I guess what bothers me the most is that I didn't put those dents there. That was somebody else's work, and I don't want to own their dents. I want to replace the bumper with a better, original one, but front bumpers rarely come up for sale online, and when they do, the sellers won't ship them. "Local Pickup Only" is the bane of my VW existence. I'd like to find parts in wrecking/ recycling yards, but I don't seem to have very good timing there.
A week after I bought my car, I drove it to a VW wrecking yard in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Since childhood I'd been staring at the rows of broken Beetles when we'd drive by the lot, but when I arrived to shop for parts the fence was gone, and the property was empty of all vehicles. The man in the lonely office shack told me they had their car auction last month, and every car that wasn't sold had been crushed.
I knew how those cars felt.
After living in Des Moines for a few years, I heard there was a wrecking yard full of Bugs in Zearing, Iowa. I hightailed it up there, but I had missed their auction by a few weeks, too. How does that even happen?
Then last week I spotted this ad on Craigslist.
With the help of Google maps and a couple of phone calls, I was able to find where the field was located. I was told to wait by this metal fence, and a guy in a red and white pickup would let me in.
He did.
He rolled the gate open just enough for me to enter, and then he quickly slid it shut and fastened the gate with a chain. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself into. I wanted to go back to car to get my camera, but this place didn't seem too photo friendly.
"You know what cha' looking for?" the guy from the truck asked while lighting a cigarette.
"A front bumper."
"For what?"
His question stumped me for a couple of seconds, "For my car?"
He smirked and took a long drag, "For your car? What cha' got? You got a van? Type III? Beetle? Ghia?"
"Oh," realizing my mistake, "I've got a Beetle."
He nodded, and started leading me down a gravel path stained with oil. "You know what cha' looking for?"
Rather than getting tripped up again, I told him yes.
"If it was in a pile, could you recognize it yourself?"
Again, I answered in positive.
"Okay, " he said while pointing to an eight-foot tall metal bush, it's chrome branches twisted and winking in the sunshine, "I'll leave you here. Be careful, and holler if you get in trouble."
I couldn't believe my luck. The craigslist ad wasn't lying. There, crowded against a shed that had lost its roof and two walls, was a huge mound of bumpers. Unbelievable.
Just as I started to smile to myself, the guy walking away threw this over his shoulder, "Too bad you wasn't here yesterday. A guy was in there digging around for four hours. He took a lot good ones home. I think he cleans them up and sells them online."
You have got to be kidding me. I'm too late, again?
Instead of getting angry, I decided the guy was yanking my chain. Had I'd been looking at a pile of fenders, he'd probably have said the same thing. It was time to roll up my sleeves and start the excavation for pre-1967 metal.
This is what I was looking for.
But after 30 minutes, I wasn't so sure. Most of the bumpers were from the 70's, and the early bumpers I did find were either rusted out or bent like twist-ties. I considered digging deeper into the pile, but I didn't think anything under all that weight was going to look any better than what was on top. I also didn't know when I had my last tetanus shot. Feeling defeated, I abandoned the bumpers to go check out the cars. The guy said he had more than 80 of them.
He did.
If this lot was an open field, I could probably jog from the front gate to the back fence in about ten seconds. But this maze of trees, cars, frames, and body parts took decades to assemble, and rock climbing skills would be needed if I wanted to move quickly.
But speed was the last thing I wanted. This automotive labyrinth was fraught with booby traps: sharpened handholds, rotten wood disguised as solid footing, broken glass pits, and rusty nail spikes threatened from all sides. By the time I emerged from the heart of the warren, I felt like Indiana Jones without the cool hat. I also didn't have a bumper.
After an hour and a half of climbing up, sliding down, and shimmying around, I settled on a bumper that was attached to a dismembered Bug's front clip. It's not that the bumper was all that great, it was just better than anything else I saw - kind of like the one-eyed king. And its top bar was in decent shape.
I asked a different guy who was working in the yard if I could leave and get my tools, but he said that wasn't necessary. He volunteered to take a Sawzall to the bumper's bolts and cut the bumper free. Although he only wanted to charge me $15, he spent 20 minutes and broke two blades working the bumper loose. I gave him a twenty and considered myself lucky.
I think I can combine the best parts of the two bumpers and have something that looks more presentable. But if I fail, I'm only out a few bucks.
Actually, I'm just excited to work on my old car again.
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