TheSamba.com :: View topic

Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:11 pm

Dumbest thing:
I headed off in my "new" (well new to me) 1964 Ghia from Adelaide to Whyalla on a Sunday evening. This is about a 400 km trip. I didn't check any thing on her like the condition of the tyres or tools on board.

She felt pretty good two start with. Original 40 hp motor running well; sat pretty comfortably on ~120 kmph.

All went really well for the first 380 km, then out in the desert I blew my rear right tyre. My blitzen Jack was siezed. It was dark and I had to call the RAA to come out to change my wheel. (lucky I had a spare.) I waited for about 2 hours on the side of the road whilst trucks went past at high speed.

All so easily avoidable!

Other high ranking dumb thinks:
2. Didn't strap down battery and it spilled acid all over the tinware!
3. Rebulit carby & fuel pump when all I needed was new leads.
4. Stupidly thought that my ghia would stand a chance at best modified Ghia when the only modification was installation of a type 4 911 style motor and some 14 x 6 wheels.

Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:45 am

Back in college during the 70's I was driving back from Bozeman MT to Reno with my old college roomate after skiing. We had driven very hard during the day and stopped in Elko to stay the night because the battery was so bad I couldn't drive the car with the lights on and it was getting dark. I had a battery charger and would charge the battery at night and we would be Ok for about 9 hours. Well the next morning I put the battery back in and started back to Reno. After about 10 miles the car started running horribly. I got out checked things and found the exhaust pipe soaked with gasoline. All I could think of was bad stuff wrong with the engine. We ended up hitching a ride in the back of a pick-up truck with about 10 illegals. No one spoke English and we didn't speak Spanish. It was colder than *&^%. Once back in Reno I borrowed a truck and tow bar. We drove back out to Carlin and towed my ghia back. It's about 3 hours from Carlin to Reno.

I pulled the motor and found nothing wrong with the pistons valves etc. Totally blown away I had no idea what was wrong. Out of the blue I took one of the Kadron tops off the carb and found the main jet laying in the float bowl, apparently it had vibrated out during the drive the day before. Now it made sense the engine was getting way way too much fuel. Had I known this at the time it would have been a 10 minute or less fix. Learned a llot from that one!

Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:58 pm

this one is a pretty dumb one...so get ready

was doing some routine maintenance on my 70 ghia one day and checked the brake fluid. I discovered that it was a bit low and went to the place where we store those types of things, which i must say is kinda disorganized.

I scanned the shelves and grabbed the familiar shaped bottle and went back to the car and proceeded to fill up my reservior

Well, u can probably guess what i'm gonna say next.

It wasn't Brake Fluid.....I had just poured a fair amount of Chrome Polish in my instead. What a mess!

Luckily, I was able to get it out without too much trouble and was glad that there was no damage caused to anything other than my pride.

Sat Aug 19, 2006 8:43 am

I tried to restart my Ghia after getting back from its' first trip and after emptying a can of starter fluid I had a revelation it might be out of gas..........it was. :oops: Have to fix that gas gauge :?

Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:15 pm

There are many. But I think the dumbest thing I've ever done while trying to "improve" my Ghia was when I was trying to take apart the emergency brake handle to clean and paint it. When I took out the pin to remove the handle the ratchet segment fell into the frame tunnel. It took me about 30 minutes to try and grab that thing and pull it up. I wish I would've read my VW manual more clearly beforehand then I would've known that could happen! :oops:

Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:30 am

I had an previous post, but my wife just reminded me of one. I was so meticulous about pulling the car apart and tagging and boxing the parts. I clean them and reassemble the main components to reinstall. In the meantime I bought another 1969 Karmann Ghia for her which needed more work. Well the later car is gone to a new person, and so are some of the boxes of stuff for my car. Needless to say I have a permanent foot up my ass now. Time to open the wallet and get to buying!

Martin

Over organized...

Wed Aug 23, 2006 2:13 am

My Dads Ghia....My mistake.

He got the body work done...rocker panels, headlight rings, pan, lower fender sections, side chrome strip hole repairs.....the works !

