Vee Dub Nut's buggy build

[Vee Dub Nut]

Howdy!

My name is Adam and I'm addicted to VW's

I'm not really new to buggies, but it has been a while. I, with some help from friends back in high school, shortened a VW pan and built a buggy using a body I scored for free. The only catch was that I had to cut the body out of the youpon bushes that had grown up through in and all around it. It was a fun build and a blast to drive, but it got sold shortly after heading off to college.. here is a pic of it:



Well fast forward 5 years or so and I'm done with school and back into VW's full swing. Since my first buggy I've graduated, got a job, and got married. After marrying me my wife was quickly introduced into the aircooled VW world. We have done some work on my '67 sedan together and are scheduled to hit several shows this season. Here is a pic of the '67:



Back to the point.. I've been wanting another project to work on since the '67 is finished (we'll as finished as these projects get anyways). She decided that she wanted us to build a fiberglass buggy. We'll I wasn't to terribly difficult to convince so the search began. To make a long story short I was eventually tipped off to call Dale's Imports in Corpus Christi after coming up with nothing from craigs list, the samba, and various forums.

Gave Dale a call and made the trip down to Corpus to see what he had. Dale evidently is no longer building buggies due to material costs, but still had one new body left that he was willing to deal on to get it out of his shop. A deal was struck and we now have a body that we'll pick up on the 29th..

Here are the pics.. Its a champange metal flake.. traditional manx clone

Here is its current location:



A closeup of the front:



And the complete body:



Needs a good cleaning and buffing out, but has never been installed

Were planning on building a traditional nostalgic style buggy. Currently were trying to figure out what we want to do for a chassis. Looking at berren buggies, talking to Bobby at Texas Buggies, and tossing around the idea of doing a traditional shortened VW pan...

Anyways.. thats all for know!

[staggerwing]

Hey Adam, welcome to the club! Your gonna find a great group of people here and they are very helpful. I'm over here in Bldg. 87, talked to you on the phone a couple of weeks ago about your 67. I have no experience with a chassis from Berrien or elsewhere, but I'm sure someone will chime and help you out. I have the Berrien Nostalgia body and am happy with that selection. I'll be watching "The Army Lab" for an original Manx!

[Vee Dub Nut]

Hey Adam, welcome to the club! Your gonna find a great group of people here and they are very helpful. I'm over here in Bldg. 87, talked to you on the phone a couple of weeks ago about your 67. I have no experience with a chassis from Berrien or elsewhere, but I'm sure someone will chime and help you out. I have the Berrien Nostalgia body and am happy with that selection. I'll be watching "The Army Lab" for an original Manx!

Thanks Richard...

I guess I need to swing over and see yours when you drive it into work again.. see what kind of good ideas I can get

[Texasbuggys]

Dang Adam, nice Bug! Welcome to the site, great folks here!

[Bill K]

Welcome to the Club, Adam.
That bug is a very nice ride.
Good job.

[Aquabuggy]

Glad to see you made it over here, Welcome to The Texas Manx club!
Better have your shades on with all that metal flake Its gonna look awesome.
Ya gonna have your bug at the VW Classic?

[Vee Dub Nut]

Yup.. We'll have the 67 at the classic. I'm detailing/repainting the engine compartment as we speak

I'm sure we'll be checking out all the buggies real closely for ideas while were there..

[Vee Dub Nut]

Picked up our donor car today.. and it just so happens to be a '67 too After a lot of thought, we decided to base this off a traditional beetle pan. Most aftermarket pans were just out of our budget and not really what we were looking for. With a stock pan, all the tools at my disposal at work, and a few buddies I think we can build up a pretty slick pan.

Got it local, along with a few of the other things I needed specific to the buggy (speedo, fuel gauge, gas tank, etc). Going to be taking it to Columbus this weekend when we go visit family for Easter. Me and my bro's will yank the body off of it and leave it there with my other VW parts collection

Making some progress anyways.. We'll be running some 15" VW solids for the front wheels, and I'm going to try and talk Dale out of a set of big'ole fat wide 5 wheels I spied on his lot for the back. Still undecided if we are going to run hubcaps though.. we'll see..

On to the pics..

Pretty solid little shell.. I told the previous owner its fate, but he was cool with it (the rear apron is better than the one on mine)





Tiny bit of rust in the floors, but not much at all





Thats all for now!

