Air-Cooled VW owners

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driftless shifter

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Jun 6, 2012
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I know there are at least a few ACVW fans here. Was thinking it'd be nice if we identified ourselves.

Hello, My name s Bill, I've haven't had a VW for two years now? But I keep a bored and stroked, turn key, 2276 cc, type one, in one of my basement compartments for the day I find a suitable Beetle to put it in.  8)

Bill

Edited to correct auto correct
 
I tow my 72 VW Baja 4 down about half my trip time (1835  lifted with 29" tires) I love the 1700# weight compared to my Liberty at 4400#.>>>Dan  (Wendy and Mike also yank one around the southwest part of the country.)
 
Yes I remember you as well as Wendy an Mike. I think there is one or two more. I think there's one or two more on here, one may have raced them at one time.

Bill
 
We have a manx style buggy..Punched out 1300 makes it a 1641. Lots of zip and has a nice cam as you can tell when ideling. Just freshened up the upper end..Solex carb from Germany..electronic dizzy..new plugs wires and plugs. Electric fuel pump. New tires and rims. Fires right up runs great. FOR SALE because we just bought the Jeep...
 
I worked as a VW mechanic in 1968 thru 1970. The other guy that worked with me turned out to be a great friend. We still get together once in a while. We are planning on going to visit the owner of the shop we worked at in a few weeks, as we are all still alive. We could pull an engine in  7 minutes in the old days. We pulled the engines even to install a muffler on the bugs and wagons, was faster.
 
I have a completely original 1965 VW bug in dry storage in Northern California.  I'm the second and fourth owner of it - I bought it in the early 1980s from the original owner, a teacher who bought it in Germany and then just used it to go back and forth to school.

After driving it for a half dozen years I sold it to a co-worker and immediately regretted it.  He sold it back to me 3 years later and I've had it since.

It's been sitting for the last 10 years due to a main bearing knock - I have the parts to fix it and I'm looking forward to getting it running again if/when I can get away from full time work.
 
You can get an all new long block for fairly short money from reputable builders too. I paid $3500 for my bored, stroked, ported and polished ( exhaust only for polish), intake manifolds match ported, blueprinted and balanced, etc? This wad 10 years ago and done by Anibal Chico of CPR, a vet well respected name in the community. A stocker could be had for a lot less, just be sure to check your vendor/builders reputation there are a lot of monkeys out there passing themselves off as builders. It takes attention to detail to build an air-cooled VW engine that will last. That is why I didn't attempt to build my own.

Bill
 
I stopped driving the Bug because I wanted to preserve the engine case ... this car is all original with matching numbers and I'd like to keep it that way.  It has the 40 hp 1200 and most places (at least in SoCal) don't want to talk to you unless it's a 1600.

The main bearing knock isn't bad, you feel and hear something when the engine first started up but it went away and stayed quiet as soon as the oil pressure camevup.  Oil pressure was always good.

With luck, I'll be able to retire at the end of this year and have time to get the Bug back in shape.  The last VW engine I rebuilt was 30 years ago, a 1600 dual port out of a 1971 bug that I bought new.  Just before I got the 1965 bug I rebuilt the 1971's engine ... it had 170,000 miles on it and had never been touched except for normal maintenance.  Then I gave the car to my sister, she drove it another 4 years and it was running fine until it got totaled by someone running a stop sign.
 
We currently tow a 1973 Standard VW Beetle 4 down around 7000 miles each year.
Also have a 1981 AC Vanagon that needs work and a 1974 VW Thing that needs a ton of work.
 

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MikeCoke said:
We currently tow a 1973 Standard VW Beetle 4 down around 7000 miles each year.
Also have a 1981 AC Vanagon that reed work and a 1974 VW Thing thats needs a ton of work.

Oh boy you've got it bad, 3 of them huh? I've had 2 at a time but not three?. yet  8) I do cary a complete engine in my basement though.

Bill
 
Here's a pic of my daughter and I in ours 12 years ago. I sold the car without the engine 2 years ago. The engine is the one I carry in my basement.

http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/295553.jpg

Bill
 
I haven't owned a VW for years, but we had a '58 we bought in 1963.  Drove it from Whidbey Is., Wa to Springfield, Mo.  Three days later, the crankshaft broke.  Cost me $212 for a new crankshaft and a rebuilt generator.  Outrageous!
 

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I've actually witnessed an AC VW running with a broken crankshaft. I was at my buddies shop having a coffee, It was kind of a coffee after work hangout for a few guys I knew., hey the wives were happy we weren't in a bar having beers. Any way, in pulls this familiar Beetle, making awful noises.  a regular customer was near by when something happened  and the noise started so he limped it in as it still ran, though awful, and oil light went out with revs. He shut it off and it never ran again. A used motor was cheaper than fixing what turned out to be a broken crank and ruined case. Amazing little engines. Seemed they would keep running with their issues until you shut them off.