He finally gets the car assembled when we are packing up to move out of state. He gets the ghia loaded up with various parts and hooks up the ghia hitch to the back of the Ryder truck....and tells me to bolt up the hitch so that it locks onto the ball.

Then the phone rings and I run in to get the call....

30 minutes later...the whole fam damily pulls away from the curb-------> we go down the first hill-------->and we hear/feel a loud crash.

Stop the Ryder truck and get out to check it out.

Only the tow chains kept the ghia from going COMPLETELY under the back of the Ryder.

Up until then I had never heard my dad use some of those words.

Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:39 am

Had the bright idea that I COULD adjust the valves while my right arm was in a cast(Due to another dumb move not VW related) All went well til I tried to rotate the motor by pulling the belt down with my left hand and a ratchet in my right...YUP...hit a compression stroke and VOILA!!! First two fingers on my left hand are stuck between the belt and the pully while this dumbass is doing an impression of a freshly caught fish on the garage floor...trying to scoot the damn ratchet (that went flying) close enough with my right foot :twisted: Still don't have much feeling in those two fingers... :roll: :roll:

Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:40 pm

Sorry for the ressurrection...did a search for something else, came upon this...

Actually not a dumb thing 'I' did, but was in a conversation with a friend the other day talking about ghias. He goes on to tell me that back in the early 60's he picked up a lowlight ghia for cheap from a friend, a 58 or 59 he couldn't remember, then says he scrapped the body because he wanted the pan to make a dune buggy.

Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:13 pm

Dumbest thing: selling my '70 Ghia convertible when finished college. Yeah, it was a basket case but it was still a Ghia....

Wed Feb 09, 2011 7:34 pm

Not buying the 4500$ Ghia in Winlock WA. Pretty sure it's being resold for an additional 2k in Seattle. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1027205 The details are just too similar: paint color, rubber, 12v conversion. :evil:

Thu Feb 10, 2011 11:23 pm

Not purchasing a '61 ghia for $150 from my neighbor...didn't have the room. Another guy bought it and completely chopped it to pieces.

Fri Feb 11, 2011 7:04 am

1) Sold "gave" a 66' Westy to a friend that never paid me in 1990. :?

2) Passed on buying a very nice 58' Corvette in 1988 for $11,500. :shock:

3) Passed on buying an all original 100% complete 54' 23 window in 1986 for $6,500. :cry:

4) Took advice from a stock broker. :twisted:

Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:26 am

islandghia wrote: Not purchasing a '61 ghia for $150 from my neighbor...didn't have the room. Another guy bought it and completely chopped it to pieces.

Similar mistake as well. My neighbor bought a late 60's or early 70's parts ghia for the engine... somewhere around '02 or 03. The front nose needed replacing from a light accident, and some front left quarter panel work. But the rest was straight solid condition. (Still had shiney paint).

This was around a year before learning about the Samba's existence. Learned since then that used or NOS metal could've been purchased for the (then) relatively easy repair. I had no knowlegde, money or space for storage to deal with it. Was later sold for scrap.

Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:11 pm

About 20 years ago, I attempted to port and polish a new set of 041 heads and got a tad overzealous and ported through all of the material in the intake ports, leaving me with some holes to fill. :( Oh well, nothing a little JB Weld can't fix. I put over 40k miles on those JB Welded heads.

Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:51 pm

My downfall was in '68, bought a ten year old bug for $175, been goin downhill ever since. 8)

Mon May 16, 2011 10:51 pm

Thinking a Bug was a Porsche & ending up sideways in a ditch.

Mon Jan 30, 2012 8:30 am

Grinding the bell housing for a 12 volt conversion, I ended up installing the engine 4 times to check for clearance before I got it right. Finally got it right, put it back in, hooked everything back up, was about to turn it over when I saw the throw-out bearing sitting on the corner of the bench. The really dumb thing was my dad had told me not to forget it.

The other dumb thing was going for a test drive with the front lug nuts not torqued down worked fine for a couple miles, then…rattle, rattle, flump, flump….screech. No jack or tire iron aboard.