Maybe you and a Volkswagen were made for each other.

Maybe.

Timing Light

During the nascence of my enthusiasm for air-cooled Volkswagens, I often had occasion to help Melcher with his Beetles (a '63, a '74 Super, and a '71 Standard; none driven concurrently) in addition to my own car ('73 Fastback). We always used his timing light, a really good (re: expensive) one if I remember correctly. Certainly of a brand good enough to honor a lifetime warranty. Despite its pedigree, it had an annoying tendency to short out so you had to whack it once in awhile while using it, and even then it didn't always flash at each firing. It made timing the engine kind of annoying.

But it didn't seem annoying at the time because it was the only timing light I'd ever used, not that I thought it was supposed to work like that. When I got and started using my own timing light in the mid-1990s, I retrospectively understood just how annoying it had been. It flashes when it's supposed to! Replace or fix your timing light for chrissake, Melcher.
Hint: if you hook up your timing light and the engine stalls out when you pull the trigger, you have the red clip clamped to the wrong post on the coil.

Lowering is for Chumps

Just thought I'd put that out there. (To the unfamiliar: this is not our bus.)

Presidents Day 2012

Tater Tot and I took a little drive to the fish hatchery and goose pond yesterday.

 I'm looking at the fish. It's pink.

This kind of fish is called a "i-BYE-no". 

These are spotted fish. 

This is a bubbly spring. 

This is named "Big Ugly". 

Here's some ducks and geese. 

Here's Ludwig.

More Embellishments: The Toolbox

It's not just Ludwig who gets adorned with stickers. My trusty but slightly too small toolbox has received even more garish treatment. The box itself I got in 1995 at the latest. You can see that some of it is painted black because there was a brief, feeble beginning of an attempt to paint it yellow (yes, yellow again) with a black stripe to match the car at the time (Freida). The stickers perhaps deserve explanations.

Rob Zombie: I like White Zombie and Rob Zombie (less so).
SST: SST Records was a dependably fantastic record label up through most of the 1980s (think Minutemen, Black Flag, Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü) but became a shadow of its former self in the 1990s and now is formerly itself altogether.
Firing Order/Cylinder Layout: All air-cooled VWs share the same cylinder layout and the same firing order. Over my twenty-one (!) years of ACVW ownership I've adjusted valves and done the timing at least a hundred times on several Type IIIs, Beetles, and Buses, and I still--still--second guess myself when it comes to remembering which cylinder is where. Recently I've taken to simply diagramming it in marker on the back of my hand. If I were employed in a less professional capacity, I'd very seriously consider getting this drawing (by Peter Aschwanden, from The Idiot Book) tattooed there--and the ACVW shift pattern tattooed on the back of my right (shifter) hand. Seriously.
Timing Chart: I taped this photocopy of the Type III timing marks (also from The Idiot Book) up there for the same reasons I did the cylinder layout and firing order.
ART4ALL: We like the Missoula Art Museum (closed Mondays).
Montana AAA: Triple A is always sending out stickers and I'm always putting them on my toolbox (see below).

You Are A Bus: ...is "Subaru" backwards.
Independent: Skateboard truck/fashion company.
Keep Missoula Weird: It seems every town which thinks of itself as weird has their variation on this. I've seen sticker-borne sentiments imploring us all to retain the weirdness of Portland, Madison, Bend, and Austin as well. 
AAA/Fasten Seat Belts: A good idea.
Jets to Brazil: We like Jets to Brazil.

Jucifer: What can I say, I like Jucifer.
My Cat....: In the 1970s my parents had a veterinarian who believed such a thing was possible. We like cats anyway.
The Mooney Suzuki: I thought they were okay. They were handing out stickers after the show so why not?
SoCal AAA: More AAA.
Subaru (Pleiades): If we had to get a newer car (<10 years old) tomorrow, we'd get a Subaru. No question. Personally, I don't think I would consider anything else except maybe, just barely maybe, a Hyundai. A Volkswagen? Pfffft. No way man. 

IXΘYΣ [ichthys]<Science: I think we all know what this is about.
IAC: For kinder, more personal ACVW advice and less snark (and fewer demands to "do a search!"), try itinerant-air-cooled.com.
Nebraska #1: Go Big Red? I hate football in general and the Cornhuskers specifically, but N Street Liquor is my second favorite liquor store in Lincoln (my favorite: Geno's Beverage, aka 11th & G Beverage.)
Big Blue Is a Friend of Mine: ...and of yours.
Cat Lovers Against the Bomb: Like I said, we like cats. The bomb we could do without though I suspect we're stuck with it.

Apple apple: What happened? When I was in elementary school, all the computers were Apples (II+s and IIes). Now everyone's stuck with this PC garbage.Oh well: history is replete with instances where the inferior product controls the market (see also: QWERTY vs. DSK, VHS vs. Beta, standard vs. metric (in the U.S. at least)).

Save the Bays: They sent me a sticker so I stuck it here. It covers up a KYB Shocks sticker.

BodesWell.com: Hey, I thought it was BodesWell.org.

Brandt Money Handling Machines: There was a time in my life when I had to use money handling machines somewhat regularly. I got this sticker from the service guy (obviously).

AAA: Again.

The Man in the Van....: Mike Watt at 1:08.