[Vee Dub Nut]

Well Micah and I were finally able to make it down to Corpus Christi to pick up our buggy body yesterday. The pickup truck that we were planning on using to pick up the body fell through on us, so I did the next best thing I could think of... Use my custom made VW body trailer, aka my chassis with a towbar

To give you the back story.. last weekend we drug the donor car home and came back with this:





Made it down to corpus and back with no problems.. the weather threatened us all day, but nothing more than a sprinkle which was nice. He told us he trimmed on the body in a few areas in preparation for the style of buggies he builds. After getting it home and cleaned up, we realized that he trimmed on the body a little more than we would have liked, but we'll be able to work with it. On to the pics:

Here is what we got


As you can see the back below the rear storage area has been cut out. He used to build custom chassis and had some kind of firewall he would install. I'm going to cut it a little more to make the cut level, and fab/glass up some kind of removable wall so that I can access the nose of the tranny along with battery since it will be mounted off the rear torsion housing


Kind of gives you an idea of whats in store


Dash area.. its going to look awesome with the stock speedo and fuel gauge


Here is a shot of the back.. This is another area he trimmed. He liked the back cut way high to allow easy access to work on the engine. I think will be able to work with this. We would have liked it to drop down over the engine a little more, but with a nice big engine and some healthy dual carbs mounted on either side, I think we can pull off the look


Here you can see the color





Were thinking the plan is to build up a nice little 1600 or 1641 and slip that back into my sedan. I just cruise it around these days, and with as low as it is and the sentimental value it has, I don't really have any inclination to hot rod it around anymore. Then we'll take the 1915cc that was in the sedan, tear it down and swap out that crappy cam it has, drop on some dual 44's and put that in the buggy... This should provide us with plenty of power to have some fun Of course these plans are tentative and subject to change, but thats whats in the works as of now

Anyways.. Still collecting parts.. The next big operation will be to cut down the chassis

We'll I hope yall enjoy the pics.. I tell you what, it doesn't get much better than this. What more could a guy ask for than a super amazing wife and a garage full of VW's



More updates to follow as things progress!

[Aquabuggy]

Looks like you scored a real nice pan. The body sure looks a lot better in your garage then it did up in Dale's rafters
Lookin forward to seeing some build pic real soon.

[Vee Dub Nut]

Yea.. once we got the several years worth of dust and dirt off of it, it shined up real nice. It will look even better once it is all buffed out.. Won't do the final wet sanding and buffing until were on the final build though

[Bill K]

you are on your way, and it's looking good.
I'm really enjoying your progress pictures. Keep them coming.
Any chance you'll be rolling by Labor Day? We sure would like to have you cruising with us for the Buggy Roundup.

[Vee Dub Nut]

Any chance you'll be rolling by Labor Day? We sure would like to have you cruising with us for the Buggy Roundup.

Most likely not... I think we are going to try and drive down in the Beetle though to meet everyone and get some ideas

[Texasbuggys]

Check you e-mail, done deal on the body shell! Yep, like I have time to even think about it, another Texasuggys project will be in the works!

[Vee Dub Nut]

Wow... its been a whole stinking month since I posted any progress.

Not much has been happening... Efforts were diverted to the Beetle to get ready for the classic. Now that its over, its back to work on the buggy. With beautiful weather days like today, it makes it all the more encouraging to get it out on the road...

Picked up some wheels at the VOSA swap meet.. We are planning to run all four of the wide wheels (versus two wides, with two stock solids on the front), with 205/60/15's for the front and 275/60/15's on the rear. I'll be taking these to work soon and sandblasting them to prep for their new coat of black paint.





Here is a pic versus a stock wheel




Started cranking out on the chassis again, getting it prepped to shorten. The pan on the drivers side was decent, but the passenger pan had some rust and was pretty thin, so we decided to replace them. Borrowed a sawzall from work to get the bulk of the pan out. Then it was a lot of hard work with a hammer and a chisel to separate the rest from the tunnel.

Pans out



Half way done



Finally finished!! We had to keep the garage door closed with ear plugs in so that we didn't cause any problems with the neighbors. It was extremely hot in the garage, and very tiring swinging that BFH I have...

Couple of completed shots





Got busy with some black spray paint to see how the underside would look in black.. I think its going to turn out sharp!



