Dave's 1971 1302 Not-So-Secret, Secret Project Build

[owdlvr]

Sorry for the lack of updates here. I had to work on the Red German Look beetle to get it ready...and I was a little distracted in November and early December...







So yeah, in addition to Classic Car Adventures, Hagerty, the car projects...now we gotta plan a wedding! Thankfully we're going to do it in 2026, which gives me time to do the Family Heirloom in time for the wedding. Eeek.

Back to the Rally Bug, I've been working on all the little details that take forever but seem like you're doing nothing. Programming wise, I have all the lights, wipers and accessories working correctly. The tach signal was super static-y and jumpy, but installing Autometers 9116 Tachometer signal filter solved that problem. I've installed most of the blacked-out trim, but the paint didn't work on two front pieces...so they are getting redone for the third time. Windows were almost ready to go in, but it turns out this really is a '71 shell, and not the '72 I thought it was (must be the pan!) so the rear window rubber was wrong. Bob and I have worked a few nights getting all the other seals in, and I'm pleased to say that once we pop the windows in...it's ready for PPF and a test drive.








(the red things need to become black...)

I did have to spend a bunch of time reworking the mechanical setup of the Hydraulic clutch. I could't get it to disengage with my initial settings, but a bit of time monkeying around with the slave setup and it's all working well. The worn Hargett shifter and a beetle box are a TERRIBLE combination. I need to road test it to see how bad it is, but I've tuned it up as much as I can on the axle stands and it's passible...but not great. I will say it's about as good as the Porsche 901 box was with the worn Hargett shifter...but in that case, when you ground syncros it was easy to say "ah well, they were bad anyways". On a freshly rebuilt box, it's going to hurt! Mark Hargett and I have been talking, and I think with an NDA he is going to send me the files I need to CNC replacement bits for the worn parts. So that's great.



Unfortunately I can't get the CB fuel injection software to communicate with the box using my new PC laptop that I had to buy to communicate with the Aim PDM. It will, however, communicate with my old Mac laptop running parallels. It really shouldn't work this way, and should work the other! Oh well...guess I get to carry three laptops around with me now? FI, PDM, and work laptops. Good thing I used all that carbon for weight savings :P



If you spent anytime on social media in November 2025, you learned from RWB that tow hooks should be glued on with Urethane and held with green masking tape until it has set. I figured why not up the ante, and 3D print my tow hook before gluing it on?! Lightweight, and the glue won't fail if you try and use it!



Just kidding. It's a cupholder. No urethane was used for it's installation.

So...that's where we sit. Waiting for new window seals, a new windshield, and I need to quote the PPF install with a guy who will come to my house to do it. Pretty much ready for road testing, the weather is perfect for it (no snow, no salt, nice temperatures)...and I'm leaving for a work trip. Sigh. At least it's going to be ready for the 2025 driving season!

-Dave

[Scotts73SB]

Thats a good distraction! Congrats! Love all the updates and seeing the progress! New Year new Drives! Good luck!

[owdlvr]

A brief update of various things that I probably should have taken more photos of…





For years my intercom set have been a US military pair that I re-keyed to work with the Peltor intercom. Happened to see a pair of Zero Noise transit headsets while at a race track in California, and decided to head home with them. 3D printed a quick hanger to toss them behind the passenger seat. You may wonder why I’m okay with them on an angle, and touching the seat, but it’s pretty simple; I need to keep as much space between the headrests for passing event boxes and gear into the back area.







Also 3D printed a modified cupholder/brace for the shifter, which allows me to place the Paluxette espresso machine in a useable spot. “Why,” you might ask, “is this going in your Rally Beetle?” Well, that one is pretty simple. You know the black beetle dash with a silver coffee maker on it, that gets posted to your favourite Volkswagen group every month? Usually with the caption “in 1960 a dash mounted coffee maker was a VW accessory” (or similar). That’s my 1958 Beetle, my Hertella coffee machine, and my photo that is being used without credit and an incorrect caption. So, car mounted coffee makers has kinda become one of my “things”. Figured might as well put one in here too :P



Rear bumper is mounted, still haven’t gotten rid of the red bolt washers on the apron, but ‘eventually’…



I got multi-colour printing working on my 3D printer. I think in order to make the text work better I may need to move to a 0.2 nozzle instead of the stock 0.4, but overall I’m pretty happy with the results I’m getting.







