New 2008 beetle bug owner:D

[s2kpuddydad]

Hi all
We just bought a new to us 2008 bug, red 2.5 auto with 46k miles. The car is pretty clean showing some normal ware. The car is going to be my wife's new daily driver coming from a Honda S2000 and just before that a 2010 Miata. The Miata was sold but I kept the S I daily drive a 2011 4x4 Fj, love it!!

I love the little beetle bug car and my wife loves it too! We test drove a few before buying the red 08. We drove the 09 at a Ford dealer and then a 04 on a secondary lot. The 09 was pretty much a new car with only 20k miles or so but it was the wrong color. The 04 was a convertible POS with pretty much no brakes lol. The guy with the 04 said it was clean and needed nothing After driving the 04 we decided to spend over our budget of $6500 to get a newer nicer car. The 08 was under 10k and had a clean car fax and appeared to have been well kept. We are in Florida on the west coast and pricing here for this car is all over the map, junk goes for $2,000 to $9,000 for cars 98 to 05 and nice cars are priced almost the same?? Most 08s here are $12 to $15k so getting this 08 for what we did was a very good deal I feel.

We bought the car from a KIA dealer and they were great and gave a 3 month 3k mile warrantee with the car 2 tanks of gas, and new tires....nice

The car is so nice to drive and feels solid, I could road trip the car I feel without issue. I'm sure the mod bug will hit soon, the wife is already on eBay looking for cool stuff for her bug

The first question I would have is, is there anything problematic with this year bug? And what scheduled maintenance should I be thinking about? We did not get a owners manual with the car so I am on eBay looking for one of those to help us out.

[Chuckie]

WELCOME to the Org!

Where in West Fl are you? I am from Jacksonville. You will notice a lot of Florida action going on in the forum threads lately. There are a lot of us and we are quite active.

We love pictures and can't wait to meet you at one of the many get togethers we have.

Again Welcome. It's a lot of fun when we all get together and hang out or go for a road trip.

Chuckie

[IggysMom]

A big welcome to the org from Tampa. This is a great place full of wonderful people that are always willing to share their experience with us new beetle newbies. I don't know anything about the 2008 model since they were way out of my price range. I ended up with a 2001 and am still learning about it as I go along. I do know that the auto transmissions on the models before 2006 were notorious for being crummy, so if you have an automatic you are lucky enough to be above the line on that one. I've also learned that they started putting timing chains in the 2006 and up instead of timing belts which is another lucky line you are above. That's as far as I've learned so far.

I'm with Chuckie on being curious where you are in Florida since it might be close to one of us. We do love pictures here and would love to see some of your new baby.

If you don't have plans for May 3rd-5th, a whole lot of us from Florida will be carabugavaning up to North Carolina for Tail of the Dragon. This will be my first time, but it sounds like a whole lot of fun all around. There is a thread here on the org that tells all about it. I hope you check it out. We would love to have you and your new beetle baby as part of the crew

[s2kpuddydad]

Thanks guys for the warm welcome we are in Brooksville north of Tampa and south of Ocala. The S2000 guys are a great bunch too, I have been in the club for about 10 years. I kind of figured the VW bug people would be involved on a forum and having meets. There is a bug meet at Conny Island here in Brooksville about once a month, the bugs are pretty much all air cooled.

I will post pics latter tonight

[IggysMom]

OMG!!! I have been to the g2g at Coney Island the last 2 months in a row. The Duval Dubs group even came down from Jacksonville for the Dec one so there were 7 new beetles there from the org that time. Chuckie that posted just above my 1st post was one of them that was there in Dec too. He loved the bacon wrapped corn dogs if I'm not mistaken.

I smell a comment coming from Al aka scarabY2K soon. He seems to have a supernatural way of knowing when somebody from this area is posting. He and his wife are from Brooksville but up in Jax now.

There is another orger here that goes by Albie and her husband is steamroller, they have Bug Bite (a blue nb vert). They are currently in Brooksville. They were at the last two Coney Island g2gs also but they left before I could get there this time around (home field advantage). The Tampa crew was actually thinking about making that a monthly thing for us. I know the other two here are going to try to make it next month with me and I imagine Bug Bite will be there too. You should so go. The next one is Feb 1st and when I talked to the guy that does the g2g there he said they plan on doing 1st Fridays every month come rain or shine no matter what. They were happy with the swarm of new beetles in December. January only had 3 of us there total, him with his air cooled beetle, somebody else with a vw van, and me with Iggy. It was a rainy dreary day though and he said it was the worst turn out ever. Even when he called his regulars they were all staying home

[scarabY2k]

okay, at this moment I am trying not to hyperventilate over my excitement!

first, we have a GTG in my hometown... now we have an orger from my very same hometown making a grand appearance on the org.

}}} insert Twilight Zone music{{{

Yepper, I am from Brooksville... HHS Class of '81. Go Leopards!!!

this is too cool... beyond words actually. instead of basking in my delirium of delight, I will just stop and say welcome to the org. I hope you will get involved in the Tampa/Brooksville- Spring Hill/ Central Florida beetle scene. lots of good stuff going on, so jump in, and enjoy the fun.

Oh and Kristin, val is from Pensacola, by way of Hackensack New Jersey. she just came down to Brooksville on a mercy mission to rescue me.