The planned color scheme right now is the body in champagne with most everything else blacked out (Wheels, roll cage, windshield frame, etc) Got a vision in my head and I think it will look really good when finished. Just have to wait and see!

[CoryN]

Looks good. We will probably be tracking about the same timeline. Glad to see someone else is actually working on one instead of having them all done.

Cory

[Vee Dub Nut]

Looks good. We will probably be tracking about the same timeline. Glad to see someone else is actually working on one instead of having them all done.

Cory

Thanks for the kind words.. I was checking out your pictures yesterday and it was getting me motivated to make some more progress on my pan.

Hopefully next weekend I'll take it up to the shop and cut it down 14.5"

[Texasbuggys]

Lookin great man! Hey are you guys planning on coming to the Salado Buggy show in a few weeks? If so I can bring your parts up then or we can work something out if you need them sooner? Just let me know as it is here. The buggy looks great. Ya should have ran over to Victoria and borrowed air hammer, with chisel tip it make quick time and little effort the remove the small cut piece that is spot welded to the center tunnel. I bet you did get a heck of a work out in the garage hammer and chisel! Did ya get the wife in on the action? Man your Bug sure is sweet! The donor body goes under the knife starting mid next month!

[Vee Dub Nut]

Yea, I think we are planning on coming up to Salado.. Probably will end up brining the Beetle and registering it in the show. We didn't end up getting to show at the classic. There was a death in the family and we had to leave fredericksburg on Sat night so we could leave for Arkansas on Sun. I'll let you know for sure when we make our reservation, and you can bring the parts with you.

An air chisel would have been nice.. but I don't have air in my garage yet either And you aren't kidding about getting a work out.. that combined with having to keep the garage door shut and it being stinking hot.. Glad that little project is done My wife tried with the hammer once, but bless her heart couldn't really swing it. She was a trooper and stayed out in the garage with me bringing me cold ice water and sweeping up all the debris as I beat on the chassis...

Thanks for the compliments on the Bug and Buggy!

[Texasbuggys]

Yea I forgot about the mess! That is a very messy job. She is a tropper cleaning up that gunk! I thought I did not see you car in the show. Sorry to hear about the family loss. Our thoughts are with you guys.

[Bill K]

So sorry to hear about your family loss.

[Vee Dub Nut]

We'll I got through probably the biggest hurdle in the build (at least in my mind). I was sorta sweating out having to shorten the chassis but it was the first thing to get done on the long list of things to do on the buggy.

Now I've only done this one other time, and I didn't do any of the welding back then. When we finished that one, it was strong, but I'd be rather embarrassed to show people pictures of the tunnel when we got done. It worked but it looked like a hack job.. With this in mind, and the fact that I haven't done any appreciable welding for the past 7 years.. I was a little worried about the impending work ahead..

Long story short it turned out great and went off without a hitch despite several roadblocks along the way and my miss-estimation of how long it would take

On to the good stuff!

First thing I did was weld two legs to the bottom of the tunnel on either side of the section that I was going to cut out. Gearing up...



I cut the top out of the tunnel to survey what needed to be done, and to use the scrap to practice a little welding on to get the voltage and wire speed set on the mig welder. I figured if all else fails with the welder, I could at least still tow it home like this as opposed to cutting it all the way before brushing up with the welder..



Here you can see my stair step cut and one of the legs I mentioned earlier



I'm fortunate enough to work at a place that has a big shop with all the tools I could possible need at my disposal (plus the generosity of the shop guys with letting me borrow their personal tools too!)





My buddy Armondo gave me a hand with the heavy lifting.. Eventually he had to take off, and hats off to my wife who helped me prop up the chassis on its side twice more..

Marking the cuts on the bottom..



By doing the top and bottom first, I could set the chassis back down and cut out the sides (the easy part) last



The tubes where a huge pain.. getting the spot welds (no so spot'ish IMO) broke on the e-brake and clutch tube is a chore..



So we got busy and forgot to take some pics here.. but got all the tubes freed up and the chassis pulled back together. I ditched the small fuel line in the tunnel (it was pretty rough and giving me lots of trouble).. I'm planning on running stainless along side the tunned on the opposite side of the brake line. During all this we found out that all of the welds for the clutch tube were broke, so that got added to the list of things to fix.

Any ways.. tackin it back up



A little grinding action





Its whole again!



Did a little more fill work in some low spots...