90.3 KRNU: KRNU was the first college radio station I ever heard and I loved it but since this was Lincoln Nebraska and all, I assumed there were even better ones. Not true. KRNU is easily the best college radio station I've ever listened to.
Larry's Foreign Car Repair (Ventura California): We got Ludwig's rubber front mat from a wrecked bus there.
Reverend Horton Heat: Do yourself a favor and go see RHH. If he's not playing near you soon, he soon will be.
punk is whatever we made it to be: D. Boon, one of the true greats.
The Only Good Clown....: I don't like clowns. Who does?
Precision Skateboards: "Precision" Phil was (is?) a V-Dub man too. 
BodesWell.com: What? Two?
Hippies Smell: ...like patchouli anyway. I kid, I kid.
Copyright Notice: I found a stack of these at work. They're for the copy machine.
GoWesty: By now GoWesty has entered the untouchable realm of the gods I suppose. Do they still give you a free sticker with your order?
Bob's Mobile Sharpening Service (Seward Nebraska): Much like my experience with money handling machines, there was a time when I had to worry about things like the availability of sharp knives.

Blue Beetle, Butte

On our way to the Hummingbird Café (I won at Connect Four, she won at dominoes), Tater Tot spotted this running boardless Beetle and said I should take a picture.

Later we talked about her (hypothetical) future Beetle and she told me it'll be pink, brown, red, and white.

Crates

What's to sit on in a garage anyway?


Please don't anybody report me for having these (I assume you've read the warnings on the sides before). Did you know milk crates are intentionally made juuuuuust small enough that LP records won't sit straight across in them? Bastards.


I like milk crates because I can sit on them, I can climb on them, I can get them greasy, I can put a towel on one and have a little parts station, if I get mad I can kick them across the garage without regret, and if I need to haul a bunch of stuff somewhere I can flip one back over and there I go. True, I can't roll around on the floor with them like I could with one of these. But I've entertained the idea of fitting casters to a couple crates, maybe making a detachable padded seat too. Hey! Don't get any ideas: patent pending.

These Are the Days of Ludwig's and Gertie's Lives

We haven't mentioned anything about what's actually going on with our cars in a while because nothing has been actually going on with our cars for a while. Here's an update of sorts.

Ludwig's new engine has about 750 miles on it and still runs poorly. I'm 99.44% certain that all it is is maladjusted carburetors (they're running really rich). After an oil change, a valve adjustment, and doing the timing I could probably get to work on dialing in the carbs. But it's cold up here* (except when a Chinook blows through in the middle of the night and it gets into the 40s) which keeps me out of the garage. Also, Ludwig, poorly running as he is, is our only transportation and I'm hesitant to do a rushed and stressed carb job (you know, because it's cold) and render him undrivable or worse. We're saving money to buy a garage heater so maybe things are looking up.

View Ludwig's Day-to-Day Life in a larger map

In the meantime Ludwig takes us on trips of minor length, to the grocery stores and back and sometimes to the free clothing exchange in Opportunity. During the highway stints he really shines, as I think the heat cleans off the spark plugs fouled by the otherwise rich running. But (of course) we daren't take him too far, because his starter has a bad bushing and one of these times I fear he might not start altogether. I could easily replace the bushing <knocks on wood> but it's one of those deals where if you twitch at just the wrong time, you're in for an engine drop. The cold conditions would only add to the stress of an otherwise very simple but delicate job and it's not something my sometimes pathologically cautious nature is willing to risk just yet.

After a few thousand miles of basically trouble-free and highish mileage driving, last February Gertrude started acting funny. Like, under steady pedal she'll die off to almost nothing, then back up, then die off, then back up, and so on. I'm reasonably sure its a bad signal coming from some fuel injection part(s), incorrectly cutting off the flow of gas, then giving it back, then cutting it off, wash, rinse, repeat. It could probably be fixed fairly simply--narrow it down to the bad part then fix or replace--but since we've owned her a time bomb's been ticking away a little bit behind and to the inside of Gertie's rear passengerside tire: her #1 exhaust valve is either stretching, or that valve's seat is sinking into the cylinder head, or both, I guess. Either way, if that bomb goes off it quite possibly'll be curtains for the whole engine (ask me how I know). So it's best not to drive her anyway (my superstitious nature says this f.i. problem is Gertie's way of telling me to fix the head), as for once--just once!--I'd like to take out an engine and get it fixed preemptively, not after it's already gone totally kablooey.

Anyway, so that's where we are.**

*Readers inclined to draw conclusions about the relative uninhabitability of our location (in the middle of a continent; one mile up; 496 miles closer to the North Pole than to the Equator) compared to their own languid climes are good-naturedly invited to stick it; ceteris paribus, there is simply no way an unheated garage in SoCal, say, is better than a heated garage in Montana. We just need to find a way to heat our damn garage.

**This post isn't about martyrdom, but about full disclosure.

A Pair of Jacks

When Ludwig's transaxle got stuck in 2nd gear (late March 2006), it was time for us to perform our first solo engine drop. Sources implied that an ATV jack was about perfect for the job (no balancing act required like with a floor jack (below), though in the midst of Type II work I find myself wishing it went about six inches higher). So we drove Fang Fang down the 101 to Sears in Santa Barbara and for less than $100 it was ours.

 There's an aesthetic quality to this jack that I like, like it's an industrial insect or a space station or something. And red and black! The colors of revolution. I used to keep it partially disassembled for space's sake but recently I've been enjoying using it as a table and personal lift. This jack has come very close to being named. (No, not "Jack".)
  This floor jack and jack stands on the other hand are about as cheap as they come. Which is weird, because you'd think you'd want to spend good money on such things as some measure of insurance against the car crushing you. Hmmm. Though they seem to do the job, maybe I'll be rethinking these jack stands.
I try not to work under the car when the jack's the only thing holding it up, but it happens. It's better than the cinder blocks (major no-no) we used to prop cars up on back when I was new to wrenching on them. Anyway, the jack itself, cheapo though it is, has also never given me any trouble so I can't really complain.
It used to be that when I was in a more nervous mood, this whole set got plunked under the backseat where it took up space and wasted fuel. And for what! Nothing--like I'm going to drop the engine out in the middle of Idaho someplace, right? Never again.