Watch the video to see Sam's progess on this 1967 VW Beetle.

Follow along as Sam goes over installing all the components back into an empty 1967 VW Beetle door. Starting with the door latches and window regulator and ending with all new scrapers and seals and TMI's brand new Premium door panels. In between, all the scrapers, felt channels, and vent window seals are replaced as well. Sam is "this close" to having this '67 Sunroof Beetle ready to go.

Video Transcript

Back to work. Down to the wire.

Yesterday I posted the question on a quick YouTube shorts, whether or not I should replace all these felts and scrapers. 90% of you guys said yes replace all these seals. So I'm going to go ahead and rip out this scraper which is pretty much already out. I'm going to finish pulling out these felt channels, save the clips, finish tearing down both the doors. And then I'll start putting everything back together.

I've got the window regulators all cleaned up, oiled up. They work smoothly.

Over here I've got our latches all cleaned up, oiled up, and greased for, I'm probably guessing, the first time in their lives. Now everything works on nice and smooth on these guys. After everything's torn down, cleaned out I'll put the latches back in, the regulators back in, and I'll start putting all the new seals back in.

I'm not going to bring you guys along for the tear down. Although it's pretty much already done. But I'll set things up and kind of explain things as I start putting together, possibly on this door maybe on the other door based on how much room I have here and what goes on. But I'll bring you guys along for at least one of the doors so you can see how everything goes together.

All right I'm going to do my darn just to stay out of the shot so you guys can see what's going on. This door is basically an empty shell, everything down to the felt channel brace. There's nothing in this door. It's all vacuumed, all cleaned out.

I'm going to start by installing our door latch mechanism and that guy comes back up and over and will sit there, but it's a lot easier to attach our push rod here while it's still out. We'll get our push rod, or our pull rod really, get this flipped around so it actually does its job. There we go. There we go. And make sure that that clip is in place. There we go. Gonna put a screw in here and here and one right there.

And just so that doesn't go missing again.

And we have some remnants of an old lock collar.

While everything's still out I'm going to install our door handle and test our key. And truthfully it's seen better days too but. I think our spring inside is broken, but it's a 1967. It's one year only. What you going to do? I'm going to lube it up with some PB Blaster and we'll give it a shot.

Everything appears to work as it should, Next step, I'm going to throw the regulator in because the window regulator has to go in behind the vent wing brace.

It actually has to be in place on this side of the door. And with the vent wing assembly in place you couldn't actually slide it in place. That's why we had to pull the vent wing assembly out.

This thing was scratched all to heck by this old outside scraper and it's actually on the outside. But I'm not too concerned. Once, say if we ever restore this car fully, I'll deal with it then. In the meantime, in between time, not a big deal.

Now we got our felt channel brace. There's a little clip right here. It clips up at the back side of this door. I'll show you here in a moment. There we go. You got to feed it up behind the latch and in between the door handle and then it clips in place just like that. And then we can bolt it in place in the bottom here.

From this point here, now I can put my outside scraper in place. We've got the rubber itself is riveted to the aluminum. These clips will clip into the door. Earlier Volkswagen used one, two, three, four, five, six, seven clips. You can actually see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven clip slots. ‘65 through ‘68 they used all seven. They later realized that hey we only need four so they only put four in the later ones. These are still made in Germany today. This is where we get them. Made in Germany. We still import these from Germany today.

We'll get this guy set in place. And a certain amount of tweaking is going to be required on these things. You've got to install all this into the door and then this has to be bent down in place. There we go.

This is awfully fun on a car where you care about the paint. Try not to scratch everything in place. So in here I'm going to line up my clips. I think I can bring you guys in for a closer look.

Hopefully you guys can see down in here where I'm going to line up this clip, this clip, this clip, and this one over here that you can't see off camera. I'm going to line those up and press those in. And our nice wedge tool works well for those.

So I've already got that guy pressed in. That guy's in. These two are lined up, but not pressed in. A lot of times you can just use your fingers. And I thought that guy was pressed in, but apparently he wasn't. Lined up, there we are. And that's all good to go. Scraper is going to sit right there. That one like so. And then this guy will get formed into the shape up here.

And then we'll install our felt channel clips in the back edges and along the top edge to hold that scraper in place.

