Watch as Sam finally takes this 1967 VW Beetle for its first drive.

In this video Sam finishes up a few things. He welds in a battery brace and some heater cable tubes before sealing them to the tunnel. Then he re-installs the pedal assembly, steering wheel, seat, and a BlazeCut fire suppression system. And finally, he is able to take this car for its first drive in who knows how long!

Video Transcript

I'm going to try and take this thing for a drive around the building.

Now that my pans are in I still have a little bit more welding to do. I need to weld in a battery brace on this right side floor pan. I also need to remake the heater cable tubes that go from the tunnel out to the heater ducts. Not that I actually the heater ducts in place currently, but hopefully I can source those somewhere or take them from a car that's out in the parking lot. Either way, that way I can get the rear footwell vents opening and closing like they should. I'll also be installing an inspection cover plate on that side of the tunnel where I cut a big hole in the place. I'll be putting in the pedal assembly and a steering wheel and a seat. And then maybe I'll put some fuel in the tank. See if I can go for a drive today. It's a lot to do today, but we'll see how it goes.

Unfortunately heavy duty floor pans don't come with a battery brace, but they do come with a cross brace which I don't use. So, what I'm going to do is cut down this section and turn this into a battery brace.

Let's compare that to the original bracket. I'd say that's uh pretty darn close. And it's 7 inches from this edge to this edge. So I will do the same thing on the floor pan. And then we can come through and weld in our heater cable tube flappy flap thing right on top of the back of that. Just like so.

Also, just take a bolt and weld that there.

It may not come with the battery brace, but I mean it kind of does. And then you just got to weld a bolt in the back. Now we've got a place for our battery to sit safely. Now we can worry about getting a tube from there to there.

So, I just picked up a flared brake line. This is about 12 bucks at the local auto parts store. I'll cut it here and then about here so we'll have two flared ends. So we can use that to replace the old heater cable tube lines.

Well, I figured there's no sense in vacuuming if I'm just going to make a bunch of metal shavings on the ground when I put this inspection kit in place. So figure I'd do that before I do much more clean up.

Good to go.

Now let's do some vacuuming. Then we'll do some corrosealing. And then we'll do some polyurethane flashing sealing. And then we're one step closer peoples. I got to get a vacuum.

All right, I'm going to be smarter this time and I'm going to put on some gloves before I go through and do some more corroseal underneath where I welded on both sides, on top. And then I can go through and I can start doing the seam sealer.

All right while that's doing its thing, I'm going to replace these broken cables. A lot easier to do it now than it will be later.

All right, word do the wise, clean that line out before you put that tube in. Ready, set, boop. Right there and right there. Some running board washers as spacers for our handle. Open and close. Awesome.

I'm just using some Loctite polyurethane roof and flashing chimneys joints and shingles sealant. High UV resistance, water resistance, flexible and durable. Made specifically for flashing which is all just metal sheets on a roof. So metal sheet to a tunnel, this stuff works really well.

All right, so all the way back, all the way along the tunnel, all the way to the front, all the way out on both sides our seams are sealed. So with that, I can put my brake line in place. And I can put my ground in. I can put my battery cable grommet in place. Put our pedal assembly in place. Adjust the clutch cable way back underneath there. Make sure the clutch feels proper which hopefully it should now. And, put on a steering wheel. Put in a seat. Put some gas in the tank and maybe go for a spin.

Persuader, persuader’s assistant.

Time to put the pedal assembly in. Which means I got to get it pulled out of the parts washer and scrubbed off a little bit. Might corroseal that too. I got work to do.

All right, while I'm waiting for the pedal assembly to dry I might as well pre-install the pedal stop to keep the pedals from falling all the way that way. Might as well work on our battery cable too.

The silliest of cones really helps on those usually. That's that. I really think this grommet’s seen better did days, but I think she's still got a little life left in her. Here we go.

That works out well and then we can put our shoe in the back.

There we go. Hey, dome light’s on. That can hang out there. We do have a circuit breaker, so if I just need to disconnect the battery I can touch that as opposed to reaching back here and running off a ground cable.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is Blazecut and what it is is a fire extinguisher in a tube. And if your engine ever got hot enough to set on fire to melt a piece of plastic. Well, it would melt this plastic and this would evacuate the fire. It's basically like Halon, but not Halon. This is modern Halon. Yeah I was hoping to be able to slide that through there, but apparently not.

