Ruby Red Revival by Ninjapants

6 minute(s) of a 27 minute read

So here you can see what I mean about the damage to the bumper. This is after I reshaped it best I could. Ohh and you can also see kind of the work that turtle wax stuff did for the bumpers if you compare them to the pictures from Mass above.

You can also see on the rear bumper a spot where a very very old bumper sticker was. It's semi metallic kind of like a registrations sticker or something. It's another reason she wants to keep the old bumpers. With the work we're doing she wants to keep some history of where the car has been. We don't mind cleaning them up but the great thing about having a car that's almost half a century old is the history. We don't know the full history but the car shows some signs and we don't want to remove that history by restoring it completely.

So until I have an extra hand from my buddy for the brake system, the next step in the project to getting her road worthy is the headlights. I planned on just popping them back in but when I grabbed them out of the car I realized the age of the car had taken its toll. The insides of the housings had peeling paint and some rust and after a nice fresh paint job the last thing I want is to have nasty headlights. So I've taken the headlights apart and started going to town to get the old paint and rust off to have a fresh surface to prime and paint.

Getting to the sanding

One housing done, second disassembled and ready to be sanded.

All the headlights parts, old and new.

And here is where I need some help from the acvw gurus. I only had clips holding down then inner lens, but nothing to hold the chrome ring and seal tight. Should I have more clips? Also I have 2 seals. I know the larger one goes between the lens, chrome ring, and the body, but how exactly? There's a small ridge and I'm not sure exactly how it fits in. It was a while ago we took these out and the old seals were so dry and rotten they fell apart as we removed the lights. Also I have another seal that has a groove in the middle of it. How does this go on? I looked on the samba and found resources to assemble the headlights but they are all for different styles. If some one can point me to a link or in the right direction it would be appreciated. Here's a picture of the 2 seals for reference.

So this is the post that is for headlight assembly of this model of beetle but these are not the headlights I have. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/vie...light+assembly

I don't have the tensioner, a little post on the inner bucket, or c ring or anything of that sort. My posts for the asjustment screws also look different and were inserted on the outside of the rubber gromets as shown above.

Ok so I searched more in depth and found what I needed for info about the seals. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/vie...light+assembly

I'm still pretty sure though that I'm missing clips though. I'm thinking I need 6 more based off most info I've found. I had 4 holding the retainer ring and headlight to the bucket but now for the chrome ring. From what I've read though I should have 4 for the chrome ring and 3 for the headlight itself. I'm thinking I should just order 10 more to be safe.

hahah yea other than the creases in the one we lucked out, but that's minor, just more history and yea the samba search sucks compared to vortex, I had to read a crap load of threads to find what i was looking for but I got the seals sorted out which is good. And yea I found the clips, shipping is more than the clips though. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I need to order.

I checked cip1, WW, and mam and mam was the cheapest for the clips, 1.99 for a set of 7 (apparently there are different clips for the lens and the retaining ring) and their shipping was the cheapest too. But at every site even ordering 14 clips (it says you need 7 per side for the lens to chrome ring) shipping was more expensive than the parts. cip1 and WW are in CA while mam is in Illinois I believe. Which being here on the east makes sense that their shipping is cheaper, but their shipping is a flat rate for the continental US. The thing I'm wondering is about the clip styles. Some resources and vendors say the clips are the same for the whole unit while others say the retaining ring and lens use different clips. mam actually has 2 different lens clip types but doesn't state the difference between the two.