. The colour is Diamont base white with a heaping helping of blue pearl in the final clear coat. Very nice.

Finally back together, here is my Bug all finished up. Nice, eh? Those wheel are off of a later 70's Super Beetle Convertible. Toss a nice shiny coat of white paint on them, and I think it looks pretty darned sharp, if not stock.

And this is the picture I use as a background on my machine. Very cool.

Stuff other than bodywork

Interior

Of course, no restoration is complete without an decent interior. I chose to go with an all-black interior, done up in cloth. The door panels and the rear seat are covered in a nice cloth from Dee Engineering. The headliner is just a simple black vinyl job, and the front seats were recovered with an upholstery kit from RMMW.

Tunes

After driving around with nothing but the purr of the engine to keep me awake, it was time for a decent stereo. I opted for the simple, clean approach for now. The head unit is a nice Clarion removable-faceplate model with 20W per channel into 4 channels. The sweet part is the set of Infinity Kappa 692 speakers in the back. Very, very clean. I also have a set of speaker panels that will fit snugly up in the front wheel wells, and take up to 6" speakers. I still haven't gotten around to installing those.

Engine

Stock stock stock! The engine was rebuilt in 1988, and I've only put about 20 000 miles on it since it's been parked so much getting the body work done. Nothing fancy in the rebuild except for some higher-flow heads and a single quiet-pack exhaust. Toss in a stainless steel firewall and some shiny black paint, and it looks pretty good for a stock power-plant. Lucky me, 1971 Super Beetles had more stock horsepower than any other Beetle made, so even with the stock engine and some light modifications, it's a pretty peppy ride!