Current restoration work: '54 Oval-Beetle Sliding-Ragtop, '59 Beetle Sedan, '60-'59 KG Cabrio, '60 KG Coupe '63 Notchback, '64 KG Cabrio '64 Notchback, '65 Beetle Sedan, '65 13-Window Bus, '66 21-Window Bus, '69 KG Cabrio, '70 Bus, '71 Bus, '71 KG Cabrio, '74 412, '74 1303 Cabrio, '74 1303 Sedan,
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" Baby " ~ 1974 Type 4, 412 ~ |
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Project delivery of this reVOLKS restoration. As production numbers were not high for the Type 4's in general, replacement parts are difficult to find.... What is an avid T4 fan to do? Well, the owners of this 412, decided the best thing would be to find a doner vehicle for the restoration, rather than wait years while parts sourcing went on. Would you believe the owners actually found an exact duplicate of this one? Yes! It's true! 'Baby' turned out to be a twin! :)
'Baby', is a full restoration project including body, paint, interior and engine. The 412 was the very first unibody Vdub ever produced. Thus, no body-off-pan restoration. The front fenders are in great shape, but still need a little metal replacement which considering how old Baby is, is not that bad at all. The owners had originally planned to restore 'Baby' back to stock form and color - Gold metalic but later into the project decided to change to green. The original engine had been modified a little to use a progressive carburetor and this will remained. |
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In these photos you see the all the original glass and rubber seals being removed. This is probably
the hardest part of restoring a Type 4 because neither the glass, nor the seals are available. Even though
we had three people working to remove the windshield a tiny hairline crack in the upper right corner spider-webbed out
to the middle. Can you say "Arrrrgh!"?. Fortunately, every other glass was removed without problem, even though the
rubber seals were hard as rock and not forgiving at all. The the body pics here, you see the removal of the rear fenders and some spot sanding of areas that are problematic. This T4 had been repainted in it previous life and unfortunately, the prep-work done prior to painting was a little less than ideal, yeilding many tiny spots throughout the body where the "new" paint began to peel, chip or flake. So it makes for a rather spotty appearance at this point. Eventually the whole body will have to be stripped of this prior paint job so we can get down to a secured layer capable of holding fresh primer and paint. It is intersting to to see how far the 412 can be stripped down. Very much like it's Type-3, Squareback cousin, the 412's rear fenders incorporate an air induction grille and air channeling to feed the engine into the inner-body. The removal of these rear fenders is made somewhat more difficult due to the shear number of fasteners and the odd variety of fasteners used. Believe it or not to remove just one rear fender, you require three different socket sizes, two different phillips screwdriver sizes and body trim removal tool! The last pic in this block shows the body pretty much stripped of it's removable panels and all glass. The rear wheels are also off here as they must be removed to access hidden screws which hold the rear fenders to the body. |
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This block of pics show some of the 412's mechanical setup. After viewing the 412 for a while, one gets the impression
of a cross between the Super Beetle and the late model Bus. Super Beetle in basic design, but Bus in strength and
scale. The first two pics show the condensor for the AC unit. It is mounted to the bottom of the spare tire wheel well in the trunk. Like all AC units for the air cooled VWs. This was dealer installed and so every unit shares some commonalities and at the same time, some uniqueness. VW never installed AC themselves, this was only done by the dealer network and this is why they're different from one model (or even year) to the next. This evaporator was hit rather hard from the bottom, while apparently moving at a fair clip. If you look closely at the second pic, you can see that the evaporator's grid is crushed upwards to the point of obliterating the last 3 passes. Whatever it was that did that, it continued on past this area (the lowest point of the trunk) further back and into the front anti-sway bar and then bent the sway bar which is a hunk of substanial cold rolled steel, almost 4 times the diameter of that found on the Type 1 Beetle and Ghia. Just below the sway bar, you can see some of the "plumping" or flexible tubing used to route the AC coolant from the compressor in rear to the evaporator up front.
The second-last pic in this block is a close-up of the front wheel (driver's side). If you are familiar with the
Super Beetle's Macpherson Strut design, then you will quickly recognize this one too. It's just far more substantial
in over-all design. Amazingly the lower ball joints appear to be solid. |
| We'll be picking up Baby's twin shortly for supplies so things will move along pretty good then. | |
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In the first pic here, you see Baby's twin! As I mentioned before, the owners of this rare Vdub, actually found an exact duplicate of the one they wanted restored! This may very well be the proverbial 'needle in the haystack' as every component that Baby needs is in good or better shape on the doner 412! As it turned out, Baby's twin had much better doors and driver's side front fender, so here you see Baby losing her front fenders and ultimately doors too. |
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Here's where the front fenders from the twins are brought together. Baby's driver's side was rust-repaired along the rear seam and so was
the twin's passenger side. The doors from the twin were used instead of Baby's originals as they required less work to put back into full service. This work seems to move slower because we're trying not to trash the doner. Thus, every part that comes off Baby must be put back on the twin (ie: panels, doors etc).
