Winter Beater Build- '66 BBW Custom Short/Fleet with Heat!

[theastronaut]

I kinda strayed from my original plans for Goldilocks (just throwing it back together and driving it ) so now it's two winters later and I'm still driving around in my '64 VW with no heat. There's no easy way to add heat to the VW so I thought that I'd find a beater to drive this winter and sell it next tax return season when people have money burning a hole in their pocket. I went and looked at a '89 Conquest TSi but the owner over-represented it so I passed on it. I don't check Craigslist often so I usually miss all the deals, but somehow managed to snag this one.

It had been posted three days when I first saw it so I almost didn't bother to email the owner. I did anyways, and he sent back "Call Saturday for directions, best offer takes the truck." So I figured that he was trying to get everyone there on Saturday to create an "auction" of people throwing out offers. It wasn't looking too hopefull at that point.

So this morning dad and I headed out at 7am to go look at it. We tried calling around 7:30 but got no answer. Left a message and the wait began... by 8:30 we decided to hit the local jockey lot a few miles away. He calls around 9 and says that he got in late, and would be ready around 12 for us to come look. At 10:30 he calls back with directions so we go on over to his house.

No one else had shown up to look at the truck. I asked if he'd had any interest from the Craigslist ad and he said that he got over 30 emails but no one calling back wanting to go look. We looked it over, tried cranking it, then made an offer. He countered with "let me check with the wife"... We ended up making a deal after a bit of haggling and drug it home a few hours later.

It has a 250 and three speed, all the Custom options, a thrift-air heater (heat!), cluster with gauges, and supposedly has a new clutch with zero miles. The shift linkage is hung up so I gotta check that out. There is a good bit of rust throughout the truck, more than I'd be willing to fix. The sliding rear window and camper mirrors will be the first things to go. Then the normal items; brakes, tune up parts, fluid changes. Might lower it? It has two new rear tires with thin whitewalls and I wanna get two matching for the fronts. It has a steel sheet welded in the bed but I think I'll use the maple bed wood that came with Goldilocks since I want oak for 'Locks.


I'm counting on you guys- gotta keep this from snowballing into something bigger...


On to the pics...

How it looked when we arrived.









After bringing it home and pressure washing it. Looks 1000x better already! It was getting dark so had to call it a day.