Built a new floor plate, with dead pedal. On the one hand, it looks great and I’m quite happy with it. On the other hand, I now realize I should have put a ‘bubble’ above the clutch pedal as well. The brake, totally fine. I may see if I can lower the plate on top of the clutch master. I need to road test it to figure out if I need to modify it, but we’ve got salt on the roads and snow coming, so that isn’t going to happen quickly.














Running boards, and the scary part, mirrors have been mounted. The mirrors are temporary, but long-term temporary. I have different set of mirrors that I really want to use, but no good way to mount them to the car. Eventually I will use these mounts, and use the 3D printer to make mounts for the mirrors that I want…and eventually CNC them.





Glass is in…and these photos are totally out of order :P



Hoping to get the car outside in the sun tomorrow for some real photographs. But it’s ready for road-testing!

[owdlvr]

Good news! The Rally Bug left the garage today for a quick photo shoot. Roads are still salty, so I could only do a 1st gear and reverse gear run on the driveway :P

Bad news! It looks like a great German Look car (in my opinion) but it's not the Rally Bug. I am definitely going to have to do something about that...but without all the stickers.









Ran out of time before I could get some interior shots.

-Dave

[wouter1303]

The bug is looking good again Dave.
But like you said, not like the Rally Bug.
Why not adding the stickers again? Not going to be an 'Hommage bug' again?

[owdlvr]

Originally Posted by wouter1303

Why not adding the stickers again? Not going to be an 'Hommage bug' again?

Honestly? I'm pretty tired of answering the "Look it's Herbie!", or "Your Herbie decals are wrong" at the gas station. I'll be getting a few sets of low-tack Salzburg decals, so we can dress it up for the right occasions.

But...I've got a spare hood.

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Which I painted black on the inside, and wrapped with matte vinyl on the outside. Of course, I forgot to do the inside of the fresh-air vents, so I spent a bunch of time with a little paint brush...





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Need to get a buddy to help me out, but we're going to mount up the black hoods and build a new rally light bar. Thinking I'm going to run it with the VW GT look, minus the roof stripe and the side decals.



-Dave

[wouter1303]

Do they really say that? Oh man, that stings indeed.
I really like the flat black with this color, keep up the good work

[owdlvr]

Hmmm....



Started to work on the mirrors I really want to have on the car. This starts with creating an "adapter" that gets the mirror in the spot that I want it to be on. Once I have that, I can then work on modelling a much nicer looking part to join the mirror to the base. But first, the adapters. I wanted to have these sitting in the orientation shown, but about 2"(~50mm) closer to the body. Only problem? There isn't enough glass to see anything useful. If this was a stage rally car, it's "good enough" but on the street, unacceptable. We're going to have to rotate to an uglier 90deg fitment...



Orientated this way, I can actually see enough to make these useful (I think) in driving. I whipped up some mounts that are strong enough for street testing, and will wait until the snow subsides and I can road test the fitment. This will also give me enough time to learn how to "loft between two planes", a 3D modelling skill I don't yet have. I'm completely self taught, and this will be another fun mental skill to learn. But for now? "good enough".





I've been working on a foot plate solution that gives me enough heel clearance for my clutch foot. The raw plate looks a right-mess out of the car, but once fitted it's actually tight and square to everything. Sometimes, you just have to pull out the body hammer and work things until they fit right :P



Some quick black paint on it for now. I think I want to drive it for a bit and make sure it's useable before putting the final finish on it. I can't put it in the bender or effectively metal work it if I used my textured finish.



From here the project got a little stuck waiting for parts, and for snow to melt. And so, we started to work on the cosmetics. One of the things I love when looking at other peoples cars is the various event stickers from things they’ve participated on. The Rally Bug has always had this on the side glass, but over the years it’s gotten really busy.



I’m not entirely opposed to it, but the car has looked so clean in my shop for months that I’m wary of redoing all the decals on the glass. So, I thought since race cars normally put their tech decal on the roll bar, maybe I’d try that out for this round? I’m not sure that I’m sold on this. It definitely breaks up the cleanliness of the car, but at least it doesn’t behind the glass? Each event is an advertisement for my business, so I don’t want to get rid of them. But then, on the same token, how many photos of of California event stickers have I taken at things like Good Vibes Breakfast Club…and then never remembered to Google them when I get home?





