Part III - Driving Again
October of 2002 saw Giggles back on the road, after 3 years in the shop! The '65 Bus had to come off the road with seized link pins, and the fastest thing to do to get a set of wheels on the road was take his engine & put it in Giggles. The paint was complete, a few weeks of assembly was all that was needed to have a running Beetle that was good as new.
His widened fiberglass fenders make stock running boards unusable, hence the mud spray on the doors. He can't make the trip down the alley without spraying himself, if it is wet. The fenders also ruled out the use of stock bumpers as they interfered with one another. Hence, the T-bars in this picture.
The interior is fairly Spartan. Being a "Canadian Custom", Giggles came from the factory with rubber floor mats in place of carpeting. We stripped out most of the stock interior (to save on weight) and have only put in a few pieces of carpeting to make it homey. We prefer the simplicity of the flat metal dash, with the stock stereo hole & the ashtray filled in. The stock speedo has been relocated to the speaker hole on the left and a tach from an RX7 has been installed front & center. To the right of the tach are head temperature and oil temperature gauges. Mounted to the right door pillar is a fire extinguisher, too many vehicle fires get out of hand because a fire extinguisher wasn't handy at the first sign of smoke.
Between the front seats you can see the "ugly" heater. It is made of flexible exhaust repair tubing & attaches to the heat ducts under the back seat, bringing the heat into the cabin where it is needed, rather than being lost out the bottom of the car whilst trying to get to the front through the stock heater channels in the door sills. The stock heater channels are actually gone from Giggles, both door sills had to be replaced before we could put him on the road the first time, new heater channels weren't worth buying. We acquired the ugly heater from the VW mechanic in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan whom we purchased our Baja from, that thing will defrost the windshield within a block!!! We only have it attached to one of the ducts under the back seat, the other is ducted directly to the driver's feet.
Here you can see our modified rear apron. It didn't take many times of trying to get an engine into/out of our Super Beetle to know that we didn't like trying to line everything up in the confined space. The first time we got Giggles on the road, we had to replace the rear bumper mounts completely, so we chose to make the rear apron bolt on, rather than welding it in place. Four 6mm bolts hold it in place. With this modification, the two of us can install/remove an engine from Giggles in only slightly more time than the job takes on our Baja. (We could remove & install the Baja engine in about 20 minutes when we were in practice, fortunately we aren't anymore!)
Dangling to the floor on the left of the car is the auxiliary oil filter. We run an external oil filter on all of our VW engines, it just makes sense. This is achieved by using a Maxi-3 oil pump with inlet/outlet ports. The filter is bolted up under the rear fender, it does get a lot of road filth, but the filter is easy to change, and vertical. Horizontally mounted oil filters are very messy on oil change day (the '65 Bus has the filter mounted horizontally). Giggles used to have the oil filter mounted inside the engine compartment, on the firewall. A round of filters with bad seals caused the entire engine compartment to become covered in oil. We decided that we prefer our filters mounted outside the engine compartment! NOTE: You would not choose this location for a car that was used much off of pavement.
Here is the apron, bolted in place. We're very happy with how it works and looks.
Giggles parks nose out at the curb in front of our house. We have too many vehicles to all fit in the driveway, and Giggles is the natural choice for the street, because the carburetor on his summer engine (our currently leaky 1776) doesn't like to start on the slope. Also, the single quiet pack on his winter engine can catch on the curb. Nose out helps preserve the inherently weak reverse gear. Backing up the crown of our cul-de-sac causes reverse to pop, if you forget to hold the gearshift.
Besides, nose out is the best position for a car that just likes to go.....!