Sent from my SGH-T679 using AutoGuide App

[s2kpuddydad]

Great, my wife is class of 83 and her sister was a few years after. We sometimes do what we call date night! At Conny Island. Friday is date night and my wife is a cheep date lol. We will be at the next bug meet for sure

[albie]

Welcome to the Org! You will love the people and the gtg's they are friendly and great times!! I'm Lisa/Albie, as Kristen mentioned I'm in Spring Hill!
I never thought I would enjoy my bug as much as I do! Love her! And my husband probably has the same thoughts as you when I'm on eBay!! Lol!
Hope to see you at Coney Island!


Sent from AutoGuide.com App

[IggysMom]

Originally Posted by scarabY2k

okay, at this moment I am trying not to hyperventilate over my excitement!

first, we have a GTG in my hometown... now we have an orger from my very same hometown making a grand appearance on the org.

}}} insert Twilight Zone music{{{

Yepper, I am from Brooksville... HHS Class of '81. Go Leopards!!!

this is too cool... beyond words actually. instead of basking in my delirium of delight, I will just stop and say welcome to the org. I hope you will get involved in the Tampa/Brooksville- Spring Hill/ Central Florida beetle scene. lots of good stuff going on, so jump in, and enjoy the fun.

Oh and Kristin, val is from Pensacola, by way of Hackensack New Jersey. she just came down to Brooksville on a mercy mission to rescue me.

Sent from my SGH-T679 using AutoGuide App

Speak of the devil...told ya his telepathy would kick in

So glad Val came down to B-ville on her rescue mission for you, you guys look so happy together . Although if she hadn't, you might still be down here in my area instead of all the way up in Jax schmoozing with your buds up there .

Guess I mizundastood when you were mentioning Val and Brooksville. Still, at least she was there, right? LOL

Originally Posted by s2kpuddydad

Great, my wife is class of 83 and her sister was a few years after. We sometimes do what we call date night! At Conny Island. Friday is date night and my wife is a cheep date lol. We will be at the next bug meet for sure

Can't wait to see you there. So glad we have one more to add to our little group. This is the ultimate awesome sauce...except now I got another guy with home field advantage. You and Bug Bite will be meeting and done and gone by the time I can get my butt all the way over there from Tampa

[02SilverSport]

Wow, another Florida NB. I've got family down there and my grandfather had a place in Spring Hill that we visited often in the 70's. a warm NC-NB welcome!

[scarabY2k]

Originally Posted by s2kpuddydad

Great, my wife is class of 83 and her sister was a few years after. We sometimes do what we call date night! At Conny Island. Friday is date night and my wife is a cheep date lol. We will be at the next bug meet for sure

Cool

If yins graduated from HHS or Central High y'all might know my brothers or sister: Arnold, Eddie, Eric and Trudy Stewart.

[s2kpuddydad]

I wil get my wife to play on here soon to answer HHS stuff, it's her school and her car lol.

Sorry the pics are up late I was in the shop working on a BMW M6 differential ring and pinion change out.

Here are the pics, we are working on taking off the stripe and replacing it with another, maybe white??

[scarabY2k]

The Beetle looks great man. Diggin the stripe

[IggysMom]

It looks great!!! I think you are right about the stripe. I like it; but not the color. Maybe you could redo the same exact stripe but in white like you said, or black, or maybe even pink

Here it is in White, White w/black outline, Black, Black w/white outline, and pink (I like the black...it goes with the black decal that you added to the back. I can't tell what it is in the pic because it's too small; but looks cute)

[s2kpuddydad]

Wow, thank you! now we know what the car will look like with black or white. Like the black best, maybe a silver would look good too with the wheels

My wife has a iPhone5 is there a way to charge the phone from the little AUX. port in the dash? Not sure what the AUX. port is for since we have no books with the car.

[IggysMom]

Mine is too old to have an aux port...lol. If it's a little jack like the one for headphones on the iPhone then no, that is just to tether your headphone jack in the phone over to the car so you can listen to your music off the phone via the stereo system in the car. They sell little plugs for the cigarette lighter socket (now just called power socket I believe since smoking is bad...lol) that have usb ports so you can plug your iPhone into that to charge just like you would plug it into a computer to charge, or just get an iPhone car charger. Last time I saw one of those was up by the register at Auto Zone for like $7 and it had 2 usb ports so you could charge 2 phones at once. Let me throw you a quick silver stripe now...brb

[s2kpuddydad]

Thanks again I did see those plug in chargers at the Zone today for $7 bucks, maybe I will get her one to try out.

Here are a few pics of the S and Fj

[IggysMom]

Oooooooo pretty S, and the pic of the FJ with the pig/pinwheels...classic. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...whee-whee-wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...I love that commercial! "Thanks Mrs A." LOL

[Chuckie]

beautiful looking Red New Beetle!

But I am sort of partial to them now! Great to have more Florida folks on board. I know Al is hyperventilating over the fact you guys are in Brooksville. We had such a good time on the road trip we took down there that Friday night.

Hope to see you at some of the other events in the future.

Chuckie

[s2kpuddydad]

Got some great news today, the dealer called and they have the 2nd key and all the books to the car