Installing A Cheap Air Ride System On My Vw Beetle - Episode 5

We are back on another episode of my 1973 Volkswagen Beetle that caught on fire. Over the past few months, I've been doing a lot of work to this thing, even though it kind of doesn't look like it. But trust me, there is a lot of work done to this. First off, we started with a brand new wiring harness all the way through the whole thing. Also tackled the frunk area, got that all cleaned up. All the old paint removed, got a new coat of bed liner in there that looks really good, along with a new gas tank and a new air ride system up front. Moving to the back of the car, I pulled out the old motor that caught on fire. Ended up rebuilding that motor completely and installing it back in. This car now runs and drives perfectly fine. Moving to the interior, I did a good bit of work in there. The dash is all fixed and painted, all ready to go in there. And I installed new seats out of a 2015 Fiat 500. The original seats were all burnt up in the fire, so I decided to go a different route and install some newer seats in it. And they are very comfortable and they look really good in here. Also installed new glass all the way around the car. This thing is pretty much ready to drive on the road now. That was just a quick recap. There's obviously plenty of more that's been done to this thing and still plenty more to do. Now I had quite a few comments about this in my last episode. They saw me repaint the interior of the car and said, why don't you just repaint the whole thing right now? That is way easier said than done. This thing has about five or six layers of paint. Also it being over 50 years old, it really needs to be taken down to bare metal. The best way to do that is get sandblasted, get all the paint taken off of it, and start fresh. And doing all that takes one, money, and two, a lot of time. Full restoration and paint job of this bug would probably take a few months for just myself doing it. And with me having a lot more projects to work on, and I just want to be able to get out content consistently. Just not really in the cards right now. Hopefully in the future I will be able to paint this thing, but right now it's just going to be a running and driving vehicle that I don't have to worry about scratching or doing any damage to. I know a lot of people do not like the patina look, but I love that it tells a story and everyone can look at this car and see it's been through a lot. And people want to know about the history of it. If you saw a bug like this with a really good paint job and it's all cleaned up, you know, you would look at it. But if you saw this on the road, you would definitely look at it a little bit longer. And that's what I like about it. People want to know the story about this. This bug is run and drive ready, but there is a bit more I want to do to it before I start driving it daily. One being the interior. The interior still needs to be finished up. I got a new steering wheel. I need to finish installing along with carpet, headliner, all the other goodies that you really need for it. One thing I really want to focus on this episode is the suspension system. The front end has an air ride system, so I can lift it up and down with just a touch of a button. But the rear end is kind of stuck where it is right now. It's really low to the ground and I scrape on my driveway and scrape on the road. So what I want to go ahead and do is add air ride to the rear end. It's a bit more complicated than adding air ride to the front. You have to make a custom bracket system. This right here is an airbag for air ride suspension. There's going to be one installed on each side, driver's side and passenger side, right by the CV axles. It's going to lift up right by them. The easiest way to install these is to remove the body completely. Luckily, it's not too difficult to remove the bodies from these old Volkswagen Beetles. Just a few bolts all the way around it. I do have to get, I do have to take out the gas tank and a lot of other little things, but we should be able to get this thing removed in a day pretty easily. That's what I'm going to start with. Go ahead and start working on this body and get it off the frame. Let's do it. First step into removing this body. We got to unhook some stuff down here, mainly the gas lines and the steering stuff. I'm going to take this out. Gas tank next. All right, I think that's everything up here. All the wires unhooked, steering unhooked. The back is pretty simple. All you have to do is unhook the wiring. That's pretty much it. There we go. Unhook this one. And then I have the fuel line running through the body, so I'd unhook that. There's a couple more wires on the starter I need to unhook, but other than that, I think that's pretty much it. Body mount bolt right there. Remove that. There's also a few underneath the heater channel right here. Lastly, there's some bolts underneath this back seat. Battery unhooked. Bolt's undone. I think it's ready to go. I triple-checked everything and made sure all the bolts were out, and they are. But the issue is, whenever one of the previous owners replaced the floor pans, they welded it on to the body down there. So what I gotta do is grind away where they welded, and hopefully that will release the body. Finally. I don't know what they did, but they welded it completely wrong. You know, overall, if it wasn't for this welded spot right here that I had to cut off, it wasn't that hard. It