Beetle For Sale

This '64 or '65 Beetle is for sale in Missoula, on Stephens. My cursory look-over deemed it a slightly rough car with one-piece windows which'd have to be taken care of. 

The area code is 406 on the off chance anyone's truly interested.

Initiation

In discussion about the poor running he'd been experiencing, Larry mentioned that he hadn't adjusted Sandy's valves. How many miles had it been, I asked. Over 4,000 miles was the answer. That's too many. Even if it had nothing to do with Sandy's poor idling and starting, they needed to be done anyway. Knowing from bitter experience that fuelies are especially sensitive to out-of-adjustment valves however, I had an inkling.

In any case, true bus operators need to know how to adjust valves and Larry'd never done it. He had done his homework though (see his composition book?) and said that Sandy's were to be set at 0.006" for intake, 0.008" for exhaust. Skeptical since twenty-two years of valve adjustments have indelibly etched the 0.006" figure into the very fabric of my mind (it's right there between the quadratic formula and the lyrics to "You Shook Me All Night Long"), I asked him to call the guy who built Sandy's engine for confirmation. Sure enough, Sandy has a cam that necessitates those figures. Eight thousandths for the exhausts it is.

Determined to get Larry familiar with Sandy, I did as little as possible besides talking. At cylinder 1 I showed him where to slide the feeler blade and checked his work. 

At cylinder 2 I just checked his work.

By the time he got over to cylinders 3 and 4 I was just fielding questions, spouting "wisdom", and casually reflecting on existence.

Sandy's got a nice, clean engine compartment with unmolested fuel injection. Larry has already been advised to get a screen for the fan, lest Vermont's spectacular Fall foliage (among other things) end up inside Sandy's cooling system.

Checking in with Lexie.

It turned out that all the valves were off, both ways (tight and loose), and not just a little. Firing her up post-adjustment, she purred like a kitten, pretty much. We reset the idle to spec, looked at the timing, and Larry changed the oil. Then he took her on a drive up a grade, to get her warm and see if he could induce the poor idle/hard starting condition.

Nada. I advised (such as my advice is) that the problems were caused mostly if not entirely by the way-off valves and that barring any further issues, he shouldn't do anything else to the engine. (Here is Larry's take on the day, for the record.)

As of this writing he's in Livingston, on his way to Billings and points East. Safe travels!

Still Life with Larry

Larry bought a bus (a '78 Westfalia, "Sandy") a couple weeks ago in Reno and is on his way, the long way, back to Vermont with her. (He's going the long way to knock off the few states he has yet to visit.) Check out his blog. That map is crazy accurate, the waypoints anyway.

A failure to idle well or start easily when warm has been plaguing him since somewhere in Washington (I think). He found us online and arranged for a visit, and why not see if we can address the engine while we're at it, yeah?

His co-pilot Lexie kept watch in the cabin.

The beginning of our crash-course in L-Jetronic fuel injection yielded no real results. It's fun to mess around with someone else's bus though. For the occasion I wore a jacket to match the bus.

Tomorrow: Larry's first valve adjustment

Missoulaneous VWs, Blurry Edition

Ain't Nothin' but a G Thang

Why.

GL on the Hip Strip

Here's to Sylvie the Subaru

Someone requested a report on Sylvie, the 2003 Subaru Baja that serves as our primary driver since Gertie is at present unreliable and Ludwig is more of an open road vehicle, not great for hauling stuff--camping stuff excepted--anyway. I mean, if we're gonna wear-and-tear Ludwig, it's gonna be in service to some exploits, not getting the damn groceries.

Speaking of hauling stuff....

Anyway, in response to the request I was typically pessimistic and grumpy. But I could've done a little better. Sylvie is a decent enough car (or truck, or whatever). She does what's asked of her with little complaint or fuss. You know, point A to point B and all. She has a sunroof (or moonroof, or whatever), my first, so rah rah to that.
And (maybe) interestingly, she is by a looooong shot the most rare car I've ever owned or co-owned, or driven, Subaru having made only around 33,000 of them, only for the US and Chilean (?) markets, over four years. Compare that to the 3 million-plus bay window buses and the little more than 2.5 million Type 3s Volkswagen made. Shit, Bajas are even rarer--by better than twice--than that perhaps most vaunted of all collector cars, the Porsche 356. (Not that I care about that kind of thing; in some respects it's a pain in the ass, to be honest. But there I go getting pessimistic and grumpy again.)

So there you have it.