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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

Posted October 05, 2022 5:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: Restorations volkswagen beetle

It's not hard to find videos of dudes going into the woods, dragging out a car and getting it running again. It's not hard to find videos of shops installing the latest air-ride system, LS engine and flashy interior. It's not hard to find videos of guys with knuckle tats throwing sparks off their grinding wheel in slow-motion like that makes them some sort of hero.

It is, however, hard to find videos of people taking the time to fully restore a car and to show every step of the way in minute detail. Some might discount it as boring, uninteresting and backwards. What's flashy about putting a vehicle back together exactly the way it came apart? Forty-five minutes without drama or overly caffeinated personalities doing wacky things or rights-free generic hard rock soundtrack - who'd watch that?

Unfortunately, in this sponsor- and click-driven world we live in, there's little perceived demand for videos simply showing people at work, quietly but earnestly returning a vehicle to like-new condition. Fortunately, there are at least a few people making such videos - people like CT Moog at CT's Garage, who's currently working on a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle that had sat for decades in a field in south Georgia. He first dragged it home just a couple months ago, and he's documented literally every step of the way, from taking it apart to to repairing the body to, in his latest video, reassembling the chassis (including the little hangups along the way). Where others would just skip over, say, rebuilding the steering box or go and buy one already rebuilt, we see here where every nut, bolt, and clip goes. We've included a few highlights here, with the entire playlist available on CT's channel. YouTubers, more like this, please.

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#1

Re: What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

10/05/2022 11:20 AM

Thirty years ago, I'd swear you could have built an entire Beetle from parts you could buy from J.C. Whitney.

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Re: What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

10/06/2022 5:09 AM

Yes, they sold everything including those cool chrome upgrade parts!

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#2

Re: What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

10/05/2022 12:18 PM

Notice anything about the headlights...........they are not fogged after 40+ yrs sitting the elements. Today you are lucky to get 8. Progress is great

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Re: What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

10/05/2022 7:57 PM

I believe the expression is: "Change is inevitable, progress is not."

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Re: What Does it Take to Fully Restore a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle? Follow Along on One Man's Journey

10/06/2022 5:11 AM

Back then, the bulbs were sealed glass. Today, they're made of plastic and the bulb is inside the plastic.

Here's a tip to clean the foggy lenses. Use Motorcycle Plasic cleaner/polish from Meguiars. I like it better than even Plastix.

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