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Friday through today I managed to work on my vintage Beetle some.
On Friday, spent some time with polishing compound, and I got the worst of the greasy handprints off, and started to make the car look a little bit shinier after 3 years of almost not being driven. 
I mostly got the gasoline stains out from below the gass filler where it had leaked out (when the vent wasn't working). However, now I have some ratty spots at the bottom of the fuel filler door that I need to repaint, or something.
I ordered and got in the mail a temperature threshold sensor that tells you if your engine is too hot by measuring the oil temperature. It's a brass tube, with a bimetallic spring at the bottom. Here it is stickout out of the dipstick hole at the camera. 
A copper wire is connected to the spring and sticks out the top; it's indicated by the green arrow. As the oil gets hotter, the spring twists, and end of the copper wire twists with it. When the oil is as hot as it should be, the copper wire has rotated around and is where the purple line is, and it touches the head of the screw, grounding the circuit and turning on a light in the front of the car.
I installed the temp sensor and ran a wire to the front of the car for it.
I bought a couple of analog tach-dwell meters on ebay; here I'm testing them against the digital one.
A couple of other things on the squawk list:
I tightened up the clamps on the muffler tips, so they're solidly mounted now.
And the reason that the reverse lights aren't working is that the fuse is blown. And I blew another one. I checked the current, both reverse lights together pull like 3.5A total, and it blew an 8A fuse. So it must be getting too hot. I'll have to try to relocate it.