Oh ... I should write a book!
My wife had a nominal 1967 Bug (yellow)when we were engaged, but it had been built up by her uncle from several abandoned cars that he bought from police auctions. It was actually in pretty nice shape.
But she rolled it off an enbankment 2 1/2 times
I happened by a few minutes later and nearly freaked
But she was okay, just a few bruises. Most of the glass popped out of the bug and it was "parallelogrammed." We tipped it back onto its wheels, added some oil, and I climbed through a window and drove it home for her. It smoked like crazy for a while because of the oil that had run down into two cylinders.
I pried open the doors and took them off, and removed the remaining glass and the sun roof. We drove it all around the national forest the rest of that summer like a dune buggy, and had lots of fun with it as it would go almost anywhere, which really embarrased the city folks with their expensive blazers, etc
Only problem was the gears weren't low enough to climb some mountains. We even hauled the canoe down to the lake, just by holding onto the thwarts by reaching up through the missing sunroof hatch
The windshield washer still worked, which was a joke on unsuspecting passengers because there was no glass.
But like an idiot, I went out and bought her another VW Bug (red) and we hauled it home. The engine was not supposed to be any good but I tinkered with it and we drove it for a while, until it blew up just outside Denver
Had to call a friend with a flatbed to come haul us home.
So, I pulled the engine out of the wrecked yellow one and put it in the red one. We drove it a while (got married) and then one day I lifted it up (with a forklift
) to work on the brakes and the front axle stayed on the floor
Turns out the body was so rusted that the bolts just pulled out. I put some longer bolts and big washers in there to hold it together, and we drove it some more.
(we hauled that bug to KS and back for the winter, on the back of my log truck, just sitting on some planks rigged up over the swivel bolster)
A few months later, back in the mountains, one night we missed a turn and drove out into a meadow. "Ladypine" says "it's late so quit messing around" as we both used to do crazy things like that. I said "here if you don't like my driving you take the wheel" - literally, as it was no longer connected to anything.
So next day we dragged it home with the log truck, and I proceeded now to swap out the undercarraige with the yellow one (about 800 bolts IIRC). Jacked up the good red body, rolled out the rusted chassis, and rolled the good one under, and then bolted it mostly back together. Had to swap the engine back the other way again, of course
The hinges on the engine cover bent out of shape, so I just took the lid off, and wired the license plate to the little vent slots under the back window, hanging over the exposed engine. Ran cooler that way anyhow
After a while, we got an old 4x4 pickup from my mom, so we traded off the bug for some firewood to a guy that worked for me. I hauled the wood and sold it. Later on one winter, he loaned it to some down on his luck drifter who promptly left the state with it and it was never seen again.
Thus ends our VW saga. We never owned a "car" again until 2007 when we got a Chevy HHR from my dad (all we ever had were pickups and suburbans and
trucks).