All right, perfect. Like that, like that, over the top of that, over the top of that. Apparently this thing would hit a guy with glasses. You know what, I see another solution. I can come in right here another clip and hold this in place to that deck. Nice. That's using your noggin. After you got hit in it a couple times. Awesome, now we're protected from fire.

And before anybody asks, this is designed to be used in an engine compartment. No, this engine compartment does not get hot enough to melt this tube and set this off. So don't ask, it's good.

All right before I go much further, let's throw a little protector down on here. I'm glad I took a look at this pedal assembly closer. This bolt was holding the clutch pedal in place through the shaft. So I was like all right, well I've seen stranger. So I decided to tighten that nut onto it and that bolt broke into three pieces. So, I replaced the clutch pedal pin while I was at it I knocked the petals off and greased them all up so everything's nice and smooth.

Grease our brake pedal push rod and the pin where it rides. Get those guys up into place. Get that spring into place. That's good. And that's the pedal assembly in place, short of the clutch pedal which is easy to do because we've got an access hole on the other side.

Seat’s in. Steering wheel’s in. In hindsight, I probably should have put a light coat of grease on the seat rails, but that's what they invented hammers for. Give it a whirl.

I do have the parking brake on. Release point for the clutch is just off the floor. Let’s tighten that up a little bit more. Once I do that I can put the car down on the ground and then back it out under its own power, safely with brakes. Oh, I probably don't need that light on the roof.

I'm going to try and take this thing for a drive around the building.

I got the GoPro on the side and other people to film, but.

Gonna adjust my mirror a little bit. There we go. I need to adjust that one too, but we'll get there.

I need to put a spring in that accelerator cable.

She's alive!

Good brakes too.

That wasn't neutral.

So guess what, we have a running, driving, stopping car. That's awesome. Now it's kind of just a mad dash to get everything else done that I want to get done. It's Friday October, 20^th. We're, I mean work days wise, 5 days next week, 5 days the week following, and 5 days the week following that. I think that will put us into driving to the show. So, 15 work days. Honestly, I only get about four to six hours of work done, you know, any given day. Between actually doing, you know, regular work and then editing these videos, so let's call it, if I get lucky to get 15 days times five hours a day, that's 45 hours worth of work.

I have a lot of things that I want to get done. I've got new door panels and upholstery that TMI sent us to be debuted with this car. Oddly enough the color combination doesn't quite fit, but it feels great. And in a different car it would look great, but with this car it is what it is.

I need to get these window regulators working. As seen in the video, obviously the sunroof needs some work because I forgot that it's not actually attached and it just went… and slid closed. I don't know if I'm going to have enough time to fix that hole in the dash. We'll see how it goes.

Obviously I need to get bumpers on the car. New window seals because I can see daylight through here. We'll be putting new seals front and rear. The pop out side window seals I'll probably just leave alone. I might put some snap-on trim on those to trim out the opening, but maybe not.

I really don't like the hollow sound so I might put in some floor tar boards and some floor mats of some sort. Whether it be stock or the, you know, universal all-weather rubber mats, I might set those in here just to have some sort of sound deadening and take away that tin can effect.

We need some door seals too.

Oh also, one more thing you may have noticed that this shifter is awfully vague. Looking back to the shift coupler, that might just be a worn shifter. Actually, we got a lot of back and forth on that so I'll probably have to replace that shift coupler to make that a little bit more positive. And I don't like this shifter anyway so I am going to replace this shifter. That knob just not very comfortable.

And I might do some tarboard on top of the tunnel to replace this segment that I cut off. I might put some tar boards or sound deadening or insulation kind of in place of the old stuff that we had to take out back there.

The roof, we'll probably just leave open and hollow.

Oh, I'm going to need some seat belts too. Mount some seat belts in there.

And I got a lot of cleanup to do cause my bench is a big old mess. So yeah, I mean it's not really a whole lot to do, but there's still a lot to do. But at least we got a running, driving car. How cool is that.

Anyway, that'll do it for this video. Next week I'm gonna do more stuff. We'll see what that stuff is. Maybe I'll get that window regulator working. Until then guys, later.

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