I Bought This NON RUNNING Car To FIX & FLIP For A Profit!

We are back on this 2008 Volkswagen Beetle that I only paid $1,000 for. If you watched the last episode you know I was convinced I had this thing figured out and I went on a pretty long rant about how I knew exactly what the problem was only to find out that I was wrong. I also spent the day running around to all different kinds of junkyards trying to find parts to piece this thing back together so hopefully we can get this thing running and eventually flip it for a profit. Now the main problem with this car hasn't changed. Every single time you turn the key it'll fire right up, run for about a second, and then instantly die. It'll do that over and over again exactly the same way every single time. That immediately reminded me of my old 2004 Volkswagen Beetle because it had almost the exact same symptoms. The fix on that car ended up being deleting the immobilizer out of the ECU. Basically the immobilizer is an anti-theft system. The key, the instrument cluster, and the ECU all have to recognize each other before the car will stay running. If they don't communicate properly, the engine will start, run for about a second, and then the ECU shuts everything down. So I bought an ECU that supposedly already had the immobilizer deleted. I plugged it into the car and absolutely nothing changed. It still started, ran for a second, and then died. That sent me down a rabbit hole of forms trying to figure out what I was missing. I also spent a lot of time reading through your comments on the last video. Some of you suggested that it could be a bad fuel pump while others thought the key itself might have lost programming or gone bad. The fuel pump theory just doesn't really make much sense to me. This car starts every single time, runs for about a second, and then shuts off. It'll do that over and over again no matter how many times I try. If the fuel pump was failing, I'd expect the symptoms to be a lot more random instead of being identical every single time. The key theory though, that actually makes a little bit more sense. When I put the original ECU back in and completely scanned the car, it was throwing the immobilizer key fault. To me, that's a pretty obvious clue that we were chasing some kind of immobilizer issue. We just need to figure out where exactly the problem is. I also called around and got a quote to have a new key made and programmed. It was right around $250 which honestly seems kind of expensive. I might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere but it's also not a guaranteed fix and I really don't want to keep throwing money at this car that's only worth so much. So I think I'm going to go back to my original plan but this time I'm going to do things a little different. Instead of using a replacement ECU that was supposedly deleted, I'm going to pull the original factory ECU out of this car and send it off to a completely different company and have the immobilizer deleted properly. So that's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to pull this factory ECU back out, get it packaged up, and send it off. Hopefully that will finally get this $1,000 Beetle back on the road. One week later. Oh, please work. Pretty please. All right, please. Well, it seems like it's running good. It's not shutting off. So no check engine light, just an airbag light, trunk open. It smells a little bit like gas but that's not surprising considering how long it's been sitting for. Let's see if it goes in the gear. We're moving. Yeah, sweet. Maybe we should take it on test drive. Let's see how it drives. So nice. I'm a little confused because usually the immobilizer light will start blinking after you delete the immobilizer. It's not blinking yet. So maybe it'll come on after a drive or so. Also, one thing to check is if it has cold AC. Not cold yet, but we will see after a drive. A bunch of leaves flying up. So far, it's running pretty good. Shifting good. A bunch of leaves flying everywhere over me. You see all these leaves? Unfortunately, the AC is not very cold. So we'll have to look into that. Maybe it just needs recharged after sitting for how many years. Hopefully. These leaves are gross. Well, this is some pretty awesome news, and I'm very relieved. Not only is this thing finally running and driving, but I'm also pretty glad to know that I wasn't completely wrong from the beginning. I was pretty much right that it was the immobilizer issue all along. The only problem was the first ECU I bought obviously wasn't deleted correctly. So I want to give a huge thank you to ByLiteClusters. I think that's how you pronounce it. Huge thank you to them for getting my original ECU taken care of. I still don't know if the original issue was the key, the instrument cluster, or maybe something inside the ECU itself. But honestly, at this point, I don't really care. It's fixed, the car runs and drives, and now I can finally move on to the rest of the stuff to get this thing ready to flip for a profit. First up are these tires, and this car has been sitting for probably multiple years. So these things are pretty badly dry rotted. There's no way I'd feel comfortable selling a car with tires like this. The next thing is the AC. It works, but it's definitely not blowing cold. And living here in Florida, that's a pretty big deal. So I have to get that figured out. If it ends up needing a major repair, that's definitely going to eat into our profit quite a bit. After that, it's mostly cleaning up the little stuff. We picked up a passenger side mirror at the junkyard. That definitely needs to go on. Also, I want to replace the rear view mirror assembly. I want to fix the delamination in the instrument cluster. Give the interior a really good clean, especially I need to work on the convertible top and fixing that rear window. All that definitely needs to get done before we can start focusing on the other little cosmetic issues about this car. So let's go ahead and start knocking out some of this stuff. Maybe start with the AC and then move to that rear window. Oh yeah, that is