ddavidv said:
Radios were likely an option back then, installed at the dealer level. Antenna style and placement was often at the dealership's whim. Very typical on the Fiats I played with from the same time period.
Yes. Dad bought a new beetle in '65 - paid the dealer for the antenna but no radio. He was a ham radio operator; he didn't want to drill into the body but added his own S/W head unit in the dash.
My first car at age 15 - pre-drivers license- was a '63 ragtop. Amazed at how well preserved this one is.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
Wow! That Bug looks awesome! Let us know how the driving experience compares with the memories!
It does look good. My college roommate had a ’67.
Ok so rebuilt the carburetor, got about 0.5mL of dirt out of all of the orifaces with the sonicator/hot bath and blowing out all the passages. Found that the chock and the accelerator pump were sticky and the accelerator pump linkage was hitting the generator strap. All put back together correctly and then re-tuned it. Car is so much happier now and idles happily at ~800rpm and picked up a ton of power for a VW. It will happily get to 65 mph now without a problem just takes 25 seconds to do that.
I am pretty sure its slower to 60mph then it is in the quarter mile. Which means you get to drive full out everywhere and nobody can tell. I need to lower the car and get a bit better toe alignment in the front after that and I think it will be good. I also got eh fuel gauge working but it drags in the tube because ti got bent somewhere along the line so it shows half or empty correctly. Which is enough for now until I get a new gauge.
Also made a quick little standoff to install the antenna and confirmed the speaker is not blown just that the radio reception sucks as expected.
Left to do
- Steam clean the motors
- Paint to protect the pan a bit on the bottom.
- Figure out why the heat is leaking more then I would expect even through when the valves are shut.
- Fix the driver seat again with even stronger springs because it sags towards the center of the car with me in the seat.
- Horn covers are on order as they are cheap knockoffs and hidious.
- Install new vintage radio clone with bluetooth when it gets here. (Cheap amazon thing I found online)
So awesome to hear about the progress on this one.
And if you ever want this thread moved to the Build section, just let us know.
