Hey guys, Chris from ClassicVWBugs.com and I got a pretty big tip for you today. It's going to be probably longer than my usual tips that you see on YouTube or on any of the video sites, and that is -- I am going to show you how to breakdown your doors. We're going to take the handles off. We're going to take the door panels off. We're going to take the armrest off. We're going to take all the felt channel out. We're going to take the window out, the post and the vent window. All the rubber that's got to come out with it as well.
I am going to show you what to save, what not to save and basically you do this to get your car ready for paint. And I see a lot of cars too many times that leave all the stuff on and they get the car painted and all the stuff is over sprayed and looks kind of bad, but I always got my car, so this is one area that I want to show you. I get a lot of emails on it, and that's it, let's get to work.
Okay, so the first thing you're going to want to do is take off the handles. I already took this handle off. I am going to show you how to take this one off, it's basically the same thing and these early bugs, all the way up to I think even the late 60s. I think even that '67 was, they started with the pole handle. But for this one, what you're going to have to do is there is a collar here, you got to press this collar and right back in here is a pin. That pin has to be hammered out in order for this handle to come off. So that's exactly what I did over here and if you can see, I don't know if you could see right here, but I will probably just zoom the camera a little closure for you a little later, but there is a shaft here and that -- this is what the handle goes on, and then here is the teeth that the handle rests on, so to give it the opportunity to turn, but behind the teeth is a space where the pin goes into, so it gives you an idea of where that pin is supposed to go.
So when it comes down to push this back on and put the door panels back on and what not, you know that you can't hammer the pin on the teeth area, you got to hammer it, so it clears into this space. Okay, so here we go. Get you handed with any hammer and get a nail like this. Basically, you want to push, get that nail into the hole like so, and hammer that out. Here it comes.
Make sure you put your hand over here to catch the pin. The pin is really tiny. Okay, there it is. Here is your little pin. If you lose this, don't worry there is a way you can actually just cut a nail, pretty much like this. Make a little section of it, kind of like that, or if you could see. Okay, you can just cut the nail and throw that in there as the pin, and then this should just come off. And there you go. Save these, you want to put them in like a can or something and label them.
So that's how you take your handles off. Okay, so now you got your door panels that you got to take off. If you want to save your door panels, some people want to save them because they got the original and might be in decent shape already. So, what I usually do is just try to get your hand behind this way, if you can. It's tough sometimes. Sometimes you got to use like a putty knife or something, but I am going to try to get behind here. There we go. And this all popped off very nicely there, but if you're going to -- push up just a bit. Try to get both hands behind to pull it off, not just one, because if you do that you might buckle the board and actually break it. So I then just start going all way around. This one's got -- you got a button down here, so just keep going all the way around and then you'll be able to pull if off. So keep pulling off.
Now, usually when it comes to the door handle here or the armrest rather, you got to pull up to get it off the catch, to get it out of there. So here is the armrest. It is basically you would pull up, once everything is unbuckled. And you just pull up this way, because it's hooked on a catch here. See the catch. That catch is on a bracket and holds the armrest on. It is the bracket that hooks into that catch, so you guys only have to pull it up.
Okay, one thing I want to point out is all these springs. When you took the door panel off, you're going to have these springs on here, you need to save these, and the springs go on -- I just dropped that one. Springs need to go on with the small hole first. So the big hole, the big round end rest up against the door panel.
I have another video out there basically showing that some of the newer springs are not as soft, they are really hard and actually come out even a little bit further. So sometimes I cut the spring, because it's really difficult sometimes when you're putting on new door panels and to press the panel on and then try to get the pin on and some of these newer springs out there are real tough to press and to get the pin in there, so I just sometimes cut them, but these old one seem to be soft enough.
Okay, so apparently, this guy just sounded really whacky here when I noticed. It has got this big 2x4 here. I guess it looks like it's a whole new window up, because when I am cranking it, I just see the arm moving here, and it's not moving the window. So I didn't know this. This is all new to me. So I am just going with the flow here. So basically, I am just going to try to take out this piece of wood, and see what the heck is going on here. The window is coming down now. We find some whacky things, oh I see why, look at that. This window is missing the frame that gets on -- that is on the bottom of it in order for it to latch on to this. So I am going to have to look for that later.
So what's going to happen now, this window basically what you would do is, there is an arm here and there is a wheel and the wheel goes into the track that is on a brace on this window, so you just pop this off, and then just basically slide the window out. Now, okay, it's got to come down. Before I do that, there is a couple of things I got to loosen.
Okay, so first things first, what you're going to have to do is get your 10 mm socket, okay? To go around, you got to take nuts off. Okay, for the regulator here, this thing is going to have to come out and you got to have to take this post out. This is basically on all sides of bugs. Later years you had them on both sides, and the early years, you just had the armrest on the passenger's side. So I am going to do that for you now before we take the window up.
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