Custom Beetle-rebuilt engine, Bernard Newbury interior, tons more-fortune spent!

I then decided I wanted a Karman Ghia, so put it up for sale, but on the way to being on display at the Volksworld show the engine caught fire!



I kept the car and decided to get the necessary work done and then put it up for sale again. But as quite often these things go, it started costing more than I thought and I was getting a bit carried away with getting all the parts for it, so I decided to keep it and make it into the kind of Beetle I always wanted! I was going for a high-tech streed-rod kind of style.

The body was bare-metalled, new heated channels were welded in, new front & rear quarter panel bottoms welded in, new spare wheel-well, '67 only rear valence and decklid, a genuine pre '67 bonnet fitted, the seams/guttering removed on the front quarters, new front beam with sway-aways and a front disc-brake conversion with new discs, pad and brake lines.




Hidden door hinges by Shane Powell were welded in, the rear air vents were welded-up and a high-level brake light fitted in place. A vent to get air into the engine was made going from behind the engine to under the car. The running boards are smooth fibre-glass ones from Wizard roadsters. The outside fuel-filler flap was welded up and the fuel tank is an early type with the filler neck on the tank. The fuel-filler cap was chromed. The bonnet catches were nickel plated and chromed. The bonnet hinges are polished billet alluminium. The tabs at the bottom of the headlight rims were removed for a smooth look. There are new Bosch sloping headlamp lens, rubber headlight seals and drain tubes + mk 1 Golf crystal headlights. The body was sprayed with House of colors candy turquoise over metallic turquoise. The doors had Renault Laguna oval-shaped door handles fitted which took many hours of head-scratching to be made to work! The respray + some of the body-work cost £4500 at the time!






T.B.C!

Sadly the doors seem to have been lost by someone who previously did work on the car! They are sure they don't have them and think that I have them, but I know I 100% don't!

Inside the 3-point seat fixing humps were removed as they didn't need to be there and custom-made seat sub-frames were made for Recaro front seats. There are 2 layers of sound-proofing material all over the floor-pan and front bulkhead + 3 layers in the area behind the rear seat/in front of the engine area. A split-charger was bought and I was planning on running two batteries-one for the audio or anything else electrical when the engine wasn't running. Exterior battery posts were fitted in case it ever needed to be jump started. The stereo hole and speakers grills on the dash were welded up for a smooth look. A panel was made to go under the dash to house the stereo, tweeter speakers, alluminium billet down-lighters and custom switches. To match up with the panel a centre console was made the curves up to underneath the panel and also curves outwards each side as it reaches the panel. Both these were covered in charcoal leatherette to match the seats. The front seats were Recaros from a Capri 2.8 injection and the rear seats were trimmed to match as well in charcoal grey and light grey leatherette as the rear quarter panels. All the seat and quarter panels were trimmed by Bernard Newbury. Some high quality charcoal wool auto carpet was bough (cost over £100) with enough to trim the whole inside of the car including behind the rear seat, under the bonnet and with more spare left over. I bought some foot-well speaker panels to house 13cm mid-range speakers.


Under-dash panel with tweeter speakers, billet down-lighters and stereo and steering wheel cut-outs:



Custom centre console:







T.B.C!

A new top-tint windscreen was fitted, I already had some grey-tint rear side windows and a new Bugpack grey tinted one-piece window set was bought as well as new door rubbers and window rubbers.

The alloy wheels are Saab 900 Turbo 3-spokes that were re-furbished by Spit & polish in Tonbridge.

On the engine side, another 1600 twin-port engine was bought and then dismantled. The case and cam were checked, crank reground and a new 1641CC Mahle/Cima barrels and pistons, new heads, new bearings, valves fitted, then it was fully balanced by Harry Harpic. There are Autocraft bolt-on rocker shafts with swivel-feet adjusters, a new Bosch 009 distributor with Pertonix igniter electronic ignition, pertronix ignitor flame-thrower coil, a new alternator and a full-flow oil system. There is a fillet alluminium crank pulley with matching alternator pulley, distributor cover and fuel-pump block-off and a Facet electronic fuel pump. The rear suspension is IRS for better handling. The manifold is a steel Bugpack one and the exhaust is a stainless steel turbo-trip tuckaway style that goes up in the rear wing. The carbs are twin Weber 36IDF in mint condition with a Porsche style linkage, K&N oval filters and billet alluminium tops. The firewall back and side have been custom made of a alluminium.There are billet alluminium deck-lid hinges and painted stainless steel panels to the side and rear of the engine. There are also new Autometer oil temp and rev counters. The heat-exchangers, levers, all heating pipes etc are all new or mint.

The engine pics below are before the new cylinder heads were fitted.








There are several boxes of parts/new parts!

The front and rear blade bumpers were converted into targa-style, with the front bumpers housing the front indicators and the rears housing the rear lights were were custom-made. - I currently don't have these, but am trying to see if a guy who did some of the work on them, can find them.

T.B.C!

A custom-made wiring loom was made with just a little needed to fully finish and I have a brand new Foxguard alarm with sensors and scanning LED light. There is also a multi-sound alarm with microphone!


This is how it is now:








So what still needs doing? Well as mentioned a little bit more on the wiring loom, the engine block is all fitted up etc, so just needs all the various bits & pieces fitted to the bare block. The carpet material needs to be cut & fitted and new front door panels made. As the car was sprayed a few years ago now, there is a little bit of bubbling on one section of the roof rail and there are a few little teeny dents or scratches here and there. Nothing major and easily sorted, so it would only need a bit of welding on the roof rail and a teeny teeny bit of filler on any teeny dents, replacement doors, then a light rub-down and blow-over. As mentioned at the beginning, all the major bodywork was done before the respray, so it would be easily sorted. How many Beetles need than small amount of welding?! Once the doors have been sourced and paintwork done, the new front windows need to be fitted, a new rear window sourced, running-boards fitted, the front headlight rims finished, lots of little bits fitted up here & there and that's mainly it!

So why am I selling it?! Well of course I'd love to finish it (especially after spending around £20k on it), but since buying my current place 8 years ago (which needed a lot of work doing to it and still does!), I've just not had any spare money to finish it and I've also just been made redudant, so I also have greater need for the money right now. I guess looking back on it now, I got a bit too carried away trying to do too much and when you can't do all the work yourself, custom things cost a lot more as it's harder to give accurate quotes. Quite a few times I had final bills that came to a lot more than the original price I was told! I still did a lot of work on it myself and I still ended up spending a fortune on it! I hate to think how much I would have spent if I'd done none of the work on it!

Price is-£3500. I'm in North Kent. Please PM me if interested, you want to chat about it or want to view it.

Cheers!