- [Host] Have you ever purchased a car on eBay
that wasn't quite as described?
Well, in this episode of The Wrenchmen,
Davin and I tackle Todd's 1957 eBay Beetle
with steering, brake, clutch, and electrical issues.
Follow along as we try to get Todd back on the road.
(rock music)
- It should not wobble like that.
- Contact.
- [Host] Ever had a project that's stuck,
stalled, or over your head?
Sometimes, it just takes an extra set of eyes
or an extra set of hands.
Enter The Wrenchmen.
Follow along as we travel the country
getting classic cars back on the road.
(rock music)
- Pretty nice morning, here Matt.
- Yeah, it's not a bad place.
- It's nice.
- Hey guys. - Good morning.
- I'm Todd. - Matt.
- Good morning, Todd. Davin.
- Davin, Matt, how are you?
- Good, good, so what've we got here?
- A '57 Beetle, and it needs a lot of help.
- Alright, well let's see it.
And what do you mean by, "a lot of help?"
- Electrical problems, the thing won't start.
Clutch has got some issues and the brakes need some help.
- [Davin] Alright, well that covers a lot of systems.
- [Matt] Yeah. - [Todd] It does.
- [Matt] Especially on a '57 bug.
- [Davin] Yeah. It's pretty much all of 'em.
- [Todd] I ended up buying this on an online auction
four years ago, and it was a New Year's Eve purchase,
a little bit of an impulse purchase
and the car was somewhat misrepresented.
- Is that late in the evening or early in the evening?
- It was kind of late, yeah.
(laughing)
- Well, hey, it doesn't look like you did too bad,
this is pretty cool.
- Yeah, the car looks pretty solid,
the bones are pretty good, but the drive home
from picking it up at the transport was a little scary.
- [Davin] Hence, the steering questions?
- [Todd] Yep.
- [Davin] Well, Matt, it looks pretty good.
Let's get this project rolling.
- I'm ready to tear into it.
- [Todd] The car came from an eBay auction.
The auction ended on New Year's Eve,
and I ended up winning the auction.
I think it was like 10:00 at night
and it was the same night that I met
my girlfriend now, and I remember her saying
she wanted to drive it and I was like, "For sure,"
and that was almost four years ago.
- [Matt] I'm going to look at what he has now,
'cause we're going to want to try to start this
before we tear out all the wires,
and see if I can just kind of reconnect things
based off this diagram.
- [Davin] I'm thinking part of the issue with steering
is whatever's going on in this front corner,
'cause it should not wobble like that.
So, we're going to need to pull the hubcap,
get the wheel out of the way,
and let's look at our suspension pinpoints
and see what's loose, 'cause that's not good.
(hammer pounding)
- Got her.
What I see here is a big ridge that's wore in here.
- [Todd] Ah. - [Davin] Hey Matt.
- [Matt] Yeah.
- [Davin] I think I found out the problem
with this right front corner.
- Yeah?
- [Davin] So, these link pins,
there's a large wear area, see it?
- So we thinking we need those?
- [Davin] Yeah, we need some fresh ones of these.
Alright, was that battery taking any charge at all?
- It appears the battery's starting to hold a charge.
I had 5.9 and it wasn't dropping like a rock.
So, I've got it hooked up still.
The charger's just acting real funny on it.
- Okay.
- So, we can hook this back up I think and try to crank it.
5.9 should be enough at least to spin the starter
and see if we need a starter or not.
- [Davin] Alright, can you ... do you wanna fire the ...
Try the key up there?
Just to see if that switch portion of the key works?
- Ready? - [Davin] Yeah.
- [Matt] It's not cranking,
but that doesn't mean the wires are connected.
- [Davin] Yeah. Okay. I'll ...
Let me catch it from down here then.
I'm getting a spark, but I'm not getting any ...
- [Matt] It's not kicking over?
- [Davin] No. We'll add that to the list is all,
no big deal.
