Been a long time, back in it!

[Mack_T]

Howdy all!
It's been a long time. Life, jobs, etc. etc. and a daughter as things continue to change. Well, my daughter is 14 now and a freshman in High School and she's been beggin/bugging me to get my VW back on the road, so I can pick her up from school. I guess there's only about 3 1/2 years left to do that and time won't stop for anyone. So, I finally got to work.

The car has sat in the garage for over a decade. Where we live in Nor-Cal, we get fog. Coastal fog. That caused rust even as the car sat in the garage. The front discs (Karmann Ghia setup) fully rusted but seem to be doing OK. The gas tank rusted all over the outside, maybe because back in the day my friends and I would take the car to the beach in Pacifica, go surfing, and leave our wetsuits in the trunk. The hard brake line front to rear rotted out. The fuel lines rotted and/or were hard as a rock. But, how can you say no to your daughter?

She did help out a bit when she could, like with the brakes. I had to pull the carbs and clean out all the "cheese" that blocked all the passages, as our gas in CA kind of sucks. New fuel tank, all new fuel lines, some new hubcaps. Lots of elbow grease getting the dust off the car, some insurance and registration and I'm back on the road!

Funny how back in the late 90's and early 2000's, this was basically just another car on the road. Things sure have changed. I've been picking my daughter up every day I can from her school and EVERYONE looks.

I finally got some good tuning done on the IDAs as well. 65 idle jets and back to the F7 tubes and it's running really good. Yes, this is the same (high compression) 1600 that my buddy and I built in the late 90s. Engle W110 cam, Mahle pistons, 311 rods, Scat crank. Dual port 40X32 heads (weird combo back in the day) with 1.25 rockers. 1 5/8" merge header to the old A1 Magnaflow muffler. The 009 dizzy has high rev points in it as back then the Pertronix units weren't super reliable. Compression is around 10:1 as the case was decked a few times and there are no shims on the cylinders (piston is at the top of the cylinder) and no head gaskets. I don't know how many miles are on this engine, but yes it likes to run warm, and yes it's been all over Nor-Cal including to Santa Cruz, Livermore, and of course Sacramento for Bugorama back in the day. A few trips to Infineon Raceway on Wednesday afternoons as well...

The car was like a time capsule, I suppose it just ended up that way. My daughter found some surf wax in there, and of course Wilbur Kookmeyer is still hanging out on the handle above the glove box. I remember finding the Flat-4 steering wheel at the 2005 Bug In (Bug In 32), where I had the chance to meet Dyno Don, Ron Fleming, and Frenchy DeHoux; all who I had sign my California Look book as well.

We visited our daughter's old daycare provider, who is into hot rods, the other day and I took him for a ride around the block. Too much fun, he says it's the fastest VW Bug he's ever been in. Well, just wait until I put my 1800 back together!

The 1800 is a 76X87 engine, with a W125 cam and a set of EMPI/ Autolinea 40X35.5 heads. Yup, those are the Scat stroker I-beam rods. It broke a lifter (at what RPM?) many years ago and that's why the 1600 is back in. My daughter is going to help me get that all back together. That sure was a lot of fun, it really pulled hard when up past 3k rpm. Straight cut gears sound great too. When it's back together, there's a rev-limiting rotor for the 009 that should prevent going past 6800 rpm.

Otherwise, looking forward, I'm going to add another 72 plate oil cooler soon. It has 1 already, but as we were driving around the other day in 80 degree weather, the engine was already on the warm side. I've realized that my oil temperature is post cooler, so when it's reading 150F, that's the "cold" side. When it's reading 180F, how hot is that on the warm side? I need the sump plug sensor to find out. The sump is kind of leaky anyway so during our winter rainy season I'll pull that off and get it sealed up good. In addition, the roll cage needs some fresh satin black, the headliner needs to be replaced, and the package tray carpet is probably original still. I feel like I just did the headliner & carpet but that was over 25 years ago!