much better. Yeah, so much better. Right now, let's focus on this rear window. This is something we have to fix. First, we got to glue this back together, then lift the convertible top a little bit, and we can start trying to glue this thing back down. Fortunately, it's starting to lift up everywhere, especially right around here, right up here. See where it's all lifting up? The only part that's still connected is right here. But we got to fix this flap first, glue this back together. I'm definitely gonna have to do this window in sections. There's no way I can do this all at one time. I'm waiting for this fabric to dry up here, and then I went ahead and put a little bit of silicone right down at the bottom. Do this section first, and then tomorrow I'll work on this section, and then hopefully, maybe tomorrow evening, I'll be able to work on the top section. In the meantime, let's work on something else. Let's go up to this front end and take a look at these headlights. They look very rough, but I believe we can save them and save a bit of money. All you have to do is wet sand these down to 1,000, maybe 1,500 grit, and then put a clear coat over top of them, and that will bring them back to almost new-like shape. This light, however, I'm seeing some spider cracks up underneath the plastic, so this one I don't think will come back perfectly, but it will definitely look a lot better than it is right now. Now, there's a couple ways we can go to bring these things back to life. The first option is cutting and buffing. So you sand it down with 1,000 grit to 2,000 grit, all the way up to 3,000 grit. Then you would buff the headlight just like any other normal car part. That is one option. It's pretty quick and easy to do, but it doesn't last forever. It usually only lasts for right around a year. At least that's the case here in Florida. The best option to do, though, is to use clear coat. And what I found that works the best is Eastwood's 2K clear coat in a can. This makes it super easy. All I did was sand it down to 1,500 grit, then throw two coats of clear coat onto it, and that should bring these things back to life. All right, we should be waterproof again. It doesn't look very pretty right now. I was a little bit careless with the glue, but I'm going to scrape off the edges and then put another layer right around it all, try to clean it up and make it look a little bit better. But it's waterproof, it's holding, and this should hold for quite a few more years. With this top down, we can go ahead and take a look at this interior. I'm going to show you all the damage and stuff I really want to fix. Starting with the front of the car, I need to vacuum out all these leaves. There's a ton of leaves up in there. I don't know how they got there. Need to get them out and then put this dash back together. Also clean up the rest of it. Clean these seats up. Fix this armrest. I actually got a new one in. Moving to the back, you can see these rear panels have tape on them. That's because there are cracks along the whole way. You definitely want to try to fix that and make it look a little bit better. And the passenger side is a bit worse. You can see there's a chunk missing. I think that chunk is right here. Yep. So hopefully try to piece this back together and make it look better. Also definitely need to replace this rear view mirror and assembly. You can see it's all crunchy. Luckily I got a new one at the junkyard. And while I have this dash all taken apart, I might as well work on this radio. Possibly replace it. All the cracks are fixed. They're stapled together with a little bit of fiberglass body filler on top and then regular body filler on top of that. Sanded and then sprayed with Eastwood's high build primer in a can. I know not everyone has fancy paint guns and a big air compressor to be able to paint all this stuff in your garage. But Eastwood sells all the stuff you need in a can. Even the OEM paint color, which I have right here. This is just a really great alternative and a lot easier than buying all the stuff you need for a major professional paint job. This is really all you need, especially for stuff like this. We're going to crack this open and see how well it sprays and see how well it matches. Let's go ahead and put a few coats on here and then clear coat it all. That's all fixed. This interior looks amazing. It cleaned up very well. Last thing to do is these front two door panels. I don't like whatever this is. There's usually leather over this. But after all this time, this thing's almost 20 years old. So obviously it's not there anymore. Only thing to do to replace that leather is to rip off this door panel, take it all the way apart. You have to cut a lot of stuff and re-glue it back in. It's kind of a pain, but I found another solution. These right here are covers that go right into that section and then they screw on. Now this used to be gray, but I decided to paint it black to match the rest of it. And I think it's going to look a lot better than what's currently there. Screw these on and then fix this light because I have a replacement light for right here. Looks pretty good. Just peeling that off everywhere. Super strong. I hate these mirrors. They're so hard to remove. Everything is starting to look so good. Everything but this paint. As you can see, the clear coat was peeling off very easily. My pressure washer was taking it off and I even took a little razor blade and was able to get some of the rest of it off. Just a little bit down here, I'm going to sand out. And of course, I'm going to have to repaint this thing. Luckily, it's just the hood that I have to repaint, along with these two rear fenders, the rear bumper, and this rear deck lid. The clear coat on this whole trunk came off with just the pressure washer. I wasn't planning on having to repaint all this, but I definitely think it's going to help the resale value. And honestly, that's just kind of the reality with these cheap rebuilds. You always go into them with a plan and a budget, but there's almost always something you weren't expecting. Sometimes