Rimmed it! - '66 Beetle


 


When your daily drivers are a T4 Bus and a V6 Audi A3, both with big wheels, it stands to reason your idea of the perfect custom Bug is going to incorporate similar thinking


 


“There I was, sitting on the beach in Bude, waiting for the right set of waves, when this fella comes along and we start chatting,” recalls Steve. “Turns out he’s into VWs as well and starts telling me about this Beetle he’s restoring back home.”


A few weeks later, the same thing happens, and Steve and JC – for ’tis the other fella's name – begin a friendship based around their two loves: surfing and Volkswagens. They meet up every once in a while at the beach and Steve gets regular updates on how the Beetle is progressing. Then suddenly it all stops. JC no longer travels down to Cornwall for his surfing fix and Steve no longer gets to hear about his ongoing project.


Then, several years later, a good friend of Steve’s, Rich Churchill, asks if he’d be interested in a Beetle he has for sale. Or parts of a Beetle at any rate. It’s been painted, he explains, but is missing some bits and needs putting together.


Intrigued, Steve goes to look at it. “It was just a painted body on a floorpan at the time,” he told us, “but the bodywork was immaculate and, at the price it was being offered to me for, I couldn’t turn it down.” The story goes Rich had bought it from this surfer dude who had emigrated to Australia. He hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it, but knew if Steve took the project on, he would make a good job of it. 


This was all starting to sound a bit familiar. And Steve’s suspicions were confirmed when he put some pictures of the car on his club’s Facebook page and later received an email from Australia from none other than JC himself, confirming the car he had just bought was indeed the car he’d been telling him about all those years previous. Funny how things work out, eh?


Fired up to complete what JC had started, Steve had to source a lot of new parts as the pile of bits that came with the car weren’t up to the standard of the bodywork. Parts came from all over – a set of wings from Day Mouldings, stainless steel bumpers and trim bits from Machine7, two sets of seats, from which were made one good set, from swapmeets, a built long block found online and a gearbox from Bears Motorsport. Around this time Steve made the acquaintance of Gavin and Kel at Trailer Queen Restos, in Bude, Cornwall, and it didn’t take Steve long to realise that Gavin was the man for painting the rest of the bits to match the Bahama Blue of the bodyshell. 


Further parts for the rebuild came from Spirit of the 50’s – a company Steve couldn’t praise highly enough – who took on the job of fitting a set of their German square-weave carpets, a biscuit mohair headliner and a new outer sunroof cover, while a company more local to Steve, Transcal in Bristol, made a fantastic job of stitching up a new set of leather seat covers to go over the freshly powdercoated frames.


“I could have gone the usual Resto Cal route with the wheels, but I wanted something different,” Steve explained. “I like big wheels, but not gangster-style big, or so big that it raises the car. On a Beetle you can’t really go any bigger than 17s without the wheels starting to look too big, so I ordered a set of 17-inch Escra wheels from GR Wheels in the States and I think they’re just about right.”


The big rims are bolted up to a set of CB Performance wide 5 disc brakes all round – chosen because Steve remembers how bad the drum brakes were on his old Beetle – and he reports they work superbly, hauling the 1914cc-powered car up with no drama.


Other chassis modifications include a CB two-inch narrowed front beam, Bugpack shocks and adjustable rear spring plates, while the built gearbox has a taller fourth gear for better cruising speed.


After reassembling the majority of the car himself at home, the task of fitting the gearbox and engine was handed over to Clive at the Old Dub Shop. “He called me up a day and a half after I took the car and the new engine and gearbox over to him, saying there was a problem and I’d better get down there right away,” Steve remembers. “When I got there, he had a big grin on his face and the car was up and running!” Okay, so people have fitted engines in under a minute in competitions, but Steve had given Clive a long block and a box of bits, so that’s pretty good going by any standards.


 

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