Scott

[Mack_T]

Oh and of course, a before & after pic of our daughter in the car.

Scott

[APPLEGREENVW]

Welcome back. Kids grow fast.
_________________
Parts for sale https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/search.php?username=APPLEGREENVW

02/76 Beetle sedan

[Cusser]

[irvanm]

Great story, car, kid, dad, think this time around will be fun too.

[Bobs67vwagen]

Nice story, the 1800 is going to be a nice reminder of your younger days in your car-enjoy.

[Mack_T]

Thanks everyone,

Yup, our daughter is a redhead. We knew it would happen, I had redder hair in my youth, and it runs in my wife's family. Funny thing is she wants to dye it some color all the time, and everyone tells her don't do it! Everyone wants that hair color!

Going over the car now that I'm older I see things done in haste as a youth; well after all it was my daily driver, only car, for years. So when you had Sunday to work on it, it better run Monday morning! But back then at least we had import parts houses locally to get what I needed. I remember changing the oil one Sunday afternoon, and guess what... an oil line to the filter blew. My wife (to be) was with me and thankfully we were able to get replacement hose at a place called "Jordan's Import Parts" in Santa Rosa. That shop always seemed to be doing OK but sadly, they are gone. A few other places too:
Vintage Tech - cool VW shop
Van's VW - a repair shop that was across the street from where I worked in the early 00's (I'm sure some locals remember Van...)
Donsco's? My buddy and I had machine work done there I think back in the day.

Pulling out my old dunebuggies & Hot VW's magazines has been a trip. It was funny to see ads for cell phone holders in '01 with the brick phones. Sad though to be reminded of when lots of parts were reasonably priced!

The other day, bringing my daughter and her cousin home from the high school, they thought it would be fun to both ride in the back seat. Sure? "Can we put our backpacks under the hood?" Absolutely! I think we're all having a good time "Will my backpack catch fire under the hood?" My daughter responds with "No, the engine is in the back". Too much fun for them.

I think I need to still get some new CV joints. Even after doing the rear wheel bearings, sub axles, and spacers, there's still some noises back there. As I was doing the wheel bearings I noted 1 had grease, and I never did that so it was done before I had the car I did go with cromoly stubs though. I had too much trouble in the past with a drum grinding down on the driver side.

Scott

Scott

[pondoras box]

Man, you made a clean break, you were out and escaped the siren song of VW’s. But you just had to peek under that car cover didn’t you? Well it’s probably too late for you now so welcome back to the jungle.

Cool car, awesome history on it. The car’s story is always cooler to me than the car itself. Any pics of from back in the day? Would love to see those. I am a huge fan of Cal Look history, yes we know about the big guys but it’s the common guy on the streets buying the parts that drove the look and the industry.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda). https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=563183
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1960 hardtop
1964 hardtop
1965 hardtop (Arschloch)
1973 standard bug (Dirty Gertie)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=804912
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion

[Mack_T]

Ohhhh boy, you made me look!

I found some old photos in the gallery. Thank goodness I was taking digital photos back in the day!

Earliest photos (2003)

Lagoon Island show

A cruise to the coast:

When I first got my Mangles Chromies!

V-Dubs in V-Town (Vallejo show) 2004

Post racing at Infineon, 2004

I have realized that there's a lot of random cool bits regarding this car. And I need to document everything I can remember, it's got even more interesting bits to the story.

Scott

[pondoras box]

Thank for sharing those. I wish I had my first bug, I don’t even have pictures of it. Please share more of the stories!
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda). https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=563183
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1960 hardtop
1964 hardtop
1965 hardtop (Arschloch)
1973 standard bug (Dirty Gertie)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=804912
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion

[Mack_T]

I'll have to dig up the Polaroid photo, wherever it ended up, of when we first got the car running. Here's what I remember though.

