'70 Volksrod

[180roman]

Nice work dude, love builds that have custom fabrication, as it makes the build totally unique and not just a bunch of parts put together.

BTW are you welding with no mask in one of the photos?

[ChuckNDicks]

Its a slow day so far and I'm waiting for my appointments for the day... so here's a little more info about the car:



This is how she sat for at least the last 2 years. Neglected and maybe about 1/3 finished.

I spent a good 100 hours on the chassis when I was "working" at a VW shop in the area. In all actuality, I was hanging out there and working on my own shit here and there. Every now and then I would work on a couple customer cars and make a few extra bucks. But at the time I had on on-call job and I didn't have to actually work on cars to pay bills. I kind of miss those days a little.

I did one restoration that involved about 100 hours of welding and rust repair and I decided I needed to build a heavily modified car. I always wanted to, but I always wondered if i could actually pull it off. I'd done a shit ton of mechanic work, built motors, and carb set-ups, shaved bays, done a billion suspension mods, built exhausts, and all that nonsense, but I'd never cut a car in half and then tried to put it back together.

I got my boss to give me a beetle. For free.

He had picked it up for $200 bucks and we imediately sold the motor out of it for $400, and it was stuffed with NOS parts in boxes; so we promptly installed them all on a restoration finish up on a Karmann Ghia. Since he had more than doubled his investment at this point I talked him into giving me the body so i could chop it up.



I got a chassis from a customer car that had been abandoned for a good 3 years, and the customer had no interest in keeping it, so we filed on the title, and I got the chassis. The rag top section also came from the same car.

I started the roof chop first, and got it tacked together and then took the body off and started on the chassis.



I had to swap the bulkheads where the beam mounts up because I had bought a beam extension for a ball joint front end, and the chassis I ended up with was a king pin front end (the kingpin chassis was just in far better shape overall).



This beam extension is one of the few pieces that I bought and didn't try and make myself. For $200 it was well worth the time and headache saved. Not to mention the guy that makes these has made a bunch of them and has pretty much worked out all of the kinks.

After the bulkhead was swapped I cleaned up the chassis top and bottom and sprayed it with chassis paint. You can also see that I added some bracing to the bulkhead. Some guys build a whole cage for the thing, saying that the beam extension puts "SSSOOOOOOO MUCH extra stress on the front end due to leverage". Maybe. But I'm not racing the thing, or taking it off any jumps, and honestly, any extra leverage I feel is negated by the fact that the car now weighs half of what it did as a stock beetle.





This is where sh*t starts to get fun.

In order to run the around 30" tires I wanted to on the rear, I needed to drastically change where the suspension sat. The easiest thing to do is to cut the rear of the chassis off and just move it up. I've seen it done a few ways, and for the raise I needed this seemed to be the easiest and most obvious solution:



Just sit that f*cker right on top of the tunnel. Now, the only real way this is possible is to have two chassis to cut up. So, the rear on top of the tunnel is from the original 1970 chassis that I scrapped. After I measured every possible way I could imagine to try and make sure the rear was straight, I welded it on. And then I added some 1/8" plate steel and welded some more.



I also put it up on the lift to see if it would fall apart. And then I added some more bracing. Just because.



I then rolled it outside and put some 8" wide widened stock steelies with 235/75 15 tires on the back to see what it would look like.



Not too bad. A little high, but the pan is a lot lower to the ground now, which is perfect!

I started fishing off the tunnel raise. modifying the clutch and throttle tubes to run through the raised rear section and also adding height to the tunnel so the shift rod could lay level and everything would work as it should.







Next it was time to plop the body back on and see what we had going on.



It looked like ass.

The body is too tall. WWAAYY too tall. It looks stupid. Never mind the chassis sitting way off the ground even though the body is dropped 5" front and 7" rear (factoring in the tire size in the rear, the rear is actually only lowered about 4.5").

