Looking at most of the Speedster replica builds, they all seem to opt for a plywood base on top of the floor pans. This creates a new clean and flat surface once the body has been mated with the chassis After some templating out of cardboard and a little bit…
With the chassis prepared, painted and cured, it is time to re-attached all of the components that we had previously built, plus a few new items as well. The following photos show the new IRS suspension installed, new shocks, hard-brake lines, transmission, drive-shafts, and engine. You can also now see,…
The chassis is looking in pretty good condition, but there is some surface rust on areas that have been worked on. First job is to remove the original beetle seat mounts which will not be used in the final car, then grinding and sanding down any surface rust, before paint….
After many more months than expected, the body and shortened chassis have finally arrived. Overall very happy with the work, but some damage to the gelcoat in places, but that is made up by good solid engineering and bespoke design in others. There will not be much done on the…
The initial idea when starting this project was to create a EV powered 356 Replica. However, when pricing things up and looking at potential lead time, we decided to go for a traditional ICE route – at least for now… Therefore, we picked up a good little runner on eBay…
The original transmission that came with the chassis was for the original swing-axle setup, so we needed to swap out the box for an IRS (independent rear suspension) one. We have also gone with an uprated (Pro Street) from CSP in Germany to cope with the potential future torque from…
The initial phase of our build is now complete, which included: All of this took around one month, from a standing start of really not knowing what needed to be done, plus ordering parts, and finding the spare time to do the work in a freezing cold garage. The photo…
Today we fitted the anti-roll bar, or sway bar as called by some. This should help reduce roll / lean under cornering, especially if we are adding weight to the front with a large battery pack. As is often the case with classic cars, installation was not quite as straightforward…
Today we took advantage of the good weather and did a little bit of spray painting. We are going with the original Silver Beige (L466) colour and managed to get a really good rattle can from Wolfsburg West. After a good sanding down, we hung the parts from the pergola…
The new steering column arrived today from Egypt, curtesy of eBay. I managed to track this one down, which is off an Oval Screen Beetle (circa 1958), as I wanted to match the original 356 steering column setup; including the horn mechanism. Upon first inspection, I thought that the seller…