It wsa the late 90s, and I was introduced to the Cal-Look VW by a good buddy of mine who has a '58 euro-spec Bug (he has semaphores). It was lowered all around on chromies, with big hubcaps. I thought it was so cool with it's quad tip exhaust, and dual baby Webers. It was loud, and drafty when riding around in it. Realizing that as someone in their late teens/early 20s who doesn't make a lot of money, he convinced me to find a Bug since they were kind of cool and economical at the time. Well after searching, he ended up selling me his other car, the '69 I still have, which his sister was driving to school. I don't recall exactly what happened but maybe it threw a rod or something, since it did not have an engine case.

The car was in good shape and pretty similar to the photos above from '03. But it needed carpet, headliner, door panels, window cranks, and of course the engine. Somehow we were cruising around the bay area in his car, and literally found an engine case being thrown away. We snatched that up and I was able to get a lot of the other internals needed at Vintage Technology in Santa Rosa. We painted the engine tins red, built the engine with single port heads and the original single carb but the lower end was put together with the Engle W110 cam. I remember the first drive down the street from the shop; the car couldn't do more than 40 mph with the pedal to the floor!

We figured that the cam had something to do with that, so at the next swap meet in Vallejo I picked up a set of Baby Webers for the car. I might have found the pop-out windows there too; he said the car had them originally but in the 90s, "Cal-Look" was all about dechroming so he put in solid windows with black rubber all around.. The pop-outs were coming back in style though and are nice. Once we had the ICTs installed, the car could drive normal freeway speeds! It sounded cool to with they way they "talked", along with the single quiet pack muffler.

I quickly found the engine ran hot. I would take a drive from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol, and the oil temp would be 200 degrees easy. One Saturday, after work, my buddy says, let's take it to Pinole (his girlfriend lives there) and see how it does. We watched the gauge go past 200, all the way maxed out, and then it dropped. "Woah, see, there's just something wrong with the gauge!". I started loosing power shortly after though, and found that the engine was indeed too hot. Trying to turn around in the Marin area, we made it just a few more miles when it was too hot again. Pulled over to a safe spot to let it cool off, but it would no longer crank over.

We towed the car back to where I lived, and found a rod had welded itself to the crank. I took the block over to Van's and they found that the center main, when the case was torqued, was not touching, so the 2 center rods were not getting enough oil. He was able to fix the case with heat treatment and a new line bore, and again I went to Vintage Tech to get parts including a new Scat crank. Van hooked me up with a set of the 311 rods, and we re-used the pistons & cylinders. This is the same lower end that's still in the car today!

To be continued...
Scott

[NJ John]

Cool, welcome back. Is that a narrowed beam? Did you drag race it, too?
_________________
1973 standard, yellow, lowered, 3” narrowed front, 1600 blo-thru turbo w/single dell 15.4@86, so far
11.41 et buggy. Long gone
Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s!
https://www.youtube.com/@AirSpooledGarage

[pondoras box]

Sounds like you started out like the rest of us, had no money and even less idea of what we were doing. My first engine rebuild seized during the 20 minute break in process. Used crank and no line bore equals seized engine.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda). https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=563183
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1960 hardtop
1964 hardtop
1965 hardtop (Arschloch)
1973 standard bug (Dirty Gertie)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=804912
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion

[plotch]

Super cool!

[Mack_T]

[NJ John]

Looking forward to the updates and stories!
_________________
1973 standard, yellow, lowered, 3” narrowed front, 1600 blo-thru turbo w/single dell 15.4@86, so far
11.41 et buggy. Long gone
Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s!
https://www.youtube.com/@AirSpooledGarage

[Root_Werks]

Very cool story! Very cool your daughter is into the Bug. Don't know about your area, but here in the PNW you very rarely see an aircooled anything. When we take our Bug out, same thing, it gets lots of looks and thumbs up.

-Dan
_________________
When I set my timing, why do I flush, then take a pee?

[Mikedrevguy]

Welcome back . . . Your dreams were your ticket out . . . . .