I got out the measuring tape and the sawzall. about an hour later:



4" gone from the body. A lot better. Way less boat looking, and honestly, I would have gone 6", but at 4" my feet already barely fit in the front of the thing, and I'm not trying to have to lay down to drive the car. It is already going to be uncomfortable. I'm not trying to make it miserable.

Oh, here she is from behind after the section:



That pretty much gets us caught up to about 3 months ago when I started working on this thing again.

Since then, the heater channels got sorted, the roof and body section were finished off completely, suspension lowered, motor sourced, wiring installed, seats made, inner fenders built, package tray bracing built, rear window put in, etc, etc.

Here's a little photo history of the last 3 months:

































That is pretty much it. There is a lot of early work that I lost pictures of when I destroyed a couple phones. And my lack of a personal computer and a DSLR makes it real hard to take good pictures of what I am doing now. Not to mention I usually just roll really hard when I work on stuff and forget to photo document anything in-progress.

For more pictures of the build and if you want to keep up with it and other work I'm doing you can search me on Instagram and check shit out (user name: "tradedfortheghost"). I usually upload a lot of work to that and use it more as a day to day work blog for the time being till the shop gets its web page up and running.

Cheers.

[ChuckNDicks]

Nice work dude, love builds that have custom fabrication, as it makes the build totally unique and not just a bunch of parts put together.

BTW are you welding with no mask in one of the photos?

Yeah, I'm welding without a mask. I found its a really good way to tan my face.

In all seriousness, I do that a lot more frequently than I should when I'm tacking things together. Especially when I need to squeeze something together or hold something in a very specific place. I just turn my head real quick and give it the ol OSHA safety squint while laying down a quick zap with the welder.

Its not a good habit to form, and I don't recommend it, I only do it on real low heat setting and I never lay a bead or do more than a couple quick tacks without a mask.

[rab71]

1) you make this hsit look easy... (mad skillz)

2) I hope you're a short mofo as that is one low roof line...

[MommysLittleMonster]

Incredibly badass. Hot rodding in it's purest form.

Keep it the fuck up.

[aLaFleur]

This is sick. Makes me want to build one really bad now... Thanks a lot.

[los02]

This is unique! I like it. Surprised there isn't a "slammed" chassis pre-made for these already. I look forward to seeing more progress done in this! I wish I could weld!

[98z24ragtop]

Holy awesomeness, Batman! Can't wait to see more of this thing, gonna be totally badass!

[Edgar.]

Why leave it w/o door windows?

<---- Nice.

[Dwob]

^becauseracekar

[ChuckNDicks]

1) you make this hsit look easy... (mad skillz)

2) I hope you're a short mofo as that is one low roof line...

I'm 6' and 175lbs. The seating position is what one might call "layed back", Haha.

This is unique! I like it. Surprised there isn't a "slammed" chassis pre-made for these already. I look forward to seeing more progress done in this! I wish I could weld!

Usually all you have to do to slam them is turn the rear torsions and put beam adjusters in the front. Its really easy to lower a bug. The only reason I had to do all the work in the rear is because I want to run tires that are 6" taller than stock and I don't want the rear wheels to camber like crazy.

Why leave it w/o door windows?

<---- Nice.

The car is under 40" tall, and your concern is why I don't have door windows? Haha.

Its not suppose to be practical, it's a rat rod.

[keeton]

Sick...I kinda like that you are leaving the rear window stock size. Ha

[Nick crx]

well........... fuck this is awesome.

[ChuckNDicks]

This is sick. Makes me want to build one really bad now... Thanks a lot.

A lot of people that build them do so because it's a really low budget way to get into hot rodding. A lot of people also bitch out on doing chops and just take off the fenders and throw on a beam extension and call it a volksrod.

You should build one. It is a real good time, and if you don't do huge rear tires or a tunnel raise you can build one pretty quickly. here are also a few different ways to do the roof chops depending on how low you wan the roof to be. Some of them are simple enough to pull off in a couple hours.

well........... fuck this is awesome.

Thanks man!

[keenan]

amazing