Many attempts were made to make the car look like new without having the whole vehicle resprayed. Many hours were spent polishing the car with a cutting compound, which made most of the paint look good, but where the previous owner used the previously mentioned emulsion paint to 'touch up' the car it looked terrible! I spent hours carefully sanding this paint off with fine wet-and-dry paper, but this made the paint thin, and the grey primer show through. The decision was made to have the car resprayed externally in the original Pearl White (L87) and have the small bits of welding done on the sills, door bottoms and the corners of the spare wheel well at the same time.
To do this, I took the car to Kombi Klassics (Wareham, Dorset, England) who agreed to sort out the car. The respray took only two weeks to complete, and the result is almost perfect!
I completely stripped the Beetle out for the journey to Kombi Klassics - even the headlights were removed on arrival! I stripped it to a drivable shell to save money on the respray (why pay for somebody else to take it to bits and reassemble when you can do it for free?!). The pieces that were removed (passengers and rear seat, door panels, chrome trim, running boards etc) were all removed and thoroughly cleaned and/or restored before being replaced when the car returned.
The above pictures are of the small amounts of rust in the sills of the car - not much by UK standards! It was caused by water being trapped between the running board and the sill.
Here is the car sanded down in the workshop! All the windows were removed and were replaced using the original rubbers and chrome trims. The only pieces of chrome that needed replating were two hubcaps and one indicator housing - the tailpipes were replaced with stainless steel versions. The rest is all original and immaculate!
(Above) - No corrosion in any of the inner wheel-arches!
(above) - Primed and ready for spraying!
Only the exterior of the car was repainted, as I wanted the keep the Beetle as original as possible. All the paint on the dashboard and inside of the bonnet, engine lid etc is the original 'Wolfsburg Applied' paint, and is in very good condition. I like it, as it keeps the cars character - you can't reproduce the thin paint around the ignition key or scratches on the handbrake caused by 30-odd years of motoring, can you?
Please visit the Kombi Klassics Website!
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