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Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:05 pm

My wife fell in love with a 1971 411 Estate for sale, and today I made an offer to the seller and he took it. I'll pick up the car later this month.

The car has been sitting for a year at the seller's house, and perhaps for a while at the original owner's house, too. It has less than 70,000 original miles on it. The car appears to be completely factory and all there. It's automatic, fuel injected, has new tires, AC and a roof rack. He had a few new ignition components put on it, but he was not knowledgeable enough to go into specifics. The engine turns over, but it won't start and he doesn't know why. I bet I can figure it out!

I'm planning on getting the gas tank cleaned and replacing fuel lines and all hoses in the engine bay. Do any of you veteran 411 mechanics have any more suggestions for a first time VW owner? What's this I read about transmission servicing? I'd hate to get it running and burn up the transaxle soon after. How will I know if those rare front end components are good enough for the road?

Also, I'm glad to see this forum going strong. It's probably going to come in pretty handy in the near future! I'll post more pictures when I pick up the car, if anybody's interested.

Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:25 pm

remove and do not replace the fuel sock that it isn the tank at the petcock!

Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:11 pm

Cool, thanks for the suggestion.

Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:30 pm

Cool Ride!

Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:07 pm

Do whatever it takes to save your front suspension from damage as parts are nearly impossible to find. If your ball joint boots are bad buy some bus ball joints and steal the boots off them. You can also buy bus ball joint boots from West Coast Metric and others, but there have been some quality problems with them lately.

Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:35 pm

vwfye wrote: remove and do not replace the fuel sock that it isn the tank at the petcock!

Why remove it?

Wed Sep 19, 2007 5:26 am

I think many people feel it gets clogged too easily and is unneccesary because the car, of course, has a primary fuel filter that works fine. Strangely enough, this is what I took my wagon off the road for last year. Long story short, the car was stalling after driving at highway speeds for a few seconds, ran fine driving around town or if let off the gas at highway speeds when it started choking. This was with a brand new filter. Be careful if you want to drain the fuel to work on the outlet, because I cranked the drain plug and broke free the boss that mounts to the tank and not the plug itself. Be sure to give it a shot of WD-40 or whatever your favorite stuff is and don't be a hamfist like me. Anyway, sure enough, the sock filter/screen had crud on it. If you have the need for swapping gas tanks, be aware there are early and late styles. Not only is the fuel level sender/float unit different, the location and mounting are different as well. I had several spare tanks and found that one was the early one, the other had the same thing done to it as I had done to the one in the car, with some shoddy looking repairs. I put that one in the car, but have since acquired a better one which will go in the car eventually. Since I had to take the tank out, I decided to go ahead and rebuild the front suspension and steering systems since these had to be removed anyway. I ended up not getting this finished before I had to move halfway across the country and I have not had the opportunity to retrieve it from storage. It would only take about a weekend's worth of work to get it back on the road, so it has been frustrating to not drive it all this time...OK, still a long story I guess. :lol:
On the subject of the transmission, Fye has had good luck with his just driving it as he got it after getting the car back on the road, IIRC after it was sitting some considerable time. Other suggest you need to put new seals in it, mainly to prevent mixing of the ATF and final drive oil from seal failure. It seems like good insurace to me. My wagon had it done shortly before I bought it, so I haven't had to deal with it yet. The automatic transaxle is one component that normal shops should be able to handle as it was shared with other VW models and was more common than the Type 4 manual transaxle, which was unique to the car, fairly rare in North America, and for which no significant quantity of parts, expertise, or tools exist to service it from what I understand.
As for front end parts, wow, that is a big subject that gets discussed on all of the Type 4 spots on the net it seems. Look for seller Sherrie507 on ebay, she has an enormous stockpile of rare NOS parts for Type 4 parts it seems. (Please do not ask me to track down this stuff for you, I just don't have the money or time for it right now-so many of my own projects). Just recently, there were more auctions for things like ball joints and center links and I think most of it went unsold. These parts do turn up from time to time. One thing that Type 4 expert Ray Greenwood has suggested is to drill a small hole in the top of the ball joint, where the strut plugs into it. Make a paper gasket to go between the ball joint flange and strut housing. Then, tap the weep hole in the flange casting and screw in a grease zerk. Grease until you can see the boots start to swell. I haven't tried it myself, but others have said it works. Being able to grease them will really help with their longevity. Strut bearings can use modified Fox units. Radius rod bushings can be made from polyurethane tubing. Late Super Beetle bronze idler arm bushings can be used. Center link ends can be rebuilt, though I haven't completed one yet. As I mentioned, NOS are available from time to time. Tie rod ends are shared with other ACVW's. Sometimes strut cartridges are available on ebay, samba, etc... though there have been questions raised about their longevity due to sitting stationary for so long since they have been out of production for quite a long time. Lowering the front end and alternative strut cartridges is a subject for a whole other thread and a matter of contention. In fact, I suggest searching for previous discussions on this forum and taking advantage of all the web resources in the sticky post concerning that subject. Hope this will be of help. Most of it is information I am merely passing along, as I'm still learning also.

Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:48 am

Excellent reply, thank you very much. I've read a little about the car on this forum. The depth of knowledge available in different places on the internet led me to feel like purchasing this car would be a well-justified project.

I don't plan on lowering the car immediately, unless the handling seems unsafe. If I do, I think I'd remove and keep any original components and replace them with other shocks and coil springs like I've read about on these forums. That way my car will only be a weekend's worth of work away from being stock. You know, so I don't void my manufacturer's warranty. Ha ha!

Tapping a grease zerk into my ball joints sounds like a great idea, and I hadn't come across that in my stumbling around in this forum.

It sounds like the general consensus is to remove the fuel pump sock, and be gentle with the fuel tank's drain plug. Thanks for telling me about that.

I know I've heard "a lot of parts for the type 4 can be taken off of other Volkswagens", but is there a post anywhere that lists specific parts on the 411/412 and which other VW had the same part? That would come in handy when I take some crusty rubber thing off my car and wonder "Where can I get one of these?"

http://www.evwparts.com/Type4.htm has been pretty useful because it lists parts under the type 4 section and also lists whether or not they fit other vehicles. Has anybody had any success with using this online store?

Keep all the comments coming, so far I'm building a pretty good database of what to do when I get my car. Hopefully I'll get it this weekend!

Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:10 am

busdepot.com usually lists all the applications for a particular part, which can be handy even if you are not ordering from them. They have 411/412 broken out in their online parts catalog. bughaus.com also has listings broken out for 411/412 specifically, but I don't think they have them cross referenced. I haven't heard anything bad about evwparts.com so I don't see any reason they shouldn't get you the right parts. In the past I believe they have had some obsolete Type 4 specific stuff.
Type 4 front brake calipers and rotors match up to the same years of Porsche 914, if that makes things easier. This means tjhe 411 is the same as late Type 3. One traditional upgrade for 914's is to use the BMW 320i caliper, which needs minor machining for late cars. I've heard it works well. I believe all years have the rear brake drums, cylinders, and shoes the same as the late Type 3 also.
Oh also, one thing to note is that the 411 and early 412 have the symmetrical style bolt pattern strut mount plates/crappy bearing setup. I've read that if possible, one should upgrade to the later style asymmetrical Super Beetle style mounts. Then use the modified Fox bearing piece to replace the original that fits in the asymmetrical plate. This means drilling that bolt pattern into your strut towers. Should be pretty easy, but not pretty unless you weld up the old holes and repaint your front trunk (frunk as I've seen people call it now).
Oh yea, Rabbit poly control arm bushings can be made to work with a little bit of trimming and some washers/spacers as they are slightly shorter. There are plenty of other mods Ray has either done or devised, like make your camber and caster adjustable. I'm in the middle of doing this, but have been stuck at this stage for awhile, as I had to move and then was looking for a new job for quite a few months, so no cash flow. Anyway, this is done by slotting/elongating the subframe outer mounting holes to enable the subframe to slide forward slightly. The rear captured nut is already in a slot IIRC. This should give you more highway and crosswind stability. I haven't completed this yet, so I can't tell you how much caster translates to how much more steering effort, but the one thing I don't like about the Type 4 handling was the amount of tramlining and wind wander a stock car has. If you modify your caster this way, I understand it messes up the camber, making it necessary to make this adjustable as well. One needs to elongate the control arm mounting holes toward the outside, then weld plates on the mounting ears for an eccentric bolt to ride against. I'm using spare rear trailing arm eccentric bolts, they seem to fit perfectly. I still need to get plates welded on for them to ride against. Another cool modification Ray suggested is to not only put a sway bar from a sedan on your wagon (wagons did not have them from the factory), but also doubling up or "stacking" two rear swaybars together. I'm not sure how he attached them together, but there are probably a number of different ways.
Another area is the rear shocks. I've read that 70s-80s Ford Econoline front van shocks work, specifically KYB-GR-2, probably 1/2 ton for best ride. IIRC, somebody is using front Type 3 Koni shocks for the rear. You may need to transfer/modify bushing from the original shocks to the new ones.

Thu Oct 04, 2007 5:07 am

http://www.evwparts.com/Type4.asp

Why not just ask them by e-mail?