I know, I know. Most of you are thinking a VW Beetle doesn't belong on a hot rod forum. Bare with me, this one is a little different.

A couple years ago I traded a project car I had sitting around for a haggard 1971 VW Super Beetle. I spent the winter of 2016/2017 building it up in my buddy's garage and cruised around in it for the summer of 2017. Over the winter of 2017/2018 I put air ride on it and got it all ready for spring 2018. Well then I went to start it up for my first cruise in the spring and as it was warming up, it spun a crank bearing. Didn't even get a chance to try the air ride!

So after looking into rebuilding or buying another engine, I was texting my buddy. He says "I got a 355 sitting here, and I need some help LS swapping my S10. Help me with that and the engine is yours." How could I say no? My original plan was going to be, find an S10 chassis, shorten it, and hide the V8 in the bug body. I've always been a fan of the open wheel, open engine, Model A and T bucket style rods, so I decided to go that route with it instead. Those are getting harder to come by and are a little out of my price range. I had an engine and I had a body. I also managed to pick up a regular cab short box S10 chassis for dirt cheap as well. I also like the idea of finding a bunch of parts that don't go together and building a car out of them. Just wanted to do something differnet and I had the opportunity to.

I got started on cutting the body back off the chassis (I thought it was a good idea to weld the body to the chassis the first time I built it) and cut away the bits I wasn't going to need anymore.

Here I started laying out the the idea of how I was going to change the old fender well and make it more like a cowl.

Next I jumped on working on the frame. I needed shorten the wheel base by just a bit. I was avoiding cutting the center of the frame to do so. I ordered up some jeep leaf springs. They were the same width as the S10 leaf spring, but shorter. This let me move the axle 3" forward. I mede a new shackle mount and cut off the old one.

Lining up the new leaf spring to see how much I needed to take off.

Eyeing up the insert for the new shackle mount.

Shackle mount and bushing insert all welded in.

This is how much of the rear frame was removed.

And here's the finished mount.

Time to take the body off the beetle chassis and set it on the S10 chassis. Lined up pretty good for just setting it on.

Now onto the fun stuff. The beetle had a heater channel that connects the body to the chassis and those were absent on mine when I got it. That's why I just chose to weld the body to the chassis. Also the floor pans in the beetle are part of the chassis so I had to build a floor structure for the body.

Started with some sills to get the a and b pillars back together.

Next I had to taper the front in to follow the taper of the body for the cowl.

Then I started framing out my cowl.

Then I was onto laying out the floor structure. I laid out from the a pillar back and left the foot well section until I had the engine and trans in.

Once I had the main structure laid our I got onto the new body mounts.

With the body now mounted I added in some rails with welded in bolts for my seat mounts.

Started making some rough templates for the sheet metal for my floor pans.

I scored this 29 Chevy grill shell on kijiji for the front.

Ordered a new Champion rad to keep everything cool.

Started mocking up the grill shell to get an idea of placement.

I ended up switching from power steering to manual steering so I could push the rad back as far as possible without having to make up a whole new steering setup. I welded in a new rad support and got the rad mounted.

Since the rad was done I made some headlight mounts.

Next I turned my attention to the "hood"/cowl. I wanted to hide all my wiring and battery in here so that I didn't need to do any wiring under the dash. I found these sweet locking hood pins to keep every thing locked up and secure.

Then I welded in the bottom.

Here is was checking to make sure everything cleared for a battery.

After that was done I pulled it out and made some template for body sheet metal. I was finally getting to see how everything was going to look.

With the templates made I got onto sheeting in the cowl sides.

Next up was putting the engine and trans in. 

With the engine and trans in, I could finish shaping the floor and make the firewall.

After the firewall was in I got onto the floor pans. Did some bead rolls in the metal to stop it form oil canning and stiffen it up.

With the floor in I got started on adding controls. 

With all that done I got my first good look of it all coming together.

I scored a nice set of Centerlines and some big back tires and they really gave the car the look I wanted.

I added some hood support rods and made some custom piston tail lights.

I also got on cleaning up some of the body work.

Next up was wiring. Hours of wiring....hahah it really wasn't that bad. This car doesn't have too much going on.

Next up was exhaust. My buddy had a whole trailer full of pipes that he scored and a couple Flowmaster mufflers.

After that i got it all plummed. Used this aluminum water bottle for a Catch can.

I grabbed a cheap little fuel cell to get me rolling but it needed a home. I put it back where the engine used to be. Down the road I will get a bigger fuel cell but at least this one got me driving.

And here's how it sits now. Still lots of finish details to work on. But at least I'm getting to cruise in it now!