Short Bus

[Short Bus]

Hey everyone,

My name's Dan, I'm 25 and I live in South Jersey (US). My nick is the name of my other car. It's a yellow wagon that my friends have dubbed the "Short Bus".

Around 1998, my folks bought my sister a '73 Super beetle with an autostick, which was her daily driver. She made a mess of the poor thing. Stickers, smoking, general car abuse. Then she moved to Philadelphia, and hasn't needed a car since. I made a quick arrangement ($), and it looks like I've got a bug on my hands.

Now, I certainly understand the appeal of a stripped-down, primer-black, super-light beetle. I've been lurking, and checking out all your galleries, and man, I'm impressed. Only thing is, this was my sister's car, so I'm thinking my folks and my sister would give me more than a ration of s**t if I turned this thing into some sort of a post-apocalyptic death bug.

I'm thinking that instead of stripping this girl down to her bones, what about building her up from the frame as a topless street rod? I've got some vague thoughts on what I'd like to do, and your galleries and JoeDirt's illustrations have been great help for me to envision what I'd like to do.

As soon as I get her towed out to my place (one of these days), I'll get some pictures, and then rip off the fenders. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Oh, and as of right now, I don't have a girlfriend, but I do have a fence. Hmmm. I'll get to work on that, too.

[Short Bus]

Well, it's official. I've got a car on which to work. It's a green '73 super beetle. Lots of you chimed in on my lead sled design, and I'm definitely going to go forward with it. It's still at my parents' house, but they're getting it towed over to my place in the next week or so. So I'll post pictures of it shortly thereafter.

So, first things first. The car hasn't run in about 4 years, due to a leak somewhere in the vicinity of the gas tank. Just started gushing gas onto the driveway one winter. I figure I'll spend some time getting the thing running right, getting acquainted with the ins and outs of working on a VW, and then break out the sawzall.

[Short Bus]

So, thanks to the BugSelecta links out there, I did a nifty revision of what I'm thinking for the Super. The biggest revision I made is the change in the look of the front fender. The downward swoop doesn't have so much metal over the door, so it'll either A) make less stress on the hinges or B) Mean less door to chop off if I go with suicide doors.

Of course, this is all still gonna have to wait until I get the thing running, and go crazy enough one day to take a saw to a perfectly stable car [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

[Short Bus]

It's about damn time I got my hands dirty. I finished up stripping and repainting the fuel tank. If you haven't tried those 3M "Sandblaster" Stripping pads, I recommend them. Made really short work of the paint on the tank, even the thick stuff on the sides.

After the tank was painted, I got down on the ground and proceeded to pull out most of the interior. Pulled the seats, and the carpets, and the door panels, and the tar board.

Oh man, there's a lot of daylight coming through the floors. Guess I'm going to need new pans, huh? The heater channels seem to be in pretty good condition, though (as far as my non-expert eye can tell).

I'm going to try and get the rest of the interior out tomorrow night, and maybe even pull off the fenders in preparation for getting the body off. Good times [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Dancing.gif[/img]

[Short Bus]

Here's the whole Gas tank deal:

Yank the tank

+ 1 new angle grinder

+ 1 flat black spraybomb =

1 Pretty Gas Tank

[Short Bus]

And the rusted floorpan:

[Short Bus]

So Here's how I got her:


And here's her current state (almost):

[Short Bus]

This is what happens when you don't dump pictures off of your camera often enough, 90 posts in rapid succession [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/funny.gif[/img]

So check out the mess that was my luggage area:


I tried everything, and all I could find to get that adhesive un-stuck was


Fire!

I just torched the stuff till it bubbled, and scraped it off. It left a thick, sticky residue that was really terrible. I tried hitting it with a wire cup on the angle grinder, but that was really only good to sling the stuff around. So I wound up scrubbing away with a rag soaked in laquer thinner for a couple of hours, cutting through the glue and tar. Man, that stuff sucks.

I hit the luggage area with some weird rust-to-primer spraypaint that I wanted to try out, but I don't think it worked too well, so I'm going to grind it all down to metal and prime it right.

Project-wise, I'm still flailing around [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/FreakinSmiley.gif[/img] with no kind of a plan. I'm just looking at these bad bondo-jobs and rust holes, wondering how I'm gonna make this drivable, much less good-looking.

One step at a time, I suppose, but I've got about 30 steps in my brain, all wanting to get done. Gah!