More grinding.. (that little 6" grinder sure got a work out)



The little ridges on the bottom gave me the most trouble. Here is a pic before they were filled



Working on the bottom



Action shot



Now that that was done.. on to fixing the clutch tube. Saw a recommendation on the samba to use a hole saw at an angle to cut open a flap (worked excellent IMO)



Bend her open and retack the tube to the support bracket





All done.. Here is some finished shots outside





This is junction with out any sort of filler on it.. still a little rough from the grinder.. but when we prep the chassis, I'll probably put a little filler on there to smooth it out. Came out great IMO..



Other side



Now both of us were anxious to get home and try out the body.. The chassis sure did look short so I was hoping that my calculations were correct and I didn't cut too much..

It fits!





Good side shot.. I think I finally talked her into letting me drop the front some.. just too nose high for me



And here is a good shot of the finished bottom



Enjoy!

My wife is going out of town next week for a wedding that I won't be able to make it too.. So I've got plans for my after work activities to do on the buggy. More updates to come soon!

[Bill K]

Great pictures, and great looking progress.
Now, what excuse did you come up with to keep from going to the wedding so you could work on the buggy?

[CoryN]

Wow - great deal of progress this weekend. I wish my welds looked as good as yours

You'll be rolling before too long.

[Aquabuggy]

With the kinda progress your making you should be done in another week or two. Nice job, lookin good!

[Vee Dub Nut]

Haha.. money is the only thing really holding me back. My wife and I just got out of school in December so we are working on paying some bills left over from that. So it will be a little while before I can purchase the engine, and still have no idea if the tranny will work, and tires, and wiring, and...... we'll you get the idea

Thanks for the kind words! I'm really surprised that the welding turned out as good as it did.. it really has been about 7 years since I've done any real welding

[Vee Dub Nut]

Great pictures, and great looking progress.
Now, what excuse did you come up with to keep from going to the wedding so you could work on the buggy?

Ha! That was easy.. being a new employee I haven't really accrued enough vacation to leave.. Plus were saving up time to go see her family in August.

[MURZ]

Great job on the shortening!! Like the pics.

Greg R, you should condense this and make it a sticky or use it as a tech article.

[Greaph]

Awesome job on the shortening!!! As previously stated, this would make an excellent tech thread. I like seeing people that are not afraid to fabricate

Keep them coming :-)

[GregR]

So Vee Dub Nut, think you could put this in article form for me? even if you could write and article and have the pictures separate, I could combine them in the web page...I'd love to put it on the main website, but I'm pretty slammed right now.....

[Vee Dub Nut]

We'll I'm flattered that everyone thinks this is worthy of tech article..

I'll be glad to write up something for it when I get some time on my hands.

[Vee Dub Nut]

Ok.. so no new real progress for me except...

I now have AIR in my garage!!!!



Been wanting to get a compressor for the garage for a while. My birthday was last week and the folks got me a gift certificate to Home Depot that covered a big portion of the price, so I added a little to it and brought home a compressor. Need to pick up my old impact and air ratchet when I go back home next weekend..

Still need to do the floors on the buggy.. Seems I can only make progress about once a month

Current garage pic:

[CoryN]

Good deal - I need to pick up a bigger compressor, I just have a pancake that I use on my air nailers. I'd like to have a straight line sander, but my pancake would burn out trying to keep up with it.

[Faron]

WOW Buddy! You are doing great! Reading this made me look forward to getting started on mine! Thanks!

[blackthree4me]

nice job on the chassie cut!
that is the corect way to do it
go ahead and weld up the heater slots as well
unles you are planning on runing a heater in there
use this for your pans takes a bit of work but comes out nicer than the beat it to submition form on the manx site
http://membres.lycos.fr/dbn/

you have to go in to a couple pages see his chassie work
it one of the finest articles on how to do it at least it did for me

[Vee Dub Nut]

Yea I've used that site for a reference.. sure made the tunnel cut come out a lot better.

I'm still undecided if I'm going to run box tubing and sheet metal for the pans, or go buy some original pans and cut them up. I like the nostalgic look of stock pans, but I think I could build my own with tubing and sheet metal easier. Plus it would be stronger and look better

[Carlton Dollery]

First off I always wondered what kind of body I had, now I know. My body is exactly like yours, with the exception that I reworked the dash, back end a little and added Texas Buggy side pods. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

[CoryN]

I was back looking at some of your pictures again. Any idea on why the front portion of the back seat is the way it is?



