Antique Registration

By the total lack of activity on this blog in the last year, you can infer that I've been distracted by other things. It's not just the blog that I've ignored, the poor bug that this site is about it has been mostly ignored too. The Main reason that I've ignored it is that I can't legally drive it right now because I can't get it to pass inspection. I took it in for inspection a year and a half ago and it failed because rot in the heater channels and rust in the foot wells. And because of the work that the house needs and the fact that I was out of work for three months, I haven't had the spare money to get the bodywork done on it.

The car is mostly drivable (or at least was the last time I started it), at least around town, but illegal since I can't get it through inspection with the body work. So the solution seems to be re-registering it as an antique which allows me to drive the car without registration. I was worried that an antique registration would have too many restrictions but from reading the "Antique and Classic Vehicle Fact Sheet" from PennDot, it looks like the restriction is defined as:

The use of antique, classic and collectible plates is governed by Section 1340 of the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code which states: “It is unlawful for any person to operate a motorcycle or vehicle with antique, classic or collectible registration plates for general daily transportation. Permitted use shall be limited to participation in club activities, exhibits, tours, parades, occasional transportation and similar uses.” Occasional transportation and similar
uses is defined as one day a week.

So I can drive it 52 days a year which is 52 days more per year than I have been driving it and I don't see that as a problem. I'm sending in the re-registration forms this week with four pictures (one of each side) to show that it has been "maintained in or restored to a condition which is substantially in conformance with manufacturer specifications." I should get the new plates in time for Spring so that it will be warm enough to do some tune up work on it and drive it around the city a little. I can't wait.

Back on the road (almost)

I spent the summer buying a victorian house and moving into it and starting the restoration process so I didn't have much time to deal with the bug. But since I had to have to bug towed to the new house anyway, I decided to have it towed to a shop to do the work to get it running that I didn't have time for. The nice folks at German Motor Werks did a full tune up, adjusted the valves, carb and plugs and also did a front end alignment. It runs sweet now but they couldn't pass it for inspection because of the rust in the foot wells. So now I need to get it to a body shop to get at least the holes patched but I probably should get the whole heater channels replaced.

Anyway, at least it runs now, even if it's not totally legal. Here's a shot of it in front of the new house

Metapost: two and half months later

Sorry for the delay, I'm going to start posting again this week after about ten weeks of silence. Blame mother nature, the weather has been so crappy that I have not been able to do anything but read manuals and websites and occasionally go out and look at the car sitting in the freezing garage. I didn't expect to have to wait until the end of April for decent weather, Pittsburgh has a generally crappy climate but it doesn't usually snow on tax day here.

Bought another 1973 Super Beetle! Well sort of.

I bought this 1:24 scale "1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle" from ebay this week. It has a certificate saying that it is an officially licensed product of Volkswagen AG but I would be surprised if anyone at at the company even looked at this thing since there are so many things wrong with it.

It doesn't look too bad from the front but the hood looks too narrow and it has an extra right-hand mirror that you could have probably gotten installed from a dealer but they were not common.

The tail-lights are the wrong shape, sort of a lozenge shape instead of the '73 fat rounded tail-lights.

It's hard to see from this picture of the interior but it has a standard dash instead of the rounded, padded dash of the '73 and later Supers and it has the deep-dish steering wheel from earlier models.

Looking inside the trunk reveals an upright spare tire that shows this model is not really a super at all but a standard with a rounded windshield stuck on.

Oh well, I only paid $7 for it and it looks cool on the TV stand in the living room.

Ebay Finds

I've bought a few things from ebay as documention for this car. I picked up a very nice copy of the Sports Bug brochure, the same as this, a review of the car from Motor Trend and magazine ad for the special edition. Maybe if I can get the car in show-able condition, I'll frame this ephemera and display it with the car.


The design of this ad and the brochure pushed me to redesign the blog to give it a little more of a seventies feel and to match the colors of the car better.

Future Plans

Metacomment: In this post I'm going to outline what I plan to do to this car and then track how well I manage to meet those plans. I'll put a link to this post on the side bar and then update it periodically with my progress or lack thereof.

Short term plans:

• Get the fixed window rubber seals replaced. This is not something that I feel like doing myself and is fairly cheap and easy to get an auto window company to do this for you. This is really top priority as the seals don't even try to keep out the rain right now. And since I live in Pittsburgh this car is going to get caught in the rain even if I try to only drive it on sunny days
• Replace all of the body seals. This is also urgent for similar reasons as above but I'll do this work myself
• Replace the front door window seals. Same as the fixed windows but I'll do the work
• Use POR-15 on the rust on the floors and rockers to keep the rust from getting any worse
• Tune up the engine: carburetor, plugs, points, distributer, valves, oil change, fan belt
  
• Rewire the oil sensor which is not connected. The wire is cut off and is wrapped around the wire harness as you can see in this picture
  
• Replace the heater hoses in the engine compartment
• Put the standard bug steering wheel on
• Replace any needed light bulbs
  

Medium Term Plans:

• Get new fasteners for the exterior trim strips
• Get a new liner for the trunk
• Get a new dome light
• Get a vintage radio to replace the modern cd player
• Get new taillights to replace the cracked and pitted old ones
• Paint the rims
• Replace the two missing wheel nub caps
  

Long term plans:

• Get a body shop to replace the rocker panels/heater channels and any other rusty body components
• Have a decent paint job done
• Show it?
  

Steering Wheel

One of the feature of the Sports Bug package was a special smaller sports steering wheel. It does look cool and for the sake of completeness, I'm glad that the car still had it but I can't drive with it. The small size, my height and the unadjustable nature of the bug steering column, means that I can't see anything on the dash board when I'm driving. I've taken a picture from my point of view to show you what I mean:

I'm going to keep this steering wheel and restore it but I'll probably only run with it in the car if I ever show it or if I sell it. I managed to pick up a nice 70's vintage wheel off of ebay last week for $25 dollars complete with horn button and in pretty good shape so I'll be putting that on the car in a few weeks. The standard wheel is larger so that I can see the speedometer and will give me a little more torque for parallel parking.



UPDATE April 21, 2007

I installed the standard wheel today and now I can see the steering wheel. The downside is that I can barely get my legs under the wheel but that's still better than not seeing the speedometer.