it's mechanical. Sometimes it's bodywork like this. And other times it's both. It just comes with the territory. It's apparent that unexpected expenses aren't just a part of rebuilding cars. They're also a part of life. Maybe it's your daily driver that needs repaired. Maybe your A.C. quits working. Maybe groceries cost more than you expected that week. Stuff happens, and it usually happens at the worst possible time. That's why I want to thank today's sponsor, Clover. Clover is a financial app that gives eligible users access to up to $750 before payday, with no credit checks, no interest, and no late fees. It's designed to help when one of those unexpected expenses pops up, and you need access to your money a little bit sooner. One thing I really like is how transparent it is. There's no monthly membership fee required just to get an advance. And if you don't mind waiting a few days, you can receive your advance that way. Or if you need it faster, you can choose an express transfer for a small fee. And if you're wondering how Clover makes money, they do it through partnerships or brands featured in their app. And also by the optional express transfer fee. Not by charging you interest, and not all users will qualify. And advances range from $25 all the way up to $750. And the average advances are right around $170. And those advance transfer fees may apply. So if you're short on cash, use Clover to access up to $750 with no credit check or late fee. You can click the link right here, or check it out in my description down below. Now hopefully this is the last unexpected expense this beetle throws at me. But knowing these Volkswagens, I probably shouldn't get my hope up too much. Let's go ahead and get this thing painted. Last thing I really want to fix in this interior is the speedometer. You can see it's peeling up inside there. Hopefully I don't break anything. It's already kind of falling apart, but still, I really don't want to break anything. Well, there's a lot of bubbles in it, but it's better. Just every time I dig into this thing, I break something else on it, and it just falls apart. So I'm just gonna have to make it work. I'll try to find another one. But I think they're all in really bad shape, no matter where I get it. Well, looks better at least. Still not perfect. As far as this paint goes, it turned out pretty good. Color matches pretty well. It does look a little bit lighter on camera, but in person, it looks very close. And for all this being out of a spray can, I'm pretty impressed. Obviously, there's a little bit of dirt and debris and stuff in here. That's just hard to avoid in a big garage like this. Overall though, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Even the hood looks pretty good. This stuff's kind of hard to paint. If you remember, this side is broken. Luckily, we got one of the junkyard in good shape. These things are really bad. It's starting to rip apart too. All four tires replaced. Brand new. Look really good. These tires are a little bit on the cheap side, but they are definitely good for this kind of car. I can't find my oil bucket either. Last thing is this door. I'm gonna try to re-weld this. I'm not sure if I can get to it very well, but worth a try. One last thing. There we go. Now it's all done. And with that little final piece finished, this car is done. Well, mostly done. While going over everything one last time, I did notice a couple things that still needed some attention. The biggest one is the airbag light that's still on in the dash. I'm not exactly sure what's causing it yet, but if I had to guess it's probably somewhere underneath these seats. My guess is at some point water got into this car either through the rear glass or maybe somewhere around the windows in the front and possibly corroded one of the connectors underneath. I don't know yet for sure, but it's something I definitely want to take a look at if I have the time. The other big issue is this convertible top. The light up here keeps flashing and the car constantly dings at me because it thinks the top is still open. So somewhere there's a sensor or a switch or a wiring issue that's not telling the car whether the top is actually open or closed. I'd really like to figure that out because that's definitely something that's going to affect the resale value. Speaking of resale value, these cars are honestly kind of difficult to price because they're all over the place. It's really hard to find one that's actually in good shape. And even with a couple of little issues this one still has, it's honestly going to be one of the nicest ones listed for sale. All in, I've got right around $1,900 into this car and that includes the purchase price. I probably could have kept that number a little bit lower if I skipped the upgraded radio and a few other little things that weren't super necessary. But I think those upgrades make the car a lot nicer. So to have everything into it under $2,000 I'm pretty happy with that. As far as the asking price go, I'm thinking somewhere between $3,500 maybe $4,000 is probably pretty fair. It is in really good shape, but at the same time this isn't really a car for everyone. It takes someone who really likes these beetles to appreciate them. They're fun little cars with a ton of personality. But like most Volkswagens, they definitely have their own little quirks. Overall though, I'm really happy I was able to save this car and give it a second chance instead of watching it end up in a junkyard. So that's it for this 2008 Volkswagen Beetle rebuild. Let me know what you think down in the comments. Am I asking too much? Am I asking too little? Or do you think I should just keep it and build something even cooler with it? And if you're on Instagram, make sure to follow me over there too. I post a lot of behind the scenes photos and updates. You can see those updates over there before they even make it over here on YouTube. As always, thank you so much for watching and I will catch you on the next project to rebuild. And I've got plenty of projects lined up. So I'll see you then.