Plain Old Cars: 1967 Volkswagen Beetle

Hello again. This is my other Volkswagen. This is a 1967. I bought this one about three years ago and the reason I bought this one three years ago was because I've been trying to find the car that we had. My wife and I going to college and this is the same car. A java green 67 bug. It's one of my favorites. I love it because of the color and my wife was an art teacher a former art teacher that she fell in love with it just because of that. This is the car that my son was born in and he we had this uh 67 green bug just like this one um back in 1970 19 uh from about 19 I want to say 1969 up until about 1983 and uh it was we just loved the car we used it going everywhere we had it with our do everything car in we hauled hay in the back of it and it was exactly the same car the same color interior everything and so for years I tried to find one and it took me a long time to find a java green um and uh the wheels are original they're running road on the other side is original this one has been replaced this running board uh but there's no rust in the floor pan which is pretty common with the car of this vintage it's hard to find them anymore that don't have rust in the pan and this one does not so we've done the whole interior I've taken the original engine out the engine is the uh the engine is the original engine and uh I had it I pulled it out to reseal it and I had a a friend in a shop that I didn't did not want the engine rebuilt all I did I wanted to get it resealed because it's got great compression it runs good it's got good very good power the fuel economy is still outstanding and uh everything works right but it leaked badly through the push rod tube seals when I bought it and uh which is pretty common and it had uh you know the uh the axle boots were leaking and so when I pulled the engine out I just went ahead and replaced the axle boots the carburetor is the original uh 30 p1 ct uh dash one carburetor and uh that has not been just rebuilt it's been totally refurbished so it's been remachined it's got new bushings in the for the uh the throttle shaft throttle shaft bushings been replaced so it doesn't leak gasoline anymore and that's why this is a that's a pretty major deal just to get that carburetor original to work like it's supposed to so I didn't want to buy an aftermarket one uh that's the original you know solex carb so and this has the this is this is the original bumper for the rear just got the slants for the overriders and uh but it's not it is original so it's not perfect and I left it on there because I wanted a car that is not a show car I don't want to show a car because if I've already had the show cars and if I have a show car I won't drive it and this one I wanted to drive it and it's just fun to drive and that's what makes the Volkswagen so much fun especially nowadays it's very engaging to just take this and drive it the interior has all been redone it's got the original style floor mats and if you see the headliner and that is that takes a little bit of tricky uh I can do the uh the seat covers and so on myself but I just had the fellow in town do the seat covers while he had the headliner out because they had to match the door panels and so on and so everything on it is new the the radio is the original sapphire 5 radio that's a vw radio but it's am just an am radio it does not work I've got another one that I'm going to put in eventually that does you know that does function and everything else works fine on the car and the trunk has been uh mostly I wanted the car to be all original and it is and I just replaced the uh the the uh the cover for the uh the dash cover here uh that's that's just a new from Wolfsburg West and so is the liner and this is the original tool kit that came with the car it's still there and everything else is really nice shape so it's not the original gas cap that's an after that's a different later style but it works and the gas caps they can end up leaking and you get the smell inside if you don't have them sealed properly so that's why I put a this is the way you would buy it from a dealer back in 1967 and it still got the original seat belt retractors and these are pretty iffy I you know they need to be rebuilt oftentimes and they were for 67 and 68 only so otherwise the seat and what's nice about it is that you know under the battery the battery tray is in good shape so it doesn't you know there's no holes or anything there which is pretty typical with a bug of this era and uh one thing you notice about the 67s is that they are uh much more uh they they're much more engaging to drive in modern traffic especially you know when you compare it to an earlier bug like my other one the 1960 that's got the 36 horse engine and uh totally different it's still it's still really fun to drive but it's not going to keep up with traffic by any means and certainly going up hills and whatnot whereas this one actually will and uh right now this is uh it's November what 12th something like that and it's cold right now it's about probably I want to say 39 degrees or so 38 degrees something like that and uh the heat's on the heat's on on this car and the thing about it is that it does not smell there's no exhaust smell it's very common with the that when you have the heat on whether it's in a 40 horse engine or 30 they're going to get exhaust smell through these but in this car you have the smell yeah it pulls to get the uh radio working but the wipers was much better than the earlier bugs which uh had a real problem with rolling the earlier like oval window bugs in the early 60s they were notorious for uh for rolling over and it settles down really well so it actually cheap Porsche when I was a kid you can go with 60 or 70