Has it been cut away? Or was it made like that? What do you plan to do there?

Mine comes all the way down to the tunnel, but I need to rebuild the battery box.

[Aquabuggy]

I think thats a Dale's modification.
Judging from some of his past buggy builds Dale seems to have some different ideas on how a buggy should be built.

[Vee Dub Nut]

Yea that was just him cutting away at a new body He trimmed the back of it to to make the engine easier to work on. I can't complain too much though. I did get a good deal on it.

He told me he had some kind of firewall or something he would make for it. He also gave me lots of other "tips" when I picked up the body

I squared up the cut the other day.. I'll have to make some sort of panel to fill it up. Thinking about glassing up a removable panel so that I can have easy access to the battery and nosecone of the tranny.

[CoryN]

I guess you could carpet or upholster the panel and no one would know the difference.

[Vee Dub Nut]

I guess you could carpet or upholster the panel and no one would know the difference.

Except for all yall that saw the before pics..

But yea thats the plan I think.

[Vee Dub Nut]

Still waiting for steel for my floors.. needed to call the steel company again next week... so the buggy hasn't changed much.

I did pick up a longblock for it though.. got a smoking hot deal on a recently built engine (only 40 miles on it). The owner bought an unfinished project that had this engine, and he wanted a small stock gas saver. He tore it down to a long block and I picked it up this morning..

Specs:
1776 cc
New AS41 block, tapped for full-flow oiling
Steve Tims Ported & Polished Stage 2 Cylinder Heads: (New 043 Mexican Castings with 3/4 reach plug holes, 42X37 SS Valves, Dual Valve Springs, Chromoly Retainers, Professional Multi angle Valve job, ported intakes, exhaust and a true ported combustion chamber area)
HD (30mm) Melling oil pump
Scat 12.5 lb flywheel
Scat counterbalanced 69mm crank
CB Performance Uni-Tech HD Connecting Rods, balanced
Mahle pistons and jugs
Engle 110 cam
CB Performance lifters
Scat 1 ½ qt. deep sump oil pan
Empi Remote oil filter w/ braided lines
New Aluminum Degree Pulley

I've got a set of Kadrons and an extra 009. Just need an exhaust and a few bits of cooling tin I don't have.

[Aquabuggy]

Good score on that engine!

[Bill K]

CONGRATS on the the engine deal.

[CoryN]

Very nice - not going to be able to keep up with you now

[Vee Dub Nut]

Woo hoo for progress.... finally

Steel for the floors is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow! Got company for the next two weekends, so it looks like the holiday weekend will be my best bet to get my floors built. We'll see I guess...

While I was home for fathers day.. I did a little digging through my stash of VW goodies and scrounged up the cooling tin needed for the new longblock. All I have is the cylinder shrouds and the fan shroud..

Here is the before pic:


Do I need the ones that go underneath the jugs that sweep the air back? Seems a little pointless in the buggy, especially since I don't have heater boxes to attach them to. Suggestions? What else is needed? I have the little diverter thinggy under the cylinders..

Anyways.. guess its time to unveil the twist. All my cooling tin is going to be textured brown. After a few hours in the blasting cabinet.. and some time with the rattle can, I ended up with this!





Seems weird I know.. but hang with me..

Test fit on the engine:


Why brown you say? Well it pulls the brown tones out of my body. The wheels will also be a deep gloss brown. The drums, and underbody of the shell will be black to contrast them. The browns seem to just tie everything all together IMO..



Anyways.. hope yall like the look.. Too bad if you don't cause I do and it isn't going to change

Until next time!

(please excuse any odd ramblings or incoherent sentences.. its been a long day)

[Bill K]

I like your color combo. I think it will be very different in a very good looking way.
Have you considered a brown instead of black for your exposed chassis parts like the front end, etc?

[Vee Dub Nut]

No, haven't thought about that too much yet.. I want to be careful not to do too much brown.. I think the black brown combo is going to turn out nice

Oh. and the pics don't do the color justice. The textured brown looks awesome in person

This is what I used after I blasted and primed the surface:
http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=31

[speedyshark]

Looks really nice. Who cares if some don't like it. However would have looked a whole lot better in maroon. SAW OFF THEM HORNS!