- [Matt] I'm just going to change out
this electrical harness because the old one's
been painted over, there's a bunch of black wires
I'm not really sure what's going on with those,
and with only three days to get this Beetle done,
I'm not going to waste any time on it.
Normally with a car, the electrical harness
is going to run along the floor pan,
but with these Beetles, they run up through the roof.
So, before I pull this old wiring harness out,
what I need to do is tie a string to it,
pull it through the top so I don't lose my channel,
then use that string to pull the new harness back in.
I've got the wire harness ran back,
and I've got the circuitry
for all of the lights back here done.
Now, we're missing some parts for those lights,
but once we have 'em, plug 'em in,
we should have tail lights, turn signal, brake lights,
and a little light for our license plate should work.
- I wanna pull this drum off, not only so I can inspect
the brake shoes and such, we do have a little bit of leak
that appears to be transaxle grease
from the seal on the shaft,
so as long as that seal is used someplace now,
we can cross-reference and get it.
- So, since this car had those little
flip out side turn signals,
it's got a slightly different harness here to run to those.
The new harness doesn't have accommodation for those,
and I don't want to remove this,
since I don't have something to replace it with.
So, I'm going to be thinking a little bit here.
- The next thing we have, to make this run
and go down the road, is to figure out why the clutch
doesn't want to disengage or work right.
Why don't we just pull the clutch pedal
right out of the way.
So that's what our clutch cable hooks onto.
Should we give it a go? There it is.
Alright, so I see two things
that were wrong with this clutch.
Basically the cable wasn't returning smoothly
because it was hanging up in the casing.
Secondly, it was so tight
that it wouldn't disengage the arm.
So, basically, it was always applying,
even when the pedal was returned.
So, Todd and I are going to grease up this old cable
and put it right back in, and go from there.
- I bench tested these side markers and they didn't work,
but I went ahead and wired that other side
and it popped out, so my guess is bench testing it either
didn't make a good enough connection
or that battery was just too gone to do the job.
- The brake pedal keeps wanting
to keep falling into the floor forward.
The pedal stop is broke.
That little tab is off of here.
If I take a small bolt and a nut and weld it on here,
I think I can make a stop.
I'm hoping my assessment of the damage
here on that pedal arm will work,
and my brake pedal will sit where it's supposed to sit.
- Alright, so far, headlights are done, wired, happy.
The rear harness is basically done.
The ignition switch is completely wired.
I'm working on the headlight switch.
The fuse box, which really only powers brakes,
headlights, turn signals, that sort of thing,
and then I've got this turn signal harness
that I made and refinished,
and really I'm just tidying up a few last things,
and then we're going to start putting fuses in it
and we'll think about that new battery.
- Fancy new starter.
Let's see if it's the same as our other one.
It looks like it's the same, cool.
Matt, we got a fresh starter.
(Matt whoops)
Alright, I'm done here, I'm going to slide on out.
- I think we're pretty well set under here,
so I'm going to pop the battery in,
and then we're going to see if she'll start.
Alright, contact.
(engine revs and starts, then dies)
- We don't have any fuel coming up yet,
but I wouldn't ... that doesn't surprise me.
- It's got a long ways to go.
- I'll keep it running this time with some fuel here.
- Alright.
Alright, ready?
- [Davin] Yeah.
(engine revs and starts)
What do you think of that, Todd?
- That's awesome. I love it, I love it.
- [Davin] Let's shut her down.
- [Matt] Alright.
- [Davin] Nice. - [Todd] Nice.
- [Matt] There you go.
- [Todd] It lives.
- [Matt] One running Volkswagen.
- [Todd] It's been four years.
- [Matt] There we go. - [Davin] Nice.
- [Tood] Thanks, fellas.
- Day one. - Day one, success.
Alright, let's tidy up some wrenches so we've got somewhat
of a clean start for the morning, and ...
- Yeah. - [Matt] Sounds good.
- Call it happy hour.
- When I saw that The Wrenchmen came up
and it was a new series, I clicked on it
and I watched a couple episodes,
and I think I sent a Facebook message to Haggerty instantly.