Thank you for passing on the wonder that is the VW bug.
_________________
74 1303 (RevBug): plan for German Look
76 914 with 2260
69 Bwajaja
"The wise speak because they have something to say; while the foolish speak because they have to say something." Plato

Illigitimi non-Carborundum!!

[Mack_T]

Driving, Surfing, and crankcase breathing

I'm not sure how, but although I only had a day and a half for my weekends, I was always doing a lot. Maybe in my late teens/early 20s I really did have more energy, and I wanted to take advantage of everything I could!

I wanted to learn surfing and my buddy was happy to help. After work on Saturday, we'd generally work on the cars (his Bug and mine) until late, and then drive to his girlfriend's place in Pinole Saturday night. I definitely remember working till 9:00pm and then driving that direction. Who knows how late it was but we always got up early to do things on Sunday. So, from there we would head to "Linda Mar" beach, now shown as Pacifica State beach. I had found some "soft racks" at the surf shop there (Nor-Cal Surf Shop) and we'd load up my friend's board and his girlfriend would bring her boogie board. There was no parking lot at the beach; at the time it was just a dirt parking area. I learned about how the Bug handled off-road then, 3-wheeling through some areas. Yes, it was as low as it was in the earliest photo I posted above. I had an Alpine radio in the car at the time, and although I thought it was "cliche", it was cool to play my Beach Boys CD while we were there at the beach. Sadly, there's no photos I thnk we were all mostly concentrating on having fun, and cameras cost too much at the time! The soft racks did leave their mark on my roof though, and you can still see today where the strap was against the paint.

The drive was long but we didn't necessarily care. But, there's some hills! We were heading up Hwy 1 toward Pacifica after the Bay Bridge, and as I was going up the hill I had to downshift to 3rd. The baby Webers were making lots of noise, and I learned about crankcase pressure. Oil was blowing out past the pulley, and spraying the whole engine bay. We didn't know that's where it was coming from though (since everything was sprayed) and spent too long trying to track it down. Finally, Ken over at Vintage Tech suggested that high performance engines need a breather box, and I bought one. It helped, for a little while. Seemed odd, but another discussion with Ken suggested that I pull the foam block out. Yup, it was fully soaked with oil so it didn't breathe anymore. No more foam and voila! No more oil spray.

I finally picked up a board of my own; we stopped at another surf shop in Pacifica and at the recommendation of my friend, I picked up a short board. Little did I know, even though he said "this is a great board!", it was *not* a good beginner board. It was a potato chip. We spent many Sundays in Pacifica at the beach, even in the winter (when I still had heat in the car). I recall one trip when a storm was coming, but in his wise words "You're in the water anyway so it doesn't matter if it's raining". The waves were non existent, just mush, and the tide pulled us way out in the ocean. A sea lion was laughing at us while we were floating on our boards, since he knew the storm was coming and we were going to be toast. What felt like an hour of paddling later, we made it back to shore safely.

Even in those days, it seemed like the Bug was just another car out there. Yeah, we'd see Busses at the beach which made a lot of sense. Lots more room to change, and keep your boards on top. We just had our towels and wetsuits under the hood... and at the time I had no trunk liner of any sort. It didn't seem like a bad idea at the time LOL. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's, not only was all the parking free (just in the dirt), but there was a cool house on the beach which always had the pirate flag flying; I guess it was a party house. Taco Bell was (still is) also on the beach, and has a "walk up" window for people in wet wet-suits. We never ate there but would go across Hwy 1 to the little shopping center near Safeway, where there was a nice taqueria.

Not very often I would drive back to Santa Rosa Sunday night. I'd generally stay at my buddy's girlfriends place Sunday night, and leave early in the morning. The drive was great at that time, like no traffic, so it wasn't bad at all. I tried going that way several years ago and man how things have changed. There's just bad traffic anywhere and everywhere now in the morning.

Scott