would be 10 times easier if I had a car lift. That way I'm not doing anything really sketchy like this. Pressure wash the floor pan up. That way I can get an idea of what's going on underneath here. Everything looks good. I ended up replacing this driver's side CV axle. I replaced the passenger side in a previous episode, but the driver's side still needed done. I figured I was going to do it when I took the body off, and I did. It's a good thing, too, because this one was a bit of a hassle to get off. Half the studs were all stripped out, so I had to cut them all off. It was a bit of a hassle, but I got it done, and I got the new one in. All that's good to go. Next up is the air ride system. I'm going to go with a basic setup. The rod goes from here to the other side, connecting it. You're going to weld this onto the rod, and then you're going to weld a plate down here onto this control arm. I'm going to have to notch out this control arm a little bit. Set it down a little bit lower. Weld that on. Weld the top on. It's really not too bad. They actually sell kits out there that are just like this, but I'm going the cheaper route, and I bought all this stuff myself. Make it work. Got this passenger side torsion bar out, and same thing with the driver side, so you can see how low it's actually going to sit. This is as low as I can go without modifying the frame anymore or raising the transmission and the motor. All this is ready to go. I'm going to tack weld it in. Let's see. That's what it looks like. All ready to do spot weld. I don't like that. Need to readjust. Got that looking a bit better down there. It just wasn't sitting right. This looks a lot better. A lot more flat. I think that'll work a lot better. Frame is all done and ready to be put back under the car. Got the air ride all situated. I'll go ahead and link everything I used for this air ride kit in my description. This is probably the cheapest way you can get air ride on this car. Now, it's pretty basic, but it works. Got the airlines ran through the tunnel. It all looks really good. Rubber grommets protecting it. Moving to the front of the frame. There's a little bit of work. This is where I cut it off the body where I was welded on. Had to cut off some of that stuff and it caused a little bit of damage. I went ahead and welded it up. Put a new coat of paint and a new coat of seam sealer on there. Looks really good. I also dug into this pedal assembly. The throttle was getting stuck. It was sticking. It was coming off the track. Put a new upgraded assembly on there and it works so much better. It looks really good. Got all that put back in the car. All that's ready to go. Also, I need a new cable for the emergency brake. Got all that taken care of. That was for the driver's side. And with all that done and buttoned up, we just have to roll this thing back in the garage and put the body back on it. All the bolts are lining back up, but I did forget to notch out the body just a little bit. I need to notch it out right here. Right where that airbag mount is. This stance just looks so good. I do have a little air leak for the back airbags. I think it's coming from this switch. That's what it sounds like. Eh, maybe. I don't know where it's coming from. I got to dig into that to check it out. In the meantime, I want to work on this deck lid. I got a couple things I need to install on it. This is the license plate light. Mounts up right here. Along with a Volkswagen emblem that I had laying around. The latching system. And lastly, a license plate holder. Definitely need to paint this thing something. The problem is it's not steel, so it won't rust and match the rest of it. So either need to paint it a color or do something to it. Because it stands out quite a bit right now. This part of the bug is really bothering me. You know, considering everything else is going on with it. Why is this bothering me so much? This used to be a gas tank door. Open up, fill up your gas there. But I replaced the gas tank with an older one. So I no longer needed this door. So I just filled it in with new metal. Welded it up and threw some primer on it. And it really stands out compared to everything else in the front being in better shape. But this is really drawing my eye and it just doesn't look good. So I think I'm going to just do a little bit of body work. Try to match the paint. Make it look a little bit better. And just match the rest of the front. This door handle broke. It just snapped right off. So bought some new ones. They're pretty easy. There's only one screw holding them on and they just slide out. That screw right there. It's like that. Yeah, this thing's like corroded. It's a pretty rough shape. I think there's a way to reuse your same key, but not really that big of a deal for me to have multiple. You can see where it broke off. Snapped right off. Swap the passenger side out too. It's not a perfect color match, but it definitely looks better. Under the fluorescent light, you can tell a lot more than actually pulling it out in the sun. Out in the sun, you really can't tell that much at all. Especially when you have the fender on and the trim and all the other stuff put together. You don't even notice it. My paint and clear coat is a little bit shinier than the original stuff. I don't know how old this paint is and if it's single stage or what. It's a little weird to look at. It kind of looks single stage, but I'm not too sure. You can see some runs in it and just some rust