This one scared me at first, the metal bit on the right was stuck to the magnetic drain plug. Took me a while, but I think it’s the rivet off the oil screen. With the way the engine is sitting at the moment, I can’t pop the screen out to see what’s going on.
Drove the ‘69 beetle to work this morning, parked, and discovered we had been leaving a bit of a trail.
Don’t quite see it in the cellphone pic? Here, this is under car after 2.5min…
Houston, we have a problem. After work the stain was just a bit larger, but the whole left side of the lower block and engine ancillaries was coated in fresh oil. I had checked the oil two nights ago, and it was just above the mark. Now? about 1.5qts down. When you consider the beetle has a stock oil capacity of 2.4 quarts…that’s pretty significant. Thankfully I have a 2 quart external sump attached to it!
You play with Cars!
Yes, that’s right, bring on the four-wheeled machines.
If you haven’t yet met my project, what are you doing surfing this website? For obvious reasons it’s my ‘69 Beetle. More on that later though…cuz the project of choice for this evening is Connor’s 1977 MustangII. Purchased at the beginning of the school year, and mildy forgotten for a short while, he’s back at actually getting some work done on it. Hey, everyone needs a break from a project, but we’re back now!
Tonight Connor actually taught himself a skill that I haven’t figured out yet. The art of panel beating removes dents and ripples from sheet metal, using hammers and dollies. You hold the dolly behind the panel you’re attempting to massage, and beat upon the otherside with a small hammer. Connor grabbed the hammers, took a quick verbal lesson from me and proceeded to wipe out two dents from the fender better then I could have. Hmph, that’s annoying!
Winter you say? Bah! That’s just car prep season for another awesome summer!
-Dave
Took a break from riding today to go and hit the Airspeed Cruise to AVR Import Specialties.
More photos here.
I’ve finally caught up on sleep from this project. I figured out that by Monday evening I had over 120 hours into it, and that doesn’t include all the time Connor, Scott, Wayne, Eric, Ian and Craig put in.
So to answer the age-old car-nut question…Can you paint a car in your garage over a weekend? Yes (if it’s four days).
Would you want to? No. But alas, I did it anyways.
When I last posted it was Thursday night, and I had just finished stripping the car down for sanding:
It’s a long weekend…so what’s your weekend project?
A couple of weekends ago I started to attack the rusty sections on the ‘69 Beetle. It’s mostly all stone-chips or similar, but it definitely needed attention. Even with a spectrometer I couldn’t get the paint matched correctly…so what do you do?
Somehow I got it into my head that my buddies and I could strip, prep, paint and reassemble the car over the Easter weekend.
…in my garage. Yeah, I’ve lost it. But really, I couldn’t show up to the Spring Thaw with “patches” the ‘69 beetle! I’ve painted portions of one car in my life, and it turned out quite well (had we ever gone back to wetsand out the orange peel). So with some luck, this will work out alright. The paint, currently, is a 20/20 paint job (at 20 feet or 20mph it looks great), or perhaps 30/30 with the rust now. If I can get a 10/10 or 20/20…and know the rust has been stopped…I’ll be happy.
5:20pm, I pulled the car into the garage:
12:00am, with a long stop for dinner at a friend’s place:
And now for the photos of things we discovered along the way…
Suede…
-Dave
Scott and I spent yesterday popping three new frost-plugs into Francois the Ford. It took a few hours, but we got him buttoned up and out for a lap around the block. There was a coolant leak or two, which wasn’t unexpected since he was bleeding coolant all summer out of various places. A bit of stop leak, and he was perfectly fine.
Connor, Trevor and I planned an afternoon ride…and needed Francois to take us up to Alice lake to start our pedal ride. I changed, loaded my gear, jumped in Francois and turned the key. Nothing. Hmmmm…After a bit of fussing around I finally just blocked the wheels, tossed him into neutral and started the truck by shorting a tire lever across the back of the starter. With the roar of a poorly tuned V8, Francois was ready to go.
Down the street I went, with no problems at all. Taking off from the stop sign at Government Road, though, was a different story. Francois lurched and died. After a few tries I got him started, but there was something obviously wrong. With no power, it took me about 15min to get him back down the street and off to the side of the road.
No coolant leaks. Hmmmm???
I pulled the dipstick, just for curiosity sake. Eeek. There’s the problem.
One of the things you never want to see in your vehicle is a dipstick that looks like it’s coated in Mayonnaise. I popped the oil cap, and sure enough, it had a thick layer of mayo as well. Somewhere, Francois’ coolant had been mixing with his oil. Even if I do find the problem, and repair it, I’m still going to have to flush that thick mayo like substance out of the entire cooling system. Sigh.
I think it might be time to let Francois go.
-Dave
Today was supposed to be a typical garage Sunday. You know, wake up semi-early and get a bunch of jobs accomplished so you can finish the day feeling good. That was the plan, at least. Reality, as it often is, was not exactly as planned.
It was simple enough, I swear. I wanted to drop my Porsche 912 tach into the bug for a bit, to get an idea of how badly I’m revving the engine. Air Cooled VW engines aren’t really meant to be revved out…so I should be able to figure out how strong I need to build the new engine. Perhaps I can avoid doing a replacement too soon after!
It should have been simple, but I was confronted at every corner by complete disaster. I was planning on getting the fuel gauge in, but it’s just not going to happen. The previous owner welded in some steel where it shouldn’t be, and I wasn’t going to cut it out. Speedo? Who needs a speedo! Speed and RPM are a constant, so you’re just looking at the same information in a different way. All in all, I spent waaaay more time then I planned doing this…but with the list of things I need to prep before the spring thaw, I needed a ‘quick’ job that was kind of fun to get me started.
At least it was raining?
-Dave
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