You see there's a hole here and a hole here. We're going to take our clip, that's what going to hold the scraper in place into the door. And then the felt channel will clip into that. We've already got one on the brace down there. We've got one here. We'll put one more here and then one, two, three across the top like that.

Now we got our scraper pressed into place. There will be some forming needed, especially in the corners. And actually you can see got a little bit of a gap right there. Persuade it into place.

Now I can worry about getting this felt channel in place. And once that's in place the next piece to go in is the vent wing assembly. Which means I got to build, or rebuild, our vent wings.

And felt channels are pretty basic. And honestly I don't really want to put this in until I know exactly where my vent wing frame is going to be. I'm just going to slide this in. So realistically until I get this vent assembly in place, I don't even want to put that in. So the next piece, after the scraper and you can leave your felt to hang out, is going to be the vent wing. So I got to get over to the bench and start rebuilding those.

All right, hopefully the wider view will get you guys a better view of what I'm going to do. And you can see that this rubber isn't rubber anymore. This seal I already did pull out and replace pops out and pops in. Pull that out for now. Because this seal was already missing over here the vent flap seal I put a new piece in place here.

You tuck it in the back edge and then you push this front edge in until it's nice and flat all across the back edge. That's how you know it's in place properly. But the hard part on doing the vent frame seal is you have to drill out this rivet and then you can loosen this pivot and pull this glass out so that you can replace this seal in here. I'm going to get to doing that real quick.

Trying to drill out the bottom side where the rivet is rolled over to the point where I can scrape it off. And then I can take a hammer and punch and punch the rivet out that way. Side cutters, there we go. Now I've got that rivet popped out try and get it out the rest of the way like that. Pry out what's left of our old rubber. Usually the hardest part of this job is getting the new rubber in, not getting the old rubber out.

And now we've got our new vent wing seal. And a couple things to note, obviously we've got the bottom hole and that lines up over the top of this plastic guide right here that slides. Another note point is this groove up here is cut for our upper pivot. And those are the two major set points. From there everything else just has to go into place. And you can see on the back side of this vent wing seal basically the entire distance, from top to bottom, both of these lips need to get pressed into this groove down here. And until they are, and this seal sits more or less flat across the bottom. Once that seal sits flat across the bottom you know basically how it is out of the mold. That means it's actually in place. Until it sits flat it's not in place.

This is probably the most time consuming part about doing the seals on the doors. It just takes patience and perseverance. Easiest thing to do usually is just get one side set in place into that groove. Make sure that our plastic guide is lined up.

So we've got our seal in all the way around. And note it sits basically in the exact same shape in the assembly as it did out of the assembly. That way we know that both this lip here and this lip on this side are now down in this channel. And you can actually look through this little sight window right here and, or the back holes, and see that our rubber is in place on both sides.

Easiest way to get that seal into place is actually put the seal, or put the side with the large flap. And it's going to alternate because it goes from here to here and then back to here. But put this edge in first and then just come back in and push this in place with a pry tool or otherwise. Makes life a lot easier.

Now I'm going to make sure that our upright seal is properly in place there and there. That's good there, inner and outer. Now I can go ahead and install our vent wing window and our rivet. And that's good to go.

Now this is the most difficult part, getting our new rivet through there. And we've got a little fiber washer is basically just a little bushing for in between these two. Now the fun part is holding this in place and then beating that rivet down to compress everything.

Going to try to set everything up on the bench vice. And hopefully I've got the appropriate punch.

This is kind of a fun balancing act. A third hand would be handy but. A little of that, I'll try it like this. And get it rolled over and then tap down. Not a whole lot of wiggle and everything pivots. And with that seal in place as it should be the vent wing window opens and closes smoothly.

And that's how we sent the tension on our vent window. Now we go put this in the car and get the rest of that door assembled.

That bolt’s gonna bolt in there. Then we got the one screw at the top. Hand head. Place there, good, good. Good, good. There we go. Now we can put our long felt channel. Butt it up. Can be a little bit closer than that. And put this right in there. Let's keep that guy out. And then down in here. Just like that. And anytime time we've got new rubber and glass, little shot of silicone. That will just help the glass slide in place. Now the fun part is to get our glass, beautiful. And get our window crank. We're looking pretty good. All right now we got to put the inside scraper in.

