I was bored on Sunday

Its only roughly cut, need to do final trimming and cap everything, then get the rollbar kit.

Or maybe I should do it volksrod style and give up on offroad? Opinions?

Cutting brakes, CB and minor carnage

Doing stuff like this:
Leads to this:

And this:
Here are more shots of the 4x4 play area and me climbing the steps. I don't think I actually lost my bumper here, I think I lost it on a worse obstacle, or loosened itand then it came off while driving on one of the trails, I wasn't able to find it.





I'm getting very lazy with the blog business, so let me know if you want details on the cutting brakes made from bolt cutter handles, otherwise I'll let the pics speak for themselves.

Finally I installed a CB that my brother in law gave me. His father had it on his boat or in the vehicle they towed the boat with. Its looks like its from the right era for this old car.

Yeh I went thru this too.

Well on Saturday Aug 16th I went to Hollister Hill Off Road park for the first time and the bug did well. But I forgot to bring a mem card for the cam so no pics!

Its been a while since I made an update. Since the last post I scored a used rear bumper for $5 delivered, and yesterday picked up some 235/75/15 tires for $80 bucks. Can I budget or what?
Enjoy the pics!
At some point I might post more details on the front fender cutting.

Patching the front

In the last post the front had a chunk cut off, today I removed the trimmed piece, trimed it some more and reinstalled it. More than anything this is needed to restore the trunk floor. Here you see the piece sitting in front of the car before the trimming.



Here the piece has been trimmed more.



Here we have a trial fit.



Originally I planned to trim it super close and then weld it on, then thinking the idea is to bash this thing off-road, so I'll just bolt it on. Plus I might not like the results and go with a reg baja bug kit anyway, so bolts it is for now!

Seats and front end cut

Today I mounted some skanky Toyota seats a friend gave me, why put skanky seats in my bug? Well the bug seats were pretty skanky too, but they don't really recline, so its an upgrade to reclining skanky seats and who cares once they are covered. Reclining seats make the drive-inn more fun anyway :)

So we start with this seat:

I have to cut the sliding mechanism off so I can mount the seat to the stock VW stuff, as you'll see:

Here we are after the tracks got the angle grinder treatment

Now its time to destroy the original seat to get to the needed part, I only want just the very bottom which I will then weld onto the Toyota seat


I won't go into details on how I ripped it apart, its pretty self explanatory. This is what I'm left with from the original seat.
Here it is positioned and partially welded in place, you get the idea on how it will mount, just like stock. It turns out they are a few inches higher which gets in the way of the steering wheel, I had planned on a body lift anyway so its ok. If after that I don't like them then it will be time for other seats, its like Lego, don't like what you made, pull it apart and put it back together again differently.

Now on to the front end cut. If you read the link to the one day baja build you'll have an idea of how the front can be cut instead of buying a baja kit. I decided to go with this approach as an experiment, again if I don't like it I can just redo it. A real baja kit would require to remove even more of the car so that always remains an easy option. My version is a bit more radical than the one day baja guy, I really want to get the nose out of the way. Here we see the nose marked off with tape to get the initial cut line.



Here is is after the cut, I still have a working trunk, but the spare can no longer go in the stock location. I also will reshape the piece I cut off and weld it back in so that I have a trunk floor again. Right now its open to the world except for some duct tape to keep the the cats out. So thats next weekends project. I'll clean up the edges then at that time. I'll also reshape the front the rear fenders once I have my tire package mounted.

Baja Build Day 2

Today the rear gets cut off, to make my lines I laid tape, then misted white paint on and used that line as a guide.





To make the cuts I used a cheap angle grinder with cutting dics and a cheap 'sawz-all' type saw, both sourced from Harbor Freight. The very bottom required the sawz-all and the bug had to be jacked up to gain the necessary clearance to angle the saw properly.

I cut most of the way on one side but left a little uncut to support the part while I cut the other side, I wanted to avoid distorting anything and keep the piece I removed in sell-able shape.
Here we are cut all the way thru on the driver's side.

And here we are all cut, with the part ready for the final tug off. Its not very heavy, I pulled it off and carried it easily.



And now its all gone


The final pic shows a bar I mounted temporarily for the taillights and license plate. Its ugly and temporary and only there until I get the cage assembly for the motor, so not much point going into how I set it up. I also removed the two little tailpipes, I didnt know they provided so much of the muffling, the thing is much louder now. Between the freer flowing exhaust and the weight that was removed the car feels a good bit quicker, but maybe thats just psychological. Next up will be work to the front end.