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Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:46 pm

a great invention called a cup holder!! lol. well as soon as i get my bus on the road, im sure ill have some pretty screwed up stories to tell

Sat Nov 15, 2003 4:55 pm

There is alot of good lessons to be learned from these stories so I hope this one will help others avoid doing the same.

Today, Yes Today I was finishing putting my bus back together after installing a new muffler. While I had the apron off I decited to take it to
the coin-op car wash to degrease my engine.

Knowing that the apron keeps the heat from the muffler out I still figured that the car wash was only 5 miles away and I could get there before the engine got too hot. Well it was farther than I remembered and while I was on the freeway I noticed that my Gene Berg Oil temp dipstick was sending a hot oil light. I was still farther from the car wash than home so I turned it around and did 50 mph the whole way home. When I got it in the garage I popped open the lid and had a look. My engine compartment was so hot that the fuel in my fuel filter was boiling.

The moral of this story is NEVER EVER DRIVE without the apron on.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 7:41 pm

amen brother!!!!

Wed Nov 19, 2003 8:53 am

I was installing a new engine in my bus about a year ago. I had the rear of the bus on ramps; got the engine in ok everything was set. I had two floor jacks with me to do the job. When I was trying to take the weight off the old engine so I could loosen the tranny mount bolts, I realized that one of the jacks was broken- no problem I just pushed it further under the bus out of the way and went to work with the other one. When the new engine was in tuned and running strong I jumped in the drivers seat took off the e-brake and started to drive the bus down off the ramps. One of my buddies shouted at me and I hit the brakes. The rear end of the bus was 'hovering' in mid air- my friends couldn't figure out what the hell was happening- they didn't know about the broken jack- at that point I didn't either I had completely forgot about it and now my bus was stuck in mid air resting on this one jack. I grabbed a jack handle and attemped to lower the jack. The way it was broken though, the handle wouldn't work- the jack needed to be lowered and raised with vice grips. No problem I just craweled further under the bus and used vice grips. I am very lucky I do not have a lowered bus though becaues when it came down, I was under there past my knees.

Wed Nov 19, 2003 1:34 pm

<<I am very lucky I do not have a lowered bus though becaues when it came down, I was under there past my knees.>>

or... that you finally kicked that two bags a day cookie habit. Squish!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tue Jun 09, 2009 9:31 pm

Resurrected!

My 73 bug was working fine with a black Mexican ignition coil, but for whatever reason, I wanted to try another coil instead.

Drove up to a friend's house about 1 1/2 hours away, and 30 minutes into the drive, my car suddenly started decreasing in speed and came to a complete stop on the side of the highway.

The new coil had melted my cap. Luckily, I had the Mexican coil that was on the car when I bought it and swapped it in, and I was lucky enough to have a spare cap.

I got up to my friend's house safely, and I still wanted to try another coil. He let me try an original Bosch blue coil, and again it melted my cap. He gave me another cap and I decided to put the black coil back and stop screwing around, and got myself home.

Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:03 am

my first car was a 67 bug........1600CCsingle......in a quest for a faster beetle i sold my second car a 67 13 window deluxe walk through t-2 real good shape bought it in like 1999 for $1500 solid bus....anyway sold it to buy a tunkey 1915cc from a buttrocker (it came out of his manx buggy.....it was sandy...but it had webers!!).....messed up priorities at 17.....BTW dropped a valve seat on the 1915 then built my own stock engine....havn't owned a split bus since.....

Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:54 am

so far the only thing I have done is drive around with the pop top up....

Wed Jun 10, 2009 5:25 am

threw a rod- through the top of the engine case- on my 70 beetle cause i neglected to check the oil...

also when my ghia broke down on the way to california from texas, i took it to a dealership (dont ever do that) cause the tow truck driver said there were no bug shops in town (in Tucson, AZ? you gotta be kidding me) - dealership replaced the transaxle 3 times and it still didnt work, and wanted to charge me parts and labor for all 3. i didnt have the funds... and so lost my 68 ghia. gah-lee, been almost 20 years and im still pissed :evil:

Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:09 am

Glenn wrote: Telling that cop "be my guest... search my car. I have nothing to hide.". He did and found nothing but "F"ed up my interior.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?" Because you wanted to see if the inside was as cool as the outside!

Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:18 am

I reversed into my tiny garage, being careful not to damage the drivers side mirror, only to hear the horrible grinding of metal and glass as the passenger side mirror was mashing itself against the door frame!

Still I picked up a replacement for a tenner at the Volksworld show, so no permanent harm done.

Max

Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:46 am

Great Thread, thanks for the resurrect.

Short List:
Thought I had to replace the transmission, but it was actually the splines in the wheel hub that had stripped (thanks to a shop not torquing down the wheel enough). Expensive thing not to check.

Didn't tighten the oil drain plug. One fried engine.

In hindsight, nothing too serious, but lessons you don't forget.

-P

Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:12 am

Maybe my best ever was not tightening the bolts for one of my cv joints on the tranny side and then driving on the thruway until it fell off, flopping around like mad at 70mph.

More mental lapses, the time I put one of my brake pads in with the pad side toward the caliper - how did I manage that? It makes a hell of a sound! There wasn't much of a rotor left by the time I figured out what I'd done wrong.

Other fun episodes...I misread the Richard Thompson book, the part about the pilot bearing being in the flywheel (this is so for 914's). My engine case having come out of a 914, I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't fit! I actually turned the id of the flywheel to make it work, never realizing that the bearing goes in the end of the crank on a bus! A little later I had to drop the engine as the tranny shaft was like stuck in the pilot bearing which got totally thrashed.

Other good stuff, probably the dumbest, the time I put my cam in with the teeth misaligned, and had to tear the whole engine out and apart to put it right. -the 1 dot on the cam goes between the 2 dots on the crank, just like rocket science, huh? :roll:

I like to think I'm smarter now. :-)

Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:51 am

I was driving on the beach (which is legal) but two of my friends were standing up looking out the pop top. A cop pulls me over, and asks for my license, registration, and proof of insurance. I give him all 3, but my insurance card had expired days before. He says, "I could give you a $700 fine for people not wearing seat belts, and your insurance card" and he walks back to his car to check that I'm not a felon or anything :D He comes back, asks, "How much did you pay for this bus?" and I say, "About $700, and I'm about $1500 into it total" and he smirks at me and says, "What year?" "...a 1969" and I'm shaking at this point, and he says, "Stop shaking you're not going to jail...yet" and so of course I'm shaking more. Then all of a sudden he smiles and says, "Well, I used to have a '76 Westy, and you guys seem nice, so this is just a warning, I'm gonna let you guys go.""

Biggest sigh of relief ever. That was my first run in with a cop, and the fact that I own a bus saved me :shock:

Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:24 pm

Orangeena wrote: I reversed into my tiny garage, being careful not to damage the drivers side mirror, only to hear the horrible grinding of metal and glass as the passenger side mirror was mashing itself against the door frame!

Still I picked up a replacement for a tenner at the Volksworld show, so no permanent harm done.

Max

Holy crap! Are you really the 26th owner of your vehicle?

Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:34 pm

Got married once.

Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:42 pm

Got married twice.

Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:07 pm

71_georgia_beetle wrote: Got married twice.

Ouch!!! You must be a slow learner :D

Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:29 pm

When I bought my bus the engine was toast. Instead of investing in a good new rebuild and doing a little research I found a guy with a used Vanagon 2.0L turnkey engine for about $1000 with good compression. After hacking some of the engine compartment and engine mounts I got the engine in and had a local VW shop help me get the FI installed.

I had one good trip on that engine and it started running funny. Took it back to the shop and no more good compression.

Luckily I got rid of the old original engine and tin before deciding to go back to a bus setup. Now I'm probably $1000 into random parts to get back to the configuration that I sent to the scrap heap. Not to mention the $1000 for the Vanagon engine (which I was later looking at pictures and saw the GEX sticker), welding to get the engine compartment fixed plus the cost of the new engine kit etc...

I could have paid for a good new rebuilt engine with that little mistake and spent the last year and a half driving my bus instead of working on it.

Steep learinging curve intro to the world of busses.

Two valuable lessons learned:
1. Never trust a "bus mechanic" who works out of his house (or in a shop for that matter).
2. Never go the cheap route because it'll cost you more in the end.

Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:07 pm

[quote="nathansnathan"]Maybe my best ever was not tightening the bolts for one of my cv joints on the tranny side and then driving on the thruway until it fell off, flopping around like mad at 70mph.

That is funny and has happened to me too but I was on the streets going like 25.