New Member Building a V8 Convertible Hot Rod Beetle

Hello everyone, I just joined this forum and thought I’d introduce myself.  My name is Zach, I’m 25, married and live in central IL and work as an industrial mechanic at a local aluminum foundry.  Besides building our hot rod bug I have also been building hovercrafts since I was about 14.  In January I was in Orlando FL for a Grainger trade show and while I was waiting at the airport for 2 or 3 hours I bought a rod and custom magazine and Hot Rod Magazine, I liked both so I subscribed, and figured I might as well check out the forums too.

Our beetle project started out when I randomly found a cheap 69 convertible bug on ebay that was only about 30 minutes from us when I was looking at a furnace for my garage.  My wife liked bugs so I thought it would be a good project.  The bug was VERY rough and quickly we decided that we wouldn’t be restoring it, plus my wife thought the 40 some hp wasn’t enough power.  

Well I have experience with Subaru engines on hovercrafts so I thought we’d throw a small Subaru engine in the back of the bug and modify the bug a bit.  Then one night my wife said that she didn’t really want a “wimpy” 4cyl and asked if we could put a V6 in it instead.  I said that we might as well put a 350 in it if we were going to do that much work, she said ok, so that weekend I found a cheap donor vehicle with a reman’d 350 before she could change here mind…………….  LOL  

The 350 is going up front on a modified s10 chassis and the bug body is getting mounted to that.  And I’m using a 200R4 CZ5 valve body trans from an 87 monte.  Oh yeah we also sliced the bug in half length wise and widened it 8” to fit the s10’s width and give us more room….  Most people put wider fenders on them, but I figured I’d take the hard way out.  I’m also adding 4” to the length of the car up front to make more foot room and more room for the engine.  We are also planning on doing a hard convertible top too…….  It’s a rather large project, but its doable for me…………. And it keeps me out of trouble

You can see TONS of pictures of our V8 bug project on my website at:
http://www.zbcreations.com just click on the beetle banner towards the bottom.

Here are a few pictures of my hovercraft projects over the years, and a few of the beetle too.  I’ll try to post an update soon with some more progress I made last weekend.


The first hovercraft I built with my dad when I was 14-15.  10’ long 10hp single engine and fan, about 35mph top speed.  I raced this a couple times and had a lot of fun with it but had to go bigger and faster of course.


The 2nd hover we built my senior year, it was 18’ long had a 100hp 1.8l Subaru engine on it and would do around 70mph+ and hold 6 people.  We had a blast with this hover but we had and offer from someone to buy it that we couldn’t refuse.  We used that money to stock up on some tools and build the next 2 hovers.



After my senior year of highschool I had some left over building supplies and some spare time so I completely designed and build this ½ scale RC hovercraft, its 6’ long and 3’ wide and would do 35mph+


We call this hovercraft our Sport Cruiser, it’s the first full size hover that I designed from scratch, even the prop and fan.  It has a 27hp engine for thrust and 10hp for lift up front and will do 55mph+ and hold 2 people



This is the last hover I built, its just 10’ long with a  single 14hp engine and separate lift fan and thrust prop which are both made from foam and fiberglass.

Alright enough with the hovers, here are a few pictures of the hot rod bug project along the way.


this is what it looked like when I bought it.


here I cleaned it up a bit


started to strip if down


removed the body from the chassis so It could be put on the s10 chassis…… yeah it was a bit rusty LOL


working on stripping down the s10 chassis…….. Also the first time I got to drive the bug………… Kind of…… LOL


cut the rust front end off of the car, I’ll be adding 4” to the length up here any ways


joining the two halve of the car back together again


then I cut the car back in half….. This time to widen it 8”


tearing down the front end to rebuild it and clean up the frame
Also the 66 bug I accidentally bought, I was thinking about building a v8 VW truck with it, but since sold it.

I now have the front end of the chassis cleaned up primed and ready for undercoating, then I’ll be reassembling it.

I’ll post some new pictures when I get time to take some and such.


Let me know what you think!  
Zach Bell
www.zbcreations.com

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body.... Rather it is to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, WOW WHAT A RIDE!"

Hello everyone, I just thought I’d send you all an update on the work I’ve got done on our V8 bug in the last couple of weekends.  I got the front bumper and body mounts cut off, wire wheeled the front end of the chassis, sand blasted the front end of the chassis, primed the front end of the chassis, front sway bar, and front springs, and finally undercoated the front end and suspension and steering parts with some Hurculiner roll on bedliner.

