1965 Sea Blue Bug - Parents bought new in 1964

I will post some pictures soon and thought I would start a thread for the work I do on each VW.
It might be a few weeks between posts as getting time to work on the VW's is difficult at times.

Today I installed the new muffler and have most things back together.
I need to put the tail pipes on and clamp the muffler to the heater box with the clamp things.
Odd thing is the new muffler does not slide all the way to the heater box so the clamp would be effective, but the clamp is not really needed to hold the muffler on.

I am going to put the clamp on the muffler side to try to seal the connection there.

The old muffler had holes in it and was stuck solidly on by rust so I had to sawzill it off from the heater boxes on both sides and then use pliers to pull the stuck bits of the old muffler off of the heater box tube.

Sad part is I worked on the Bug for about 3 hours and now I feel like I did a major workout and still have body pains even after I applied some self medication (the good stuff), haha. I am old.

65VW wrote:

... I worked on the Bug for about 3 hours and now I feel like I did a major workout and still have body pains even after I applied some self medication (the good stuff)...

I totally get your point! :lol:
Good luck with your sealing efforts.
At the worst you may have to extend the exhaust pipes a bit...

Man, those mufflers really bond to the box outlets. I don't think I've ever managed to get one that just came off. It always required gratuitous acts of power tool violence.

I was once told by a really angry guy in a smokey the bear hat that pain was fear leaving the body but at our ages, I think pain is mobility leaving it. My wife calls me Mr. Magoo due to my post-activity shuffle and imbalance.

I am psycing myself up to finish all the easy parts that are left but even 3 cups of coffee has not done the job yet.
But the day is not over!

It makes me feel good knowing the more difficult parts are done and if it was not for my "might as well kick back today and relax since I need to go to work tomorrow" attitude I would make much better progress on all my projects.

I really want to take the seat covers off this Bug's seats to expose the original seat covers underneath and also sew the originals up a bit where the seams are split. But I made myself do the muffler first so I could drive it again before I mess with the seats.

.

When we were performing some archaeological exploration on Zippy's seats, I was so excited to see some old red material fastened with hog rings but they had cut everything off just a bit further up, I guess they just didn't feel like prying the hog rings open.

That would have been nice to find original Red seats still on under the aftermarket covers.

I did finish the muffler install and the Bug drives a little better and much quieter.

It only slowly crept up to 50mph on a long 25mph road on the test drive so I think I need to give it a tune up to get the zippyness back.

My front brakes with new slave cylinders and fresh fluid seem to have a "bump" when I press the break peddle.
I start to press and feel slight resistance, like snapping your fingers right before you do the snap, then as I push the brake past the slight resistance it loosens up a bit and from there works perfectly.
It just has that initial bit of resistance.

The only part I have not replaced is the short rubber lines that bring the fluid to the brakes.
Would a faulty line cause this?

The new slave cyls were installed last year due to the old ones rusting inside and not releasing after a brake press (solved now for the most part). I did remove all the old brake fluid and replaced it with new at the same time.

65VW wrote:

Would a faulty line cause this?

Old flex lines can cause a few different issues. Basically, the inner diameter begins to narrow, due to hardening, contaminates, etc. A popular issue is the fluid not returning to the MC, causing the brake to refuse to relax after letting off the pedal. Although I've not heard of it causing the issue you're describing, I can't rule it out. As a general rule, I always replace the flex lines during an overhaul. It's cheap insurance.

What you describe to me sounds like something might be under a bind that you're getting past when it relaxes. Maybe take another gander under the drums and see if anything is out of place, like a spring or shoe, causing the fit to the slave cylinder to be out of true or offset.