Wife's new toy - 1976 Beetle

March 14, 2023, 09:24:59 AM

So, my wife has wanted a VW Beetle since she was a little kid. We've been saving up a bit of money the past few years and we finally snagged on for her a couple weeks ago.

It needs a little mechanical help, but the body and pan are solid enough. It was originally a FI car, but the engine has been replaced with a carbed engine from a '71.

I need to put an exhaust on it, fix the shift linkage, get the carb and a couple irritating electrical issues sorted, then she'll be able to noodle around town in it while we sort out more of the details.

Re: Wife's new toy - 1976 Beetle

Reply #1 – March 15, 2023, 12:47:16 PM

That one looks to be in good shape! Good find for the Mrs!

Re: Wife's new toy - 1976 Beetle

Reply #2 – August 03, 2025, 11:17:57 PM

So,, other than getting it sorted well enough to drive, we didn't do much else to it in the past couple of years.

Over the past few weeks, I tackled a project that needed to be done, for a couple of reasons.

Early inspections of the front beam showed it to be in a decent state of corrosion. The car was drivable, but it wasn't ideal.

The first pic was an older repair, and the second was the quick support job I did to get us by for a bit.

The fix here was a new beam. Instead of just a stocker, we opted for an aftermarket piece that was slightly narrowed and adjustable for ride height.
It needed to be painted, so I asked her what color she wanted it to be. She said GREEN! So I obliged.

The teardown also included rebuilding the steering box and replacing tierods and balljoints. It also got new oil-filled shocks at all 4 corners.

The balljoints did not go quietly. All 4 chose violence and needed to be cut out.

The second reason for the work was, while the brakes were sorted, they were still 4-wheel non-power, non-self adjusting drums.
We went with the EMPI conversion kit. It was mostly OK, but I had to modify the inner wheel bearing seals, as there was some machining nonsense on the rotors that caused the seal to bottom out on the spindle base before the bearing. Instead of fussing with sorting out the rotors, I modified the $2 seals.

The pads on these things are comically small, but no other modifications were needed to the system.

We chose the adjustable beam to allow us to drop the front a bit. It sat kind of high (with like a 3" fender/tire gap)

BEFORE

Settled on about a 1-1/4" drop

AFTER

With that, it's back ready for drives again.