Below are a few pictures, but I uploaded a lot more to my website: www.zbcreations.com/index3.html the chassis, costs, and visitor gallery sections got updated.


Since the last update I cut off the front body and bumper mounts, later on I'll probably have to shorten the front of the frame up a bit more, but I'll leave it long for now. This is also after I took a wire wheel in a 4.5 inch angle grinder to remove as much of the rust and grime as I could.


I was planning on sand blasting the chassis down, but my blaster is just a small suction feed, and I only have a 5hp 30 gallon compressor so it would have been very slow going.

I went through 1 and a half wire wheels and a couple hours to get it to look this good, but I wanted to remove as much rust as I possibly could instead of just covering it all up with the master series silver primer.


Here is my fancy sand blaster........ At work 2 sand blast cabinets got ordered and the guns were plastic and ceramic. Being that I work in a foundry and they blast hot castings with these and there are also a lot of careless people the guns would have gotten melted and broken in no time so we ordered some different guns and my boss told me to take these home........... THANKS DAVE!!!

For quite some time now I've been meaning to make a portable blaster with this gun, but never got around to it...... Oh well this worked just fine.


Here it is after getting sand blasted. Also for now I'm just cleaned up the front end of the chassis, that way I can get it all assembled again. I know I'll need to weld on the engine mounts latter, but I can grind it back down to metal in those spots and touch it up latter.

I want to get the front end put all back together so I can get the engine leveled up, the drive line angle figured out, and make the trans. cross member....

I was able to blast off probably 95% of the rust on the outside of the frame and probably 85% on the inside.


Here is my highly advanced abrasive collection system..... LOL I just sifted it through the screen into the bucket and reused it. I think I reused the sand 4 times and it was still cutting good and I still have about 3/4 of the sand left so I'll use it again later.


This is after I got 2 coats of the master series silver rust proofing primer on. So far I'm real happy with the stuff, it covers great and I did a couple tests and it seemed to work. Still I didn't want to just cover over all the rust. I rather get rid as much as possible.

I brushed everything on with a foam brush on the outside of the frame, and sprayed the inside with my little bluepoint gun. The paint was almost to think to spray, but it worked ok. I was able to get at least 95% of the inside of the frame coated, so that should help keep it from rusting from the inside out.

I'm also upgrading my front sway bar to a ZQ8 from a s10 extreme, its much larger dia. I forgot to take pictures, but I took it to work and glass bead blasted it, and then primed with at the same time as the frame. I also took my new moog coil springs to work and threw them in my steel shot blaster and cleaned them up and primed them.


Before I ever new about master series primer and chassis paint I already bought some Hurculiner roll on bedliner. A local Menards was moving to a new location so I got 3 gallons for $60.00!!! I figured the bedliner would hold up better and not get chipped and help keep the frame from getting rusty again.


Here is the frame coated with the bedliner. It might not be as pretty as a nice shiny smooth paint job, but I think it will hold up better...... Plus you can't really see much of the frame anyways. Master Series also has a gloss black chassis paint that is supposed to be pretty good, but I haven't tried it.


I think it turned out pretty good, I was worried that being put on by hand the texture would be un even, but its very uniform. I actually didn't use the roller, there were more curves, pockets, etc than flat spots so I dabbed it all on with a brush. If I brushed and rollered it there were two different textures.

I ended up using a whole gallon to do the front end of the frame and all the suspension and steering parts. I recomend having a helper if you can though, by the time I got the the last coat on the last few parts it was starting to get pretty thick in the can. Also have a couple spare brushing ready. And last but not lease where long sleeves, I didn't because it was round 95 outside, but then I had to pick lots of rubber goo out of my arm hair......... OUCH


Here you can see all the other parts hanging and coated. The coil springs are going to stay silver, they suck enough to paint let alone try to put this stuff on them....... LOL


The 2" drop spindles, center link and lower control arms after they got coated. These are where the stuff was getting a bit thick on me so they have a slightly different texture to them.


Steering box, tie rod ends, and splash sheilds, and there is my other coil spring in the background.


And there is my sway bar and the other coil spring. I'll grind the hurculiner off where the bushings go later. I'll give all this stuff at least a week to dry and then hopefully I'll have time to start re-assembling the front end again next weekend. I also got some rustoleum spray on bed liner to get the hard to reach spots inside the frame to make sure 100% of the metal was covered in the front end.  
Zach Bell
www.zbcreations.com

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body.... Rather it is to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, WOW WHAT A RIDE!"