Okay. I’m not going lie. I like this. Ignore the “clear” hood handle gaskets. They are in the order along with the passenger wiper arm.



Turns out, I like this less. Maybe if the light covers were black?



At this stage I decided to put the stripe on, and now I’m really torn. My buddies are 50/50. Half say it absolutely needs the stripe, half say the stripe should go. I think I might hate it only because my vinyl cutter kept fritzing out, and in the end I had to hand cut 60” of red and white. But hey, I got it straight!



Now, the silver hood IS hanging on the garage wall, so I can go back at anytime (presuming I have a buddy to help me swap). I can’t remove the stripe because it will damage the flat-black wrap, so I’ve decided to leave it until I can at least get the car outside for some proper photographs.

I also swapped the back lid on, which doesn’t match the front since this is semigloss paint and not a wrap. If I decide to stay with the black hoods I will paint or wrap one of the ends so that it matches.



I found a PIAA 540 light cover someone had modelled up with a Transformers theme, and used some of it to model up a PIAA 580 lamp cover. Fairly early into the test print I had a pretty significant error. 3D printing is awesome, until you’re trying to diagnose why something like this happens!

[owdlvr]

Managed to temporarily solve the problem by doing the two colours separately. Covers fit tight though!

[owdlvr]

Alright, not sure why I don't have a photo...but decided after all that the black covers don't look good and we're going with white! :P

Whipped up a couple of rock shields for the O2 sensors:





Started on a skid plate to keep myself from having to re-pan the car again :P





Oh hey! Looks like it's smaller than this skid plate that came off of some rally car of the past that passed through the shop...





Had to make a few adjustments, and that meant trimming and adding some bits. This is obviously far too ugly to actually run with, but it gives me everythign I need to measure and have a plate cut and bent. I don't have the equipment to manage 3/16" thick aluminium, so we'll mock it up and send it out to a fab shop for a nice one-piece bent unit. In the meantime, we'll paint this puppy black and run it!



No idea when I acquired a genuine Kamei front spoiler with cooler holes, but I think it's finally time to take it off the wall and hang it on the front of a car?





Either they were supposed to be painted, or someone put the ABS sheet in the mold upside down...or both.



I'm a big fan of putting mesh in holes to keep stones from hitting the car...but silver mesh in a black spoiler looks terrible. If you paint the mesh, it chips, so you need a system that allows you to touch it up pretty easily. Enter plastidip! A little bit of protection from chipping (since it's rubbery) but also very easy to touch up.







I've also built ducting above and below to help direct airflow into my oil cooler. Was going to do the sides as well, but it turns out my lovely financee has 'borrowed' my contour gauge. Guess that will have to wait!



Taped up the rear fenders, and got it outside for it's first 230km worth of driving! It's absolutely fantastic. Has some issues, the steering wheel is off to the left, I'm going to need to go to the gym for my clutch leg, the speed signal isn't getting to the rally computer, and both the fuel gauge and gear indicators in the PDM need some work. But it's driving, and a BLAST!

The PDM and programming functions into the car is fantastic. Having intermittent wipers is awesome. But I realized as I was driving, there is nothing to indicate that they are on unless it's actually wiping. There isn't a physical switch that has moved. Same with the headlights, if you put them on in the daylight for rain, there is no way to actually know if they are on...since the display screen adjusts the brightness due to outside light levels. Hmmm. A quick 2min with the laptop, reflash the programming, and I now have an indicator icon in the dash for both of them. Sweet!







And then, cuz this is totally normal after 200km, I tore it all apart in a friend's shop in Vancouver.





While I'm on a trip to Florida, he's going to do Paint Protection Film (PPF) on the front fenders, front apron and rear fenders. He'll then do a graphine-nano-ceramic coat on the whole car, after fixing two scuff marks I put in the clear on the roof. When I get back, I'll reassemble the car and it's basically good to go for the driving season! The PPF should keep the paint protected for 10 years, at which point it needs to be steamed off. You then decide if you want to reapply, or let the stone chips begin from that point on!

The minor items from my test drive above should be pretty easy to deal with over a night or two in the shop...so this thread is probably going to be getting pretty quiet soon.

-Dave

[wouter1303]

Always nice to see an update here from this car. On the other hand it is making my wishlist longer and longer on some parts you use on your car.

[volkdent]

Almost a carefree runner!! You’ve done such a great job on this thing, it’s really awesome!