VW Beetle - custom finish
This VW Beetle was owned by our customer in his teenage years, it had been sat for around 26 years in his garage before he decided it was time to restore it. However, he didn't want to do a standard restoration and wanted to have a one of a kind custom Beetle, this was beyond fun for us to get our teeth into. We discussed various ideas and our customer had some way out there ideas, with new ideas coming through all the time, but we were able to bring his ideas to life and the finished result was awesome. It went on to a friend of our customer to do the paint job after we had done our part.
The Beetle was originally a convertible.
The inner arch tubs after taking the car to bare metal showed some serious corrosion.
Fabricated sections starting to be tacked in place in the inner wheel arch.
More repairs tacked in place ready to commit to weld.
Repairs tacked in place to ensure correct placement.
Rear inner arch repair section tacked in place.
Front wings down to bare metal and put in place.
Sills before repairs.
Customised outer sill in place to ensure a flush finish with the door.
The bumper holes were blanked up on the front wings at our customers request.
Before and after shots of the front wing showing the bumper holes now blanked off.
We started to get the donor roof in position to ensure correct fitment for a new chopped roof that the customer wanted to have.
The chopped roof welded in place. The customer also wanted the back quarter windows blanked up which was done by us.
A front view with the roof welded in place.
We found a company in Spain who produced these cool oval rear window panels, the customer loved this look so we had a panel imported over, it took a while to wait for it from production to arrival but it was definitely worth the wait once we got it in place.
More of the process of the chopped roof being created and fitted.
Getting the height correct for the chopped roof, it took some adjustments but we got it looking great.
We used a lot of support and bracing before committing to weld to ensure the placement was all correct and as it should be.
The chopped roof all welded in place.
The original rear tyre on the right and the tyres the customer wanted to have put on the back of the car on the left, this needed some serious calculations and fabrication to ensure we made the rear arches wide enough to house these huge wheels.
The new wider tyres next to the original rear wheel arches.
The rear wheel arch widening process underway.
Fabrication of the rear wheel arch.
The front of the rear wheel arch with the fabricated section tacked in place.
The rear wheel arch widened and the welds ground down.
Both rear wheel arches complete. These were widened by 6 inches each side. These wings were fully welded to the body to create a smooth finish, we did the same with the front wings also.
The body was removed off the chassis to enable to minor repairs to be carried out. This was then painted in Raptor which is a stone chip bed liner.
The interior was also having a makeover, this was before any repairs were completed.
Our customer came up with the idea of wanting checker board plating somewhere inside, we then discussed going all out and putting it all through the interior which he loved, the effect was nothing we had seen before and it was so fun to get to be so creative.
We also fabricated the door cards and handle out of the checker board plating.
We had more of the aluminium checker board plating so thought it would be cool to fabricate the side steps out of it to tie everything together and the finished look was great.
The interior all finished once we had primed the car in black ready to go on to the next part of its journey.
We put the car in black primer before we took it over to having its filler and paint work completed.
We also put custom holes into the bonnet of the car.
All in black primer, looking worlds away from when it arrived with us.
We had to take full advantage of a dry day after spending so long working on this car to get it just how the customer dreamed. We loved getting to be so creative and work with our customer on so many ideas and bringing them to life. This will always be a favourite car of ours that we have done work on.