The birth of the Bumble Buggy.

My love of VWs started when I was a kid. My parents were divorced and my dad used to come pick us up in his bus when my brother and I would visit him for the summer. The seed was planted for both my older brother and I at that time. It lay dormant in me for some time until he bought a Super Beetle in high school. I'm sure my brother has good memories of that car and so do I. One of my favorites was when he whipped out of the library one day. The passenger seat came off the track and I (seat and all) ended up sitting in back, first scared, then laughing. Good times.

Eventually I managed to get my own little German wonder. I was well out of college and past my car on the way home. I called the guy, after consulting with my wife, and decided to go look at it. I looked it over well and the only rust I found was under the battery tray which is very common. I decided it was a good value and wrote the guy a check. I fired it up and was off. I instantly was in love with my little faded red bug and vowed to take good care of it. I started to learn all things air cooled like adjusting the valves and the breaks. The car is brilliant in its simplicity and has more character in its left headlight than most cars have from bumper to bumper.

Due to circumstances well within my control, I found myself unemployed not long after I bought it. I looked for a job within my profession while collecting unemployment. I was unable to find one before the checks ran out. So, in desperation, I applied for a job delivering pizza. Imagine the managers surprise when I pull up on my first day of work in a thirty plus year old car. He didn't like it one bit. He would learn better. I put seventy five thousand miles on that little car during that two year stretch and I was the only driver who never called in to work for a break down. On more than one occasion I had a customer tip a couple extra bucks when they saw my bug idling in the driveway. I also had several people try to buy the car from me. One guy offered me four grand for it. I didn't take him seriously and told him "You'll get my bug when you pry it from my cold dead hands." This became my standard answer when people offered to buy it.

Fast forward a couple years and I had found work within my chosen profession. One day, while driving my bug to work the clutch started slipping. The was the first real problem I had. I limped my faithful little car home. Even with a mechanical problem it never left me stranded. I decided it was time to start the restoration. I bought another car so I could get back and forth to work while my bug underwent it's transformation. I started to break the car down and found that I had let the cancer (rust) get too bad. As I removed the fenders and large chunks of metal came out when I removed the bolts. The door pillars were also rusted all to hell under the paint. I reflected long and hard about what to do with it. Giving up on the little car was unthinkable after all we'd been through together. I wanted to restore it but the thought of some unseen rust coming back through after I was done wasn't an option. I had never attempted any body work before and wasn't confident in my skills. Truth be told, I have no formal training in mechanics whatsoever. I have an aptitude and that's all. Everything I've learned up to this point has been from digging in and getting it done. At any rate, I decided that I was going to transform my Beetle into a Manx.

The Manx was the father of all Fiberglas dune buggies. Originally designed by Bruce Meyers, the little kit car took the country by storm for it's ease of construction and plentiful and cheap "donor" cars. When Bruce became successful selling his kit many other companies started to copy the style of the car. Thus came a flood of buggies that are now referred to as "clones" by buggy enthusiasts.

I started to scour The Samba for potential buggy bodies to buy. I was short on funds at the time and I happened to find a guy that was selling, what appeared to be, a solid Manx clone body. I contacted him and found that he was willing to trade the body for some of the '68 parts I had. SWEET! So the body, technically, didn't cost me anything but gas to go get it. It was, however in Oklahoma (hell and gone from Atlanta , GA). It so happened that a guy I knew was getting married in Southern Louisiana and I decided to go pick up the body when I went that direction. I took it as fate. In the end the body only cost me about eighty bucks in gas, two fenders, and one deck lid off my bug. After doing a little research I've determined that my car is a Fiberfab Clodhopper. I think the body has nice lines and I've seen a couple finished that look great.

I'm starting this blog to chronicle the building process that I'm going through to assemble this car. This is to provide a free source of inspiration and ideas about building one of these cars. I've already been working on the car for about a year and I'll be trying to go in chronological order and remember as much stuff as possible about the build. I will also post pics of my progress. Once I'm up to date, I'll start posting weekly updates. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, give advise, tell me I'm an idiot or whatever.