Bill
 
driftless shifter said:
I've actually witnessed an AC VW running with a broken crankshaft. I was at my buddies shop having a coffee, It was kind of a coffee after work hangout for a few guys I knew., hey the wives were happy we weren't in a bar having beers. Any way, in pulls this familiar Beetle, making awful noises.  a regular customer was near by when something happened  and the noise started so he limped it in as it still ran, though awful, and oil light went out with revs. He shut it off and it never ran again. A used motor was cheaper than fixing what turned out to be a broken crank and ruined case. Amazing little engines. Seemed they would keep running with their issues until you shut them off.

Bill
Actually, that's about what happened to mine when it broke the crankshaft.  I was heading out to go fishing and it started to run a little rough.  I called off the fishing trip and headed back home.  The further I went, the rougher it got - more of a vibration than running rough.  The service shop said it broke at an angle right in a journal, so it stayed together - sort of.  As I had just finished a 2500 mile hard trip coming across country, I felt pretty lucky it didn't break in Arizona or New Mexico, out in the middle of nowhere.
 
I blew up a waterboxer twice.  When the vanagon had only 20K miles in it a wrist pin shattered.    VW replaced the piston, cylinder, and head.  Turns out they should have replaced the rod too as it broke about 20K miles later and blew a hole in the case big enough to put your whole hand over.  It still ran!

Th VW mechanIc who did the original repair was my brother in laws father in law, almost family.

VW replaced the entire engine even though I was a few months out of warranty.  I sold it soon afterwards.  Wish I had kept my original air cooled vanagon.

We had a bunch of air cooled bugs & vans, the last being a 1969 bug with a race balanced (up to 10,000 RPM) 1776 with a monster cam, 44 mm Delortos and heads to match, bulletproof transmission, Ricaro seats, custom interior, suspension & braking mods and so on.  My son did the body work and I built then engine & transmission.  I sold it to a collector who told me it's more fun to drive any any of his 19 other cars.  When I built it I had autocross & bracket racing in mind.  It surprised a bunch 5.0 Mustangs. 

I still find odds & ends packed away in my garage, an unused 74mm CW crank turned up a couple of months ago.

My son is the president of West Coast VolksRods.  Don't know exactly how many he's got on any given day.
 
It's funny how we like surprising 5.0 Mustangs! I couldn't keep a stock tranny or cv joints in it unless I eased into it until it was moving. A built tranny cost more than a built long block.

Bill
 
I'm building a lawn mower around a 1700cc. It seems like it is taking forever to get it together.

I enjoy prodding the airboat guys that have the lycoming and continental engines by asking them "is that a big block VW" ?  That really gets under their skin.


 
This thread brought back memories of a VW van I had back in the late 70s.  I don't remember what year the van was but it was probably around a '68 to '70.  I was in my early 20s, maybe 22 and my youngest sister, who was maybe 15, and I took a trip from FL to CO to go backpacking in the San Juans.  Having lived in FL neither of us had been backpacking before, or even hiking.  So it was quite an adventure for us.  It was my first trip out west.  We camped in the van at the trailhead the night before starting out on the hike.  We had a Coleman lantern and tied it to a handle or something in the middle of the ceiling inside the van.  When I lit it, fuel must have spilled out as we were driving and it caught on fire.  I was scrambling to get that thing untied and get it out of the van!!  Which I did, whew!!  I know, that was a really dumb thing to do, and I NEVER done it since - LOL.

After our backpack, we drove over to the Grand Canyon.  This was in mid July so it was really hot.  We'd be driving down the highway and the motor would just die.  So I'd coast over to the side of the road and wait about 40 mins until the motor would start up again.  This happened several times.  I didn't really know anything about air-cooled engines at the time and whether there was any way to keep this from happening. I guess it was just over heating.  On the way back to FL we were going down thru some rural part of Texas and this motorcycle gang came roaring up behind us and went on by.  There were alot of them, probably 30 or 40.  My sister and I were both saying I sure hope this motor doesn't die now!!!  Thankfully it didn't.  We had a blast on that trip.  The Good Lord must have been watching out for us though, because thinking back on it now we did some really dumb things!!

I think I kept that van a couple more years and then traded it.  That's the only VW I have ever owned.  My sister is a real Bug aficionado though, and has had several.  She still lives in FL, I moved out to CO 10 years ago as I fell in love with the Rocky Mountains when coming out here on vacation.
 
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