ABANDONED VW Bug Will It Run | FIRST START In 30 YRS | Forgotten Volkswagen Super Beetle | RESTORED

We've come up with a pretty good collection of old cars around the shop here, including a lot of Volkswagen's over time. What we're about to mess with now is a 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle. The Super Beetle was a car that they made in the latter years of the Volkswagen. Not real desirable, they've got a little bit of a snubbier nose, completely different front end. I bought this car back a few months ago, really cheap for $300, and it's just been sitting ever since. So we're gonna go ahead and try to dig it out, at least see if we can get this car up and running. We need to either pull the motor out of it, that way we can use it on another project around the shop, or go ahead and try to flip this thing for a little extra cash. Hot! Yes. It don't have a key to it, so I know the steering wheel's locked, so you're just gonna have to drag it. That's good! Well, no carburetor. No carburetor. Got a good dirt diver's nest, yeah. It started to build down in there, didn't it? Breather probably helped them getting too big of a nest up in there. Yeah, because they had to fill that thing up. I hope no water got down in there, this one has the vents on it. Oh yeah. Plenty of oil down in there. Plenty of oil, yeah. Almost double. It turns over. And we have no keys to this, so we're gonna have to... I wanted to get it moved, because I know I'm gonna have to get up underneath there and try to get it down. But I wanted to get it moved, because I know I'm going to have to get up underneath there and try to jump it at the starter there. I wish at least the steering would turn, but it's one of those where it locks up. So we'll have to figure that out. I guess I'll go ahead and grab a jack then, jack it up, try to see if one of us can put a battery. It's pretty nasty on the inside of there. So stay on the lookout for stuff moving. We'll coil it up. The seats though, well the driver's side's not, well, never mind. I was starting to say the seats are in pretty good shape, but the bottom of the back at least is. Kind of. We've got one good tire in here, it looks like. Only good tire it's got and it's on the inside. Yeah, I don't think that, honestly, these ones ain't going to take no air. No. Yeah, it looked like the spare was about the only good one. Phew. We'll have to just kind of wedge it in there, it don't look like there's no floor to that part of it. The pans are gone. At least right there, they always are on those battery trays. Let's see if I can find a place to get up underneath this to get some room underneath there. I'll let you get it jacked up before I start putting that battery in there on it. Might be able to just sit on the head of the jack. The story was that an old woman had this and didn't hardly drive it, and then when she passed away they parked it out there in the woods, basically, what it looked like from the pictures, and it's sat ever since. It looks believable. Yeah. It's got the old grandma dents on it. We went off and didn't even bring the impact. Brakes are locked up. There's a nest up underneath here, all around that transaxle. Any luck? Yeah, I've got it at least holding itself in place. I don't know how long. It doesn't look like it'll be long. We've got 13 tetanus. I don't know how we went off and forgot the impact. We may have to go grab it. You've got to forget at least one thing, one important thing. Fair to me, it'll be a little easier when we get back in there and we can get this off. It wasn't too bad, did it now? You didn't need no impact. Have you touched any cable? I tapped it a while ago, but it didn't do anything, but my ground wasn't real snug either, so I'm going to tap it real quick here. You're fine with that? Yeah, I'm good. Sure and neutral. No sparky. That's good. We don't have anything that's drawing juice. Well, one good thing is we've got another set of wheels off that 68 down there that at least hold air if it'll run. I said I don't know if our best bet is... See that big old nest? Oh, yeah. Right there at the starter, too. I'm going to grab a screwdriver and try to get it out. I don't know if our best bet is to try to pull this motor out and set it back for another project or... Because I don't really want to build a Super Beetle. Right. Well, anyway, we've got that thing. Yeah. I don't know anything. Yeah, it'd work good, wouldn't it? I'm sure it might, wouldn't it? Just depends on once it cranks up what it gives us. At least this ain't all up on the motor. Wouldn't have been long before it was, though. I can see the starter there. Let me grab that jumper thing. Should be able to see if it turns over pretty quick. You want me to go ahead and... Make sure it's out of gear. Yeah, it's out of gear. I checked just a second