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This block shows Baby's engine being removed. The type 4 engine is a marvel of complexity (and that's being nice!). Then toss in an Auto-Magic transaxle and oh... how about an air conditioning rig too! Yeah. This is about as complex an engine installation as you'll ever want to see in an air cooled Vdub folks.
Fortunately, Baby's engine came out real nice and easy. After the engine was out we had a chance
to get up close to the transaxle and discovered that there is a crack in the bell housing :( |
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Of course this is the fun part! While the engine is being rebuilt, the body moves on to primer, block sanding, guide coat sanding and finally.... Paint!!! The owners were going to stick with the original color to keep within the resto-budget, but I just KNOW that B really wanted another color.... Well, it must be her birthday sometime this year so Happy Birthday B! You musta blew out those candles at once because you're gunna get your wish - Hunter Green paint for Baby! |
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So here it is! Baby changes her color :) The first two pics show the result of the initial two coats of paint. Awesome gloss and color. The third pic shows Baby after she was color sanded. As many of you know, I'm a real fan of super-gloss and super-clear paint jobs and to get this, you must color sand before the final coat. This yeilds a "better than factory" result and definitely worth the extra effort to get there. |
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This is where things get exciting folks! Putting Baby back together again :) The hardest thing about this restoration has certainly been the parts sourcing that continues to go on... Unlike other Vdubs where you can easily pick-up the phone and get (any part), that is not an option for the type4 Vdubs. Even the headliner had to be custom hand made! Here it is being fitted. |
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Here you see Nadine hand fabricating the trunk lining. The original factory liner was not salvageable and so to get
that factory look, you must hand-make one that looks just like the original... What do you think? Does it look just like it did the day it rolled of the line in Germany? |
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Here we get to see some of the new body seals being installed. Like anything type4 related, these are not available, so you'll have to be creative if your originals are rotted & cracking. These pics show the front trunk seal, rear hatch, rear window, side windows, fender welting and tail light-to-body seal being installed. After more than a year of searching for replacement rubber seals, we finally had them made. If you are also searching for T4 seals, [Contact Us]. |
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Well, Baby is starting to look like she's ready for the road once again! Here are some shots of the custom trim work. Much of the trim was dented or faded and so replacements had to be custom built or alternative ideas come up with. Fortunately, the roof rack was in excellent shape and was reinstalled directly! |
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Here, Nadine has custom made the interior panels and covered them in a leatherette similar to the seat upholstery
which is remaining from the original doner. This fabric was selected as it matched both the color and the grain-texture
of the originals. The 2nd & 3rd pics show more custom cargo area lining after construction and installation was completed. Next a view of the restored dash and glove box wood-grain. A shot showing the new rear view mirrors and finally another interior shot showing the windows installed - really crisp looking! :) |
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Well, this is really getting down to it folks! :)
This block shows the dash wiring getting straightened out. The original fuse panel had suffered a short at some
point in it's life and caused no end of grief during the wiring process...A circuit works...
a circuit doesn't work...no wait! It works again.... Argh! :) |
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Well, as many of you avid T4 fans have been following this resto closely and offering your
encouragement and support (Thank you!). I thought I'd bring you all up to speed on Baby's
latest progress. The last step for Baby was a mechanical and engine review. The good news is that nearly all of the major mechanicals proved to be in great shape! The braking system while untested on the road only required some wheel cylinders to be replaced along with the brake shoes. Unfortunately, the engine while really good looking for it's age showed to be well worn and in fact too worn. The engine tear-down went pretty smoothly except for the automatic driveplate's retaining hardware (12 point bolts). Two of these bolts looked as though someone had used an allen key on them and their 12-points were sorta' turned into "12-smoothes" :( That required some ingenuity to remove, but was eventually successful. The short block was finally arrived at and we discovered that the #4 cylinder had been trashed. Actually, it wasn't the piston and cylinder so much as the connecting rod. The last picture here is a link to a short MPG movie (1.5 megabytes) showing the condition of the connecting rod - to - crank journal which was severly worn and showed signes of over-heating. The crank shaft, once removed from the case was black/purple colored around the #4 rod journal. I'm not really certain what happened, as the remaining 3 rods were in good shape for their age/wear, but this one had completely broken-down and gauled the journal badly. So a complete engine rebuild which was planned for, turned out to be more involved than originally hoped for. Nearly done! After the engine rebuild, it'll finally be time for some road testing of this lovely Vdub :) |
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This is it! The engine was rebuilt with the single progressive weber carburetor that it came to us with. While certainly not stock for this model which used a fuel injected setup from the factory, it is a common change to find in this model Vdub nowadays. Ironically both Baby and the doner were outfitted identically. So after some final check-ups it was time to take this baby (no pun intended) for a spin. The following pictures show Baby's first drive in a couple or more decades :) We drove it about 130 miles to meet the owner where they took delivery. It ran wonderfully and handled so mild mannered that you would be hard-pressed to call it a Vdub. Averaging 65 to 70 MPH was no problem and the ride quality was more like that of an Detroit big iron vehicle. What'dya think? |
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