Karmann Ghia Blog
Initial purchase: 8/14/2013 (Weds)

• Model Year: 1973 (made in February of that year)
• Condition: unknown, but seemed promising - turned out to be way more work than I'd anticipated.
• Budget was 10k - but I ended up going way past this. I'll spare you the details. :(

8/14 (Weds):

Hours spent: 3 hrs.

8/16 (Fri):

So I had to drop off the UHaul after unloading the Ghia at my house.

Yep, complete waste of time. Later this afternoon, the owner got back in touch with me and apologized and said usually people aren't working on Saturday (but I was promised someone'd be there this morning!) Gyuh.... upon dropping it off at my house, my next door and across-the-street neighbors all pitched in to help move it into my garage. Pretty light car without an engine.

Not to let a Saturday go to waste, I started on removing the moonroof that someone carved into the top of this thing (tragic!!) and cut out a replacement piece of sheet metal. Fits like a glove. Now I just need an English Wheel to get that roof curve right...

8/18 (Sun):

So, whilst hammering the flywheel back onto the crankshaft, it turns out that the table holding the engine up wasn't sufficiently stable, so the whole thing went toppling down. My friend who was there helping out reached out to 'save' the engine but unfortunately only ended up cutting his poor hand.

The engine may not have sustained too much damage though - the crank pulley took most of the impact force and one of the bolts that holds the exhaust pipe is completely bent. I can still turn the flywheel, but I suppose we'll find out when we start it up for the first time. *sigh*

8/23 (Fri):

My beloved nephew also came over this evening so we put together a 'parts table' cuz heaven knows I'm gonna need as much storage space as I can get as I tear down this car to nothing.

On Saturday, I spent time cutting out replacement grommets for the intake manifold.

Chris, my bro-mo-sexual life partner, helped me modify the new parts table to hold more stuff. It was a good excuse to use the new 21 gal. compressor I purchased from Harbour Freight on Friday

I guess now is a good time to discuss what color I'd like to paint it... Orange! However, I'm not happy with the classic 'gull orange' that is original to these cars... need something more eye popping, but not gawdy... no metallic sparkles either. Yecch!

8/25 (Sun):

9/1 (Sun):

It's especially a pity that I have to tear out the nice interior... I've been working on using a razor blade to also get rid of that hideous tinting off of all windows except the front windshield... I think the rear defroster is going to be hard to preserve...

9/7 (Sat):

I'm also running out of space to put stuff. What I wouldn't do for a third car space in my garage!

The glass came out pretty easily too, you just push on it and the rubber gasket around it isn't glued to anything. Amazing how it just came out like that. Wonder how I'm going to reinstall?

9/9 (Mon):

Also, I made a nice holder for all the glass to sit in and not take up so much space in the garage lying flat.

Took forever to figure out, but I saw a guy on youtube remove a VW Beetle seat - ya just have to lift the lever at the bottom and scoot the seat all the way forward on the runners and it eventually slides right off! These seats are in great shape...

9/19 (Thurs):

I'm on the fence as to whether I want to invest the time and energy to restore this unit... 1969 was a good year; it has those cool tail lights but the front is a 1971 (someone hacked it in two). And, can you believe it? Someone put a danged moonroof on this one too!! Gyaaah!!

Anyhoos, I made a nice chrome holder and also made a pair of LED-based turned signals... they should be more energy efficient than the orginials. I resin-casted the shape.

9/22 (Sun):

Driving around Ft. Collins, I spotted a Ford GT and fell in love with the orange color... After a bit of internet searching, I discovered that this color is called "Grabber Orange" - my mind is offically set up.

9/25 (Weds):

Well, the wires are pulled, the glass is out, the dash is stripped and the enterior is lying on a pile in my garage... time for the shop to take it from here!

10/2 (Weds):

On the plus side, I now have enough space in my garage to park an actual vehicle! With the weather getting colder, it's kinda nice to shelter your car overnight so that it's not such a pain to de-ice in the mornings.

Did I mention that I didn't get a title with this vehicle? The VIN matches the chassis, but the title seems to have disappeared (all I got was the folder with repair receipts pictured below). Normally this wouldn't be a problem except that the previous owner never bothered registering it in his own name... so technically it still belongs to some fellah in Arizona... my heart is starting to ache with angst...

10/10 (Thurs):

Particularly, the rockers... someone bondo'd over rust and basically they turned into hard-shelled M&M's - shiny on the outside, but mud on the inside. Luckily, Amazon sold a pair or replacement rockers for $50. Expensive week... it'll be nice when all this is over.

While I was shopping around Goodwill (because I'm very poor now), I found a nice speaker box. Cutting holes into a classic car to accommodate speakers is the wrong way to do things. Speaker box is the way to go.

11/2 (Sat):

I made it my mission to remove the chassis from the frame by removing all the body bolts. There are a few things that have to happen before you can take off the body in addition to removing the bolts. The steering column has to be taken off (I think I broke my left ring finger doing this) and the brake line.

Well, I didn't complete this mission, but at least I got a good head start on it. It doesn't help that someone welded parts of the body onto the chassis (a huge no-no). Fewer things are starting to surprise me...

11/3 (Sun):

I should also mention that I've been working on a bonded title. The Arizona Dept of Transportation has already responded to my request for a VIN search by telling that the vehicle is 'not in my name' - whatever that means. They instructed me to start with Colorado's DOT's VIN inspection (the lady at the DMV told me otherwise, but oh well). I don't care what kind of title I get... just gotta have this resolved.

11/3 (Sun):

11/5 (Tues):

Took apart the deck lid handle in the shop today. The glass is very cracked from years of ice freezing then melting. Hopefully my efforts will amount to a better seal from moisture.

11/15 (Fri):

Today I had to haul my vehicle all the way up to the Golden Colorado police department to get the title inspected. It was not a fun trip.

Also, note that there's some clear evidence of driver side quarter panel collision. Ugly stuff.

11/27 (Weds/Hanukkah):

This is turning into an incredible expense. I've decided to stick with the original 70's style tail lights.

There's been a ton of shoddy repairs to whatever collision happened in the driver's side quarter panel. It's gonna cost me.

12/12 (Thurs):

Repairing the wheel wells cost a small fortune.

Got the antenna hole sealed.

Also sealed up a good number of the chrome mount holes. Also, we've cannibolized parts off of my red donor Ghia for the headlight sockets.

2/21/2014 (Fri):

The rockers are completely rusted and need to be replaced.

The moon roof replacement appears to be coming along just fine. Wish I'd purchased an english wheel of my own with the money this has cost me...

3/13/2014 (Thurs):

Finally got the body off the chassis. Unfortunately, the body shop seems to have little care as to how much 'outside' time the chassis gets, exposed to the elements

Both chassis and body are in pretty bad shape. Tons of fibre glass and cheapo newspaper filler repairs... unbelievable.

Hopefully they've been leveraging my donor red ghia which I have hauled onto their lot for their use.

3/26/2014 (Fri):

I found the color I've always wanted... ignore what I said before about the Ford GT color.... my real color is in an Audi TT called Papaya Orange.... it's this or nothing!!!

The moonroof is sealed.

I also found a clump of bondo inside one of my heat exchangers... a rather large chunk I might add.

4/24/2014 (Thurs):

They sealed up the wheel wells pretty well and the rockers are pretty much done.

5/23/2014 (Fri):

Time for a little sanding now that we have the primer coat on the body.

6/15/2014 (Fri):

The day has finally come! The car is beautiful... but at what cost? AT WHAT COST??