ago, but I'll double-check. We tried to bring as much tools as we could think of. We're not too far from the shop, but we just decided we'd try to see if we could get this thing up and running. We've kind of got the shop packed full of stuff right now. And as you can tell, this thing is already starting to get a ton of grass growing around it. I'm tired of weed-eating around them. So we're going to try to get it running. I'm either going to sell it, or we're going to pull this motor out. We'll see what happens by the end of this video, I guess. Either going to sell it, pull the motor out, and then sell it. Yeah. You want this cable on now, or you wait? You can wait. Okay. I'm just going to go ahead and pull that wire off. Kind of hard to get your head in places with that GoPro. Yeah. Okay. You can try it now. Take me snugging it up on there a little bit, because it is a little big on it. Does that need to be cleaned any? No, they look fine on that part. Okay, try that. Nothing. Oh. Let's see here. Make sure I'm on the right. It may not have got a great connection. It don't look like it needs to be cleaned, but I'll give it a little clean. It may be my connection down here, even. Or it could be the starter. Tell me when you're hooked back up. Okay. Nothing. Oh, there it goes. Sounds like there's something up in that muffler kind of stopped up. Yeah, that tailpipe there. Oh, good grief. Tailpipe is not. Oh, it did fall off. Oh, uh-oh. Disconnected. What was that? Oh, the battery fell through. The battery fell through the floor. Wow. I guess we're going to have to find a board or something. It was weird because it almost sounded like it cranked, and I knew that was not possible. Try to tap on that thing. Go ahead. Nothing. If I can get this hook back on here. It don't sound bad turning over, does it? No. No clunks or clanks or nothing like that. I guess we'll go ahead and pull this distributor cap off. Dang, points look brand new. Cool don't look too bad either, does it? Right. Oh, they sure are corroded, though. I brought that little file. I think it's in that box there. So I don't know how well you guys can see here. These points are super corroded where they contact each other, and they normally do that when they've set up for a while. So we're going to go ahead and take a little file and clean them up inside there and let it turn over and see if we're getting any spark. We'll have to run a wire to our coil here because we don't have a key or anything as well. So I guess if you want to do that, Dad, we can grab a wire and find if we've got one long enough to run to that battery from the coil. Got a wire long enough to get from here to there. As long as we don't have to go through that. There's a hole right back there. I don't know if it can fish through that or not. That little bitty one? Yeah, I don't know if it goes back behind the seat there or not. Wish I knew where that thing was looking. Let's see if I can see where that one goes. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one you're talking about? Okay. I was looking at even a small one. Got lots of rat poop. Rotor button here a little bit too. While he's looking at that, I was going to see if there was a sticker. Here in Texas, we have registration stickers on the windshields that show when it was last on the road. But this one doesn't have one, nor does it have a plate, I don't guess. But you can tell on the inside of this car, it's been setting up a while. Did I hear you mention rat turds? Yeah, it's full of rat turds back there. That may be what's keeping the floor together right underneath there. They suck up pretty good with a vacuum cleaner. Headliner's not in bad shape. This seat right here is pretty rough. The other seat's not too bad. I think when I got this car, I tried to open the hood, but it wouldn't open. I couldn't ever figure out the latch system on it. Let me see on the other side. Oops. Yeah, I don't know. A little 68 had it right here where you just pulled it and popped the hood. Yeah, that sounded like it, didn't it? That sounded like it there. Ah, yeah. So, we've got a lot more mouse home here. Spark plug box. Oh, it's even got a spark plug in it. Keep looking. There may be a whole set. Brand new. Yeah. So, we may have to dig through that and put us new plugs in it maybe. Gas tank don't look too bad. There's not a hole here to run it back that way unless I run it through the hole in the bottom below the battery. Yeah, that works. Okay. So, we've got those things cleaned up pretty decent. We'll have to have the ends. I'm just going to put a little alligator clip on it, I guess. So, we're just running this wire right here. We're just going to run this wire right here straight from the battery to the coil. It'll be a constant 12-volt as long as it's attached to the battery, of course. So, if