The pictures below show the vehicles engine and trunk compartment. For those of you who are not familiar with the VW Beetle: the boxer engine compartment is in the back and the trunk compartment is in the front.....
Again, the general impression to me was very little rust compared to the age of the car at that time (23 years). Of course the retainer strips that hold the hood rubbers suffered heavily from rust, but this is also often seen by even much younger Beetles. These strips are made from very thin (appr. 0,6 mm) bended sheet metal and are spotwelded to the cars body. Although they are coated to protect them from rusting,, they are very vulnerable because they keep the water in between the very small seams. In fact, a better name for these strips would be "water retainer strips". Interesting detail: these strips are the one part that have remained unchanged almost during the whole fabrication period of the Beetle ! The Beetles that are now produced in Mexico have a new type of rubber that does not need a metal retaining strip anymore.
The electrical wiring has been "mixed up somewhat". The wiring of this Beetle is very straightforward and is of the "spaghetti" type. Someone installed additional electrical components (like a radio) and the additional power cables were connected directly to the fuse box.
Broken leads were repaired by the "cut and paste" method: cut out the bad part of the wire and install a new wire between borh ends, no matter what color or size.
