Saving the Beetle's life this weekend

Don't know anything about lift kits but you will like that fan. Unless your shop is dusty and dirty. Then you will hate it. We have 4 of those fans to help keep some of our animals cooled down in hot weather.

Now if you hook a little water mister/fogger to the front of that fan it works really really well cooling that air down. Holler at me if you want info on doing the mister/fogger stuff. Need the right heads on them.

Randy

Tell us all, my man!

Very very simple but let me find where you can get the fogger heads, etc. I usually just ordered a kit that pretty much have all the needed parts from Home Depot and rig multiple foggers up from the 1 kit.

Randy

ok, here is the mister heads you want to use.

I couldn't find the kit that I usually bought but it was marketed as an Arizona mister and came with all the pvc pipe, misters, connections, etc to make a 30 ft long mister. I would take those kits and make a couple of 18inch square misters with 2 heads and tie strap those on the front of the fan. They use very little water and need very little water pressure to work. They will drop the temp by a good 20 degrees.

Randy

NOS, could even trigger them by solenoids! :=]

J.

On Jul 2, 6:14=A0pm, "P.J. Berg" wrote: =2E

Had me worried. Thought maybe you had been hitting marios stash.

Let me guess... the BBQ and fan will be installed on the bed of the Ranger, and you still need a pontoon setup and a swamp to ride it in... while having a tailgate party. Have any gators where U live? You are welcome to try out your amphibious bbq swamp Ranger here in Florida for it's maiden voyage.

Yeah, we have some gators out this way apparently. Someone got torn up by one a few months ago on the Cape Fear River just a couple of miles upstream from where I live. So I started on the body lift today. Got the front bumper off, got the radiator disconnected from the mounts, got tons of stuff disconnected like fuel lines and parts of the fuel injection system. Crazy how much stuff has to get moved around. Only four bolts holding the cab to the frame on this truck. I started on the first one and managed to get it to break off after about a turn and a half. GRRRRRR!!!!!! SNARL!!!!!!! Went through about 6-7 drill bits getting the damn thing drilled out. It was an epic battle and one that's been fought many times in the past, but the outcome was the same as always. I won. :-) It's Miller Time (tm) for now but I'll be back out there again bright and early before it gets hot to work on it some more.

Use an impact wrench with you compressor on bolts suspect to being stuck. Works nearly every time.

J. GRRRRRR!!!!!! SNARL!!!!!!! Went through

C'mon, now. You really think I didn't think of that and try it? The one bolt I tried it on would not budge. At all. The remaining three bolts that hold the cab down are soaking in PB Blaster overnight and I'm gonna hit them with the ol' blue torch first thing in the morning to get things really loosened up. Y'all wish me luck. I'm not giving up.

I did not know you had tried already.

One problem I have had on several occasions, are the impact wrench simply being to small. At work I had one which I used for everyday work, and one big heavy m.f. for all things stuck.. I also had a tiny little almost cute wrench for delicate work.

Also try not to use any extensions as they absorb much of the impacts and torque, sometimes it even helps using the black designated sockets specially designed for impact wrenches.

Are you taking pictures of the process?

J.

P.J. Berg wrote: > [...]sometimes it even helps using the black designated sockets

FWIW, I had a very unhappy experience using a chrome socket on a 1/2" impact wrench. I had a nasty bolt to remove. No heavy duty black socket. My neighbor got a free set of sockets from a toolbox salesman. He gave me the 11/16" socket I needed. I applied it. It exploded into so many pieces I never did find the part that said "Made in", but I did find the part that said, "China".

OK, I got the body lift installed on the cab of the truck. I probably should have read the instructions... I thought I had one bolt left to go this morning. Front passenger side bolt that had broken off. I got that drilled out finally. Started to jack up the body off of the frame to put the 3" lift blocks in. Hmm... That's odd. I wonder why the front tire is off of the ground... Oh, maybe it's because there are two more bolts right at the front "core support" area that I had not noticed in my haste and in my lack of reading the directions. D'oh!!!! I lowered the body back onto the frame and proceeded to remove one of the two bolts and to break the other one. Jeeeeeez!!!!!!!!!!! To make a long story short I used a lot of heat, a lot of PB Blaster, and a LOT of cussing and finally got ALL 6 bolts completely out. Installed the lift blocks and very loosely tightened them down. Checked to be sure both doors close correctly (they do, perfectly) because I noticed while I was jacking the body up on one side that it made the door not quite close right... So I'm good there. Just got to go around and tighten things down at all 6 points and then start adding the extra relocation brackets for the radiator, tranny cooler, emergency brake line, etc, etc. I'll do that tomorrow. Then next weekend I can work on the bed of the truck some. Gonna have to remove the bed-liner to get to the torx nuts that hold the bed down first. Oh joy! I'm saving myself somewhere around $650 by doing this myself instead of letting "We Do Trucks" take care of it for me. That's really my only motivation. I figure with the money I save I can pay for a chunk of the wheels/tires I'm going to get for the truck. Looking good so far... Oh yeah, I'll never buy another "stud extractor kit" again. WASTE of money. I broke two of them off trying to get some broken bolts out and them being broken off in the bolts only made it that much harder to drill the damn bolts out. GRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!! All this for three inches. Hey, that sounds like something my wife would say. HO HO HO! Oh, I'd be taking pictures of the procedure but my wife's out of town with her mom and uncle on a road trip and she has the digital camera. Gonna have to settle for "before/after" pictures on this one.

Got the front half done. Looks pretty dorky without the bed lifted but I'm not touching it again until next weekend.

when I got it all together and started the truck up I backed outof the garage and popped the hood and looked carefully to make sure nobelts were rubbing hoses or anything like that when I suddenlynoticed... water dripping very quickly from the radiator area.AAAAAAGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! A quick inspectionrevealed that I'd bumped the radiator cap while working on the liftkit under the hood and it was only leaking from the cap. Thankgoodness. Would have really sucked if I'd somehow gotten a hole inthe radiator.

it's a ranger, no matter what yo do to it, it will always look dorky....hahahahahahaha

Eat me. :-) It'll look great once I get some 33s slapped on there. Doing this body lift has completely cured me of the desire to want to lift the body of the Beetle. EVER. I will NEVER do another body lift again. Over here snorting BC Powders and guzzling Guinness to try to get over the soreness/pain now.

I see no reason for a body lift on a VW anyway. You don't gain anything other than tire clearance and room inside. I'm 6' 1" and have plenty of room in my Baja. I also have plenty of room for the 31/10.50-15's, and can run 15" x 15" wide rims with paddles without any problems.

I'm very close to buying a pair of 31/11.50-15 LTB's for the back. Very aggressive mud tires, they should work great for my rock crawling, mud slinging trail rides.

Les

blech.... i'd rather eat those neckbones....

body lifts aren't too bad, but i consider them to be more trouble than the small gains are worth... a body lift on a bug always seemed a bit ridiculous to me... then again, the bodylift is, and always has been, a cheap means to get clearance for larger tires.... Good job, though, looks good... as good as a ford can!! LOL

That's right. You tell him where to shove it. Shag, I find your work enjoyable to read. Keep it up.

Isn't a body lift on a beetle done at least by cutting off the rear suspension from the pan and welding it back on lower?