we want to kill the car when it cranks, we'll have to just pull this wire from the battery. But we'll know for sure we're getting 12-volt to our coil here. Which will allow the points to spark if we've got them cleaned up well enough. Keep it out of the way of that pulley. All right. Ready for me to hook it up on this end or not? Let me put this cap back on. Okay. And then I'm just going to grab some gas, pour it down just straight into this intake and see if it even… Just know it's going to crank. See if it even tries. Got the right mixture going on here. Yeah. All right. Yeah, you can go ahead and connect it up. You might want to be ready in case that starter starts hanging again. Okay. Good? No, not yet. I'm getting sparks. Okay. Huh? I was getting sparks. That's good. Here we go. Smoked just a hair at the very beginning, but… Yeah, no telling how long it's been setting up. Yeah, I know. Look like we stirred up some wasp or… I thought I seen some little yellow hornet looking things over there. Yeah, that's what they kind of look like. Well, that was way too simple. Yeah. Hard to believe one will run that well without a carburetor on it. Yeah. I've had carburetors on some before that don't seem to run that good. So now that we know a little bit more of the foundation of this car, we know that it's turning over. It even fired up and ran as long as we were spraying carburetor cleaner down through the intake there. We're going to go to the shop. We do have the spare carburetor that we just took off that 68. Pop it on here. Maybe see if we can get it to idle just running just a gravity feed fuel tank on it there. See if it will go in gear. I know the brakes are locked up, but sometimes just getting them in gear will allow it to turn over. So we're just going to give that a shot and see what it does. I guess if you want to go ahead and give it a little pull there. Make sure that's out of the way. We don't want to run it too long without that belt being on there, especially with all this nest built up around it. Ready? Go in gear. Okay. I was just sitting there revving it. I thought you was revving it. I thought maybe you was trying to get the wheels to break loose. I thought, well, he's awful brave to just sit there on that. No, I'm like, the throttle's hung and you're over there at the back of the truck. I don't know what we're going to do with that. Well, I have to say this old thing's running a whole lot better than I thought it would and even that it really should for as long as it's been sitting here. Pretty obvious we're going to have to get some penetrating oil to hold to this throttle cable. I gave her one rev to try to put it in gear and it just stayed revved up. So we're going to address that, but I think we're going to go ahead and see if we can get this thing to move down the road on its own power. We know these brakes are locked up, so right now we're just going to go ahead and dig into those. Try to see if we can get the wheels spinning over. Run back to the shop. We've got another set of old wheels down there we can pop on there. They should hold air at least enough to move it down the road. So we'll do that. See what she does next. What if we get it just yanked around if we can't get the steering unlocked? I'll just drive in a circle. Make a huge donut. That's better than just sitting out here with grass growing around it. So with us wanting to move this car and not having a key with it, we're about to attempt something that you shouldn't try at home. We're just going to go ahead and try to drill out on this key tumbler right here. We really have nothing to lose on it. Now we would have to just pull this steering wheel off. We can get down here, pull a few wiring things loose, and pull this ignition switch out if we have to. But regardless, we're going to have to replace it because we don't have a key. So we're just going to try to drill it out. Hopefully we can get in there with a flat blade screwdriver. We really just want this steering wheel to unlock so that we can turn the car. Because we're just bypassing all the wiring on starting it up and cranking it back at the engine anyway. So we'll give it a shot and see what happens. So we were able to finally get the tumbler to move by drilling it out. It kind of made a mess, but it did serve the purpose there. We are at least able to steer the wheels left and right now. So that's not locked up. We went ahead and just hooked up our gas tank here to just a factory fuel pump on the motor. So we're not trying to gravity feed it. Got it strapped down here. I don't even think that our hood's not even going to shut down right there. Now the issue we got now, we tried turning it over once we got everything hooked up. And the starter's hanging again. So we're going to have to basically just touch the battery post cable to the