This is usually a lot easier if the window’s disconnected. So, I'm going to do that real quick. And same thing we'll give it a preemptive shot of silicone. And good. There looks good. There looks good.

Got one started. Where did my wedge go? Where the heck did it go? Oh you know where I left it. I left it up on the roof.

Put that rubber there. Everything's in place there. Put our window back in one more time and give her a shot.

All right, reattach.

Sure, why not. Like a glove.

Awesome.

Now before I put this in place, I'm going to get a piece of fabric and tuck it around here. Keep that from rattling around. That'll just keep that from rattling.

This door is ready for a door panel realistically. In the meantime I'm going to go put a door seal in and I'm going to go build that door. But anyway, that's how you build a door. It's done. I'm okay with all that.

We've got our door seals in. I put on a vapor barrier and it's not glued or stuck or anything else in here. It's just held in place with our door panel clip seals, poked in crudely cut. But this will do a good job of keeping 90% of the water, if not more, that runs through this door. Because water will run through your door even with all the new seals and scrapers. Water's going to run through here. There's drain holes in the bottom. That's the way it's designed. This is just literally held in place by our door panel clip seals. And this plastic was actually the plastic that our outside scrapers came in. Nothing fancy, it's just a piece of plastic sheeting. I've got a slot for the armrest bracket. Got a hole for the window crank. Got a hole for the door release lever. This is all ready to go.

And honestly at this point, there's no harm in just not putting on the rear quarter panels and the door panels. So I'm going to just throw them in real quick. One less thing to do later.

These are going to be the first time that these are seen by the general public, to the best of my knowledge anyway. This is a new series of door panel from TMI. It's more of a professional, or premium, panel. Something might actually see, or get done, at an upholstery shop. We got a French seam here. We've got some vertical stitching here. Still have a original style pocket. We've got some sewn seams down here.

I did have to cut the holes for our window crank and our door release lever. And because this fits ‘67 all the way through ’79, there's three different armrests that fits. ’68-‘73, ‘73 to 7’9, and then the ‘67s are these holes right here. And you can always just verify that with your armrest. The only place that's going to fit is in those two holes so we'll punch those guys out.

All right, that'll sit something like that. But now I've got to get some hardware, bolt on my bracket, and then we can continue on the installation.

And that should be about ready to go in. Bend over at the top and we'll try to get that armrest bracket caught. There we go. And from here we can make some final adjustments. I just use a pair of needle nose.

And just like that, our new TMI, we're just going to call it premium series for now, door panel. We've got one installed. Now we'll install our cover plate. There we go. Good to go. My least favorite part, early window cranks are a pain. You got to push this little pin through this crank. And when everything's brand new it's ever so easy. All done.

Ideally that would have been black, but they're on back order. But yeah, that's what we've got as far as an interior go. This is the I think they call this distressed brown. So this is vinyl, but it's made in a process that makes it look aged and makes it actually feel really, really soft. Very, very natural and leather like. Color is definitely not what I would have gone for with this car, but the material itself looks great. I love the pattern, just not a fan of the color. But this is what TMI wanted to use so this is what we got.

I'm going to put the rear quarter panel in on this side and the rear quarter panel in on that side. And then I'm going to do the door panel up front on that side. And then it's sunroof time. So I'm going to get to work on that. Catch you guys in a bit.

So with that, short of some seat upholstery for the front and rear, that's it. That's our interior. We've got our doors completely assembled. Regulators work, release levers work, armrests well they work, door locks, handles, everything works. We're getting closer to the end.

Next I've got to see what I can do on getting together all the pieces for a sunroof. I don't have much left with this current unit. We do have a couple of cars out in the lot that have sunroofs. Hopefully I can salvage a lot of the missing pieces from them for the use on this car. And other than that, once the sun roof's done I'll get the upholstery done. Put that in. Other than a quick to the motor vehicle division out here to get registration and insurance. You know, those minor things. We're done.

It's November 1st and we're almost there. Basically the home stretch now. Making sure I got a nice seat to sit in and make sure that if it rains I don't get water on the interior.

In the meantime, catch you guys in the next video. And the world's full of good people. Can't find one, be one. Later guys.

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