Starting restoration of Dashwood

Jenn came to Chicago for a week and a half and we decided to start the body off restoration of the Dashwood. First we bought all the welding equipment. Then we started to strip the interior of the car and take off the lights and fenders. We disconnected the steering and took the gas tank out.

Then Jenn and Nicole watched the Bug me video of how to drop the engine out. After power Coffee ice cream, they disconnected all wires and hoses and started pulling the engine out. Marcel came to help, and we almost got it out, except the muffler was in the way. So next time we will take the muffler out and pull the engine out finally.



We also built a horse that the body will be lifted on to.

VW Funfest 2009

We entered the super beetle at the Funfest at MidAmerica Motorworks in Effingham, IL. We drove it over 200 miles, and it made it. We discovered a small leak in the distributor O-ring. Also, the engine seemed to run a little hot. On the way back we turned on the heat to help the engine get rid of extra heat, and the engine temp was normal.

We had a lot of fun and met some cool people.

Carburetors

We cleaned out the carburetors and bought gasket material from autozone. Nicole cut out the gaskets from ther material because nobody sold the gaskets except with a rebuild kit, and we didn't need that.

Nicole put the carbs back in and adjusted them.

I noticed that the superbeetle did not idle smoothly. No matter how much you adjusted the idle richness screw, it wouldn't idle smooth. Could it be the compression? or maybe the points in the distributor?

Tomorrow I will adjust the valves and get a compression tool to check the compression in the cylinders. Maybe the piston rings are bad, and that could also be the reason fro the gas smell in the oil.

The first engine work

Yesterday Marcel did an oil change on the Super Beetle(It was freakin cold). The oil was really nasty, thick, and smelled a little like gasoline. Later on Nicole started the Dashwood by herself for the first time(You can see the wood on the Dash). A couple days earlier Nicole also fixed the seats so they can slide back and forth and fixed the seatbelt.

Today we took out the Carburator on the Super Beetle to clean it according to the Bugme videos(Once again it was freakin cold(17 degrees)). We took it semi-apart in the basement and sprayed the jet holes and jets with carburator cleaner and made sure everything was clean. Then we put it back again. We will adjust the fuel mixture when it gets warmer.

Shining the chrome

It was still cold, so the first thing we did was de-rust the chrome on Dashwood. We took vinegar and aluminium foil to rub off the rust. They went from orange hub caps to this:

We also did the bumpers, but the rust was so deep that we couldn't get it all off.

Buying the Beetles

We bought two Beetles last month. The 73 standard Beetle is from Madison and the 74 super Beetle is from Wheeling. The one from Madison was from this guy that just graduated from college(probably graduate school). He was really cool and we will probably meet up with him at some Wisconsin Beetle meets. It made it from Madison to Berwyn in five hours and 15 degrees farenheit, all the way running strong. The super beetle was from the Russian Mafia of maybe just a regular Russian?

This was the first cover we put on. It was free and it sucked. So we had to buy a new and better one before the snow storm hit.

Here are the new covers. Above is Dashwood lookin' sexy. He is named Dashwood because he has no radio, and someone cut a nice piece of wood to shove into the radio place to keep the wind out. The name was passed down from the guy in Wisconsin, he wanted us to keep the name.

We don't know what to call the super beetle. The original jack, however, was wrapped in a sports shirt and on the back of the shirt it said Frantz. Is that the new name? Only time will tell.