peeking through in the corners. It's probably a pretty old paint job, so I knew any kind of new paint on this is going to stand out. But for what it is, it looks pretty good. I touched up a couple scratches on this fender. I'm going to buff that out and make it look better. But for the most part, I'm happy. That was only a couple hours worth of work, and I think it was definitely worth it. It is now time to preserve this rust, patina, fire burnt, crispy marshmallow. Who knows what they actually call this? But we need to preserve it and stop it from rusting anymore. Poppy's Patina sent me out their wipe on clear coat. It's a very easy application. It basically says it on the bottle. You just wipe it on. You can use a gloss finish. They also offer a matte finish if you want to go for that. I'm going for the gloss finish because I think that will match the rest of the car. I'm only going to wipe it on the actual patina areas. The rest of my paint is actually in decent shape, so there's no point to wipe that on the rest of the car. I'm just going to use it on the parts that I really need, which is all this rust. This is not a traditional clear coat. It doesn't yellow or crack or peel like normal automotive clear coats. When you put it over rust or raw materials, it likes to yellow and fade really quickly. This, however, does not do that. This paint is perfect for rat rods, patina vehicles, anything you want to keep the original paint on. You can even use it if your car's clear coat is peeling. If it's like a normal newer vehicle and your clear coat starting to peel up, you can wipe this on and it will look 10 times better. It's not a permanent fix, but it's definitely a cheap alternative and something that you can easily do in your own house. No need for fancy paint guns or a garage or a specific paint booth. All you have to do is prep the surface, wax and grease, remove it, maybe even scuff up the clear coat a little bit. If you're putting it directly on something that's already clear coated, wipe it on and you're done. It locks this patina or rust in the place, so you don't have to worry about it rotting out anymore. I've never used wipe on clear coat before, so you're going to follow me along with it and we're going to see how it works. I think it's going to be really easy because it looks really easy. This stuff self levels. No need for extra masking off. I just put a little bit of tape around my rubber seals. That way I don't get any clear coat on that. But besides that, this is a very easy prep job. Should only take a few minutes to actually do. A bigger cup would be nice, but so I got. And that is a wrap for this episode. Let me know what you think about this wrap I put on the side. I personally think it looks cool. I wish there was a little bit more red in it that we would tie it all together, but I think it looks really cool and it matches the vibe of the car. I unfortunately did not have enough left to finish the driver's side, so I'll finish that when it comes back in. Also did some other custom touches in the interior. I even burnt the back of the vinyl right here to make it look like it matches the rest of the burnt car. I've been doing something on the side that I haven't showed you guys yet. I have actually been rebuilding this other motor I bought. This is a motor I bought that I was going to replace the original one when it didn't run. This was supposed to be a running and driving motor, but it had low compression. So that is what I did. I bought new pistons and cylinders and installed it on there, along with painting the whole thing. And I actually discovered that this is not a 1600cc motor, which I originally thought it was. The guy I bought it from said it was. That is actually a 1776cc, so a little bit bigger motor. You may notice I painted the same color as I panned the original motor to this car, and that is because I'm planning on swapping it out. And the reason for that is a bigger motor. That means it will go faster, right? There's a few extra parts I want to get for that before I throw it back in the car. I need an exhaust for it, along with just some other little things. But this motor is rebuilt and it starts and it runs and it sounds good. It's just a little loud. As for the motor that's currently in the car, I'm going to be taking it out and selling it. I'm going to be using the funds from that sell to fund the inside of the car. I need new carpet. I need new door panels. I want to make this interior look good, have nice carpet, new headliner, the works, get it into daily driver shape. I want to hear all of your opinions on the car as it sits currently. Do you guys like it? Do you hate it? If you have any ideas of what I could change, add, if I should just paint the whole thing and stop wasting time, let me know in the comments section below. Also, I have an Instagram. You guys can check me out there. I post a lot of behind the scenes of current projects or projects I just bought. Things I'm working on that week, you can check me out there if you want to. This paint still needs a cure for another 12 hours or so, and I might add another extra coat because it's a little streaky. Probably my fault. Thank you guys so much for watching and following along in this journey. I love this car so much and I can't wait to drive it. Also, don't forget to like and subscribe down below. It's free to do and it helps me out tremendously. Thank you guys so much. I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.