Annas 1950 beetle restoration

The car sat in this field for many years.

Back in 2002 on a whim I bought this 1950 beetle from Mr VW Garden : )

The original plans for the car changed, so the scruffy fully stripped bare beetle shell just sat in my garage quietly waiting. But then after a few years reading a lot of books, doing a lot of research and collecting parts, I decided to embark on it and work began each evening. Well most evenings actually!

Fortunately being from Northern Sweden the car was very solid so I decided not to have any of the body blasted. But it was painted in thick old bright green very hard paint absolutely everywhere! Although I tried everything to recover the original pastel green paint, on the exterior of the car it had long since been removed so there was virtually none to be found under the pea green apart from on the inner wings : (

Repairs required typical of Swedish cars, rear corners/heater channel rear ends, heater channel bottoms thin & holed, lower front bulkhead, battery tray, bumper mount areas, spare wheel well and a few small spots.

Due to the short shock towers on the 1950 beam I flipped the pan and re-attached the beam upside down to enable me to be able to roll the pan in & out so I could zipwheel both sides of the floorpan.

Whilst I am fully capable of cutting, grinding, zipwheeling etc, all of the really clever welding work was done by a very talented man named David Howard : )

I bought 1 top quality heater channel from VWHeritage and 1 later front bulkhead ( both grey panels) we cut these panels up into small repair pieces! in order to use as least new metal as possible but they were useful profile metal. Dave still had to make the curved parts.

I ground the old channel bottom plates until they glowed red hot and peeled away, however hard you try, some of that molten lava will find its way down the neck of your overalls!

I found split wings to replace the dented later ones that came on the car. The split wings needed a lot of repairing to make useable, I had the original 50 bumpers, 16" wheels and all old 50 parts professionally aluminium oxide blasted & zinc primed before Dave repaired them.

Rear mounts removed blasted repaired and inner wings repaired and new plates made up. Lots of small metal filled areas but all 4 quarters/inner wings are original which is a great feeling : )

New heater channel bottom plates from www. wolfparts.com being trial fitted. Top quality metal parts with the correct early pattern pressings & first class service. Also used their front wing headlight bucket conduits and bumper mount repair panels on our other '50.

So now faced with a rock solid but very dented body especially the badly damaged roof I decided that I didnt want a shiny car full of filler or any more metal work on the car than absolutely necessary, so choose to go without filler, keeping all the dents and follow the military route instead. The beauty of starting with a bare shell. Had the car been complete I would have loved to have restored it correctly to stock spec without a second thought. But with so many parts to find why not have some fun for now : )

At this point I chose to give up work to concentrate fully on the car 7days a week & nights for the next 5 months with Bad Camberg as my goal.

Some time at this point I wore all my fingerprints away with days of hand sanding.

With the Nato green on I fitted the car up fully as it was essential that the camo pattern be painted on as if the army were doing it, the pattern flowing across panels etc.

At this point I seriously considered leaving the car green as my 1st compressor sprayed finish had far exceeded my expectations!

I had just 2 small runs to deal with but of course with eggshell paint there is no option of flatting out!

I highly recommend painting a car, I had a lot of fun!

I zipwheeled/handsanded/rust treated all the body underside & repainted. You can see here we 'stitched together' the original valence to get the strength back.

My favorite parts of the car are the dented roof and these dented areas that show the cars life story!

So why the splinter camouflage?

Being a Swedish car I decided to stay with Swedish Army so did a lot of research into Swedish M90 Camouflage pattern. This pattern has stayed the same for more than 30+years and is mostly found on Swedish Tanks & fighter aircraft. However I was surprised when we found a genuine ex-Swedish army Bay crewcab painted in correct Nato green/ M90. I have some of the body panels from this van but the van itself was unfortunately destroyed before we could collect it.

Finding M90 vehicles in the UK is not easy at all and I thought I would have to resort to a trip over to the Swedish tank Museum but then by luck a pair of tanks were gifted to Bovington Tank Museum during 2006 which led to a research trip museum visit 2 days after Christmas 2006!

So the paint was matched up exactly to the Centurion Tank. Base coats in correct Nato green eggshell (cellulose) The colours were mixed up especially for me and I masked the car up and painted the car by hand which took a good 2 weeks of solid days & nights.

Our old 1954 Volvo Sugga armoured car

1 week to go before Camberg and in goes the NOS industrial ex-Swedish Army engine! and NOS split exhaust.

I had made up the wiring loom from the car's original roof section and 2 other 1950 beetle original cloth looms from the pod down to each of the front & rear fuseboxes. I made up new wiring armoured and cloth covered from the fuseboxes down. Using original wiring, but being a woman and certainly no auto electrician! meant that of course the car didnt work!

But then a knight in shining armour appeared by the name of Simon Butland (aka Butty) He made it all work! and soon we were driving in circles around the VW garden! : )

The car passed its first MOT with flying colours! and performed faultlessly during its christening 1000mile round trip to Bad Camberg and back last June 2007! : ) These photo's kindy taken by our friend Jerome Vila of the Vintage VW Club of France & Flat4ever

Interior wise, I fitted a 40's football mirror as I could not find a standard 50 mirror! The speedo pod is too early mid/late 40's but the only standard pod I could find at the time, I now have a 1950 bus pod & speedo to fit to match my 1950 bus hornpush! : )

The full interior seats, panels and glovebox liners are all correct 1950 ribbed cotton unrestored complete with old mouse nests inside the seats! The '55 Huls recliner was already fitted to the '50 drivers seat and the cover is an original vw dealer fitted item. The headliner that I removed from another 1950 shell is original and even still fluffy! I had to carefully repair it before re-fitting. Rudolph the Reindeer on the rear seat was picked up in Sweden. I have'nt fitted carpet because I enjoy the painted interior and the fact that I have no ugly welding to hide anywhere on the car! (Thanks to Dave!)

I painted my deluxe steering wheel black because It was the only part that came in the car when I bought it and I dont want to swap it for a 3 spoke simply because I like it : )

The convoy lights and reflectors are are genuine old Swedish army.

A true luxury has been the ability to use only genuine old and NOS parts, with the exception of the great quality & easy to fit brand new window rubbers from www.BBT4VW.com and a few small items I managed to use no repro parts.

Most of all though I really enjoy driving with the crash gearbox!

The music of love indeed!

What ? you did'nt believe in fairytale endings?

Take Care

Mrs VWgarden aka Mrs herbie ; ) x

We also have this very original 1950 sunroof medium brown beetle that we will be putting back onto the road this year after very minimal stock restoration, in time for Hessisch Oldendorf 2009! See you there!