positive. Which will allow the starter to turn over. And that's how I'm going to control turning the motor over on that. So I've got a wire ran straight to the cool. I'll touch the battery post on the positive side to get the starter to engage. Hopefully she cranks up. Hopefully she runs good enough where we're not doing it all the time. So I'm going to hop in here. Hop in this mess. And see if I can at least get it to go around the lot a little ways. This seat is too far forward, that's for sure. Don't want to go backwards. Roll this window down. So I don't know how well you guys can see, but this is going to be the wire that's going to run, control the juice to our cool. Getting power. This is going to control it to our starter. So I'm in neutral. Cranked right up. See if she'll move now. Yep. Don't hit dad's truck. What that is making that noise, actually running pretty good. I do believe though that the Super Beetles maybe have a little bit more of a comfortable ride. This thing's a lot smoother than some of the other ones I've driven. I think she can definitely probably make it back to the shop. Whatever that noise is, it's kind of concerning me though. It sounds like a locust, but I know that's not what it is. Try to take it out here, shift through some gears. Second gear. It's definitely a good solid engine. The car is pretty rough, but it's not too far gone by any means. I'm going to go back and let them know I'm going to go ahead and try to make it on to the shop. Try to see if I can at least get third or fourth gear maybe. Don't want to lose my battery. Hey, I think I'm going to try to just go ahead and make it to the shop. So if y'all want to follow me over there. Work. Okay, we'll follow. Trying not to use an emergency brake because I don't know if I pull it, if it'll unstick. Terrible shake. A little scary. For some reason when I got up here at like so fast, it started shaking really bad. So I think if y'all were like, if she was in the back of your truck at straight on. So with us only having one camera person, it makes it kind of tricky to get all the angles that we're wanting to. This car started shaking like crazy. So we're just going to whip back around here. Get Christian on the side of the road or in the back of dad's truck. Just where you guys can see on the outside of this vehicle just how bad it's shaking. Do you want to just stand on the side of the road then on that side and kind of, because I mean it was like. And I'll try to make it do it again. And then we'll probably just get one shot of me pulling in. And then that's about it. Well, I don't know what it is. I don't know. Made me second guess if we put them all on there right. I don't know if we've got some ball joint issues up front or what the deal is. But we'll get Luke back around. Get those shots. Hopefully make it the few hundred feet we need to make it into the shot. Won't crank. Knew better. Knew I should have just drove on in. We're out there in the same exact spot, so. Nothing up here. Nothing. That starter just bit the dust. I knew better than to kill it. I think it's going to work. So I do it to myself every time on something that we just got up and running. I have too much confidence in it. I tried to kill it. I was going to wait on Christian and Dad to catch up. When that wheel started shaking, I knew it would be something cool to see on the outside of the car. But now it's not wanting to turn over or anything. So instead of us dragging all of our tools out, we're right here at the shop. We'll just push it inside if we decide to mess with it anymore. But we're right here. We're right here at the shop. I'm pretty happy that it was able to crank up and run. Now we're just going to have to make the decision of whether we want to pull this motor out, set it to the side for another project. I think probably what I'll go ahead and do is just list the car for sale with the motor or without the motor. So if someone was interested in the car, they could buy it and they'd have a good project on them. Or if they didn't want it without the motor, we'd have a good motor for a project for us. So guys, thanks for hanging out and watching this Restored Extra. It's just some little tidbit things that we're going to put out. Every once in a while, there's just some little things we've been needing to do around the shop. A little shorter videos, but it kind of gives you guys some more content on a regular basis. We do have a whole lot of cool produced content coming out as well. And we can't wait to catch you on the next one. Good way to end the show, ain't it? That one's good now. Yeah. Whirl. What happened? I don't know. Like it went into gear or something. Yeah. That's weird. Like the starter. Maybe. Engaged or something. I don't know. It should be engaged. That was weird. I guess we'll call that good.