I just put a picture of this car and told a little story
about where it came from and how I couldn't get it running.
So, I got an email from, I'm not sure who it was,
it was just the Haggerty Facebook account,
which I guess was Matt, and said that The Wrenchmen
were interested in this project and I was thrilled.
- Well, it was a good day yesterday.
- It was, yeah.
- Well I got some of those oddball parts
that showed up yesterday,
so I'm going to put the seal kit in the back end here,
and we gotta tidy up the brakes all the way around.
- Yeah, and I'll finish up the little bit of electrical
stuff I've got left and probably swap out some fluids
before we get going too far.
- Well let's get after it. - Yep.
- I'm going to initially just work on
getting all this stuff cleaned up.
Because, the seals were just leaking everywhere.
It soaked this brake shoe,
so I need to change the brake shoes out.
And then, I'm going to put a fresh seal into the cap
and then the subsequent seals that seal off that shaft
from all the fluid from the transaxle coming out.
- Right now I'm trying to figure out
some of the fuse box wiring,
because they're not real descriptive
in the instructions that came with the wiring kit.
So I'm having to trace down wires
with the multimeter instead of just
blindly following the kit.
The way you use a multimeter to figure out where a wire goes
is you set it to your ohm setting,
which tests continuity, so you test this side,
let's say I want to see if for sure this red line
goes over to this red line.
There you go, now I see that it's zero ohms between the two,
which means those are directly connected.
- Alright, so we're back over here on this right front.
If you remember, when we tore it apart
we had some issues with wear,
and this whole front corner was just rocking like crazy.
So, it wore out these upper and lower pins.
So, here's what a new one looks like.
This is actually a good used one.
But, a fresh one doesn't have any ridges in it,
and it won't lollygag around like this.
It won't be bouncing all over.
So, I'm going to knock these out,
grease them up real nice, they should slip in fairly well.
Clean everything up,
and get this all buttoned back together.
We got those pins all installed.
They're tight, everything feels good here.
Got a little rock that's a little bit of wear
from that king pin, but it'll be just fine.
I just need to get this drum cleaned up,
repack the bearings, get everything put together,
tighten it down, and then this corner's done
and we'll get on to the left side.
- Now that I've got the electrical all done,
it's time for some oil.
(rock music)
- So, fresh wires, fresh plugs, new cap, and a new rotor.
Points look fine, that's it, we're done here.
- Alright, Davin, you got it to steer, stop, and shift.
- And you got it to start,
because you got that wiring all straightened out.
- [Matt] I did.
- [Davin] And the headlights work, tail lights work,
so at this point, I think there's
one thing left to do, Todd.
- [Todd] Let's take it for a ride.
- [Davin] Alright, let's do it.
- [Matt] Hop in, man.
(rock music)
- It's not slipping, right?
- Alright. - There's third gear.
- Nice. (laughing) Cool, good deal.
- [Todd] Yeah, so when I got this car
three and a half years ago, it was New Year's Eve,
and I ended up meeting Colleen at a party
and I showed her this auction that I just won
and I promised her that I'd give her a ride in it,
and I haven't been able to make good on that promise.
I'm so excited that I can do that now.
- This is awesome! (laughing)
- Davin, I don't know about you,
but I'm pretty proud of that little bug.
- That little bug sounds really nice and it looks pretty.
- That's right.
- Well hey, I think Todd's gonna have fun,
and we got one more classic back out on the road.
- We did. Good job, sir.
- Likewise. - Alright.
- Let's go to our next adventure.
- Yeah.
What do you suppose the name of that bar is going to be?
- I'm not sure, but I bet you ...
(rock music)
- [Todd] I feel like I got a gift here.
This is heaven, a crew like this show up
and just sort of take care of it, is huge.
And, the Wrenchmen and everybody that's involved,
they're straight up.
Everybody does their job, works hard, is competent
and super nice, everybody on the team.
It was really a pleasure.
(rock music)