Brakes Efficiency Percentages

Last week my '71 Early Bay van failed her MOT on a couple of points (both now rectified and retested - so she's through), one of which was that the parking break efficiency was only 13%. The tester gave me a report showing the figure above, which also showed:

Front Service Brake 38%
Rear Service Brake 27%
Total Service Brake 66%

I was curious about these figures and meant to ask when I went back, but forgot.  Since then I've done a little research, and here's what I found out:

Apparently the percentages are calculated by dividing the total weight of the vehicle (with everything in it) by the force required to stop it (they have a machine to test this at the test centre) and multiplying by 100%.  A little searching on the web revealed that the service brake needs to be at least 50% and parking brake at least 16% for an MOT pass.  However this left me wondering: how much better could they be?

What I found suggested that it's possible to get significantly higher percentages and, surprisingly, to even exceed 100% mark.  Sounds crazy that something can be more than 100% efficient doesn't it?  But consider the way the percentage is calculated and what would happen if you put the brakes from HGV on a moped.  :-)

Unsurprisingly such high efficiencies are not recommended and according to herbie275h on the VZi forum:

normally the limit is reached by the tyres which skid around 85-90% of the vehicle weight

Various Internet sources also suggested that 60-70% is about normal and this sounds quite reasonable to me after finding the following titbit of information that SpunkMoney posted on the motester.co.uk forum:

The Highway Code stopping distances ("A car in good condition, with good brakes in good conditions blah-de-blah-de-blah....") base their actual stopping distance (ie: NOT the reaction part) on a deceleration of 0.66g - that's 66% braking efficiency.

So I guess 70%-ish is what we ought to be aiming for and be happy with.  I guess it also makes sense that the individual front and rear efficiencies will be less, and that the handbrake (which according to herbi275h needs to be enough to hold the vehicle on a 1:6 hill), can be even less than those and still be acceptable.

Thanks also to Samba63 on VZi who pointed me in the direction of SpudMonkey's info.  ;-)

End Of An Era?

I've done something I thought I'd never do: after just a little over three years of ownership, I've sold my Beetle!

Back in April my wife announced that she was moving to Wales… without me. Ironic given that we'd moved to Norfolk primarily so that she could be closer to her family, but it meant that I needed to find a new place to live. That in turn meant that I had to reconsider the future of my work in (not making very much) progress Beetle project. In truth, I'd been having second thoughts about it for a while.

Okay, so there were issues with not having a garage to work in; so the weather, in addition to my health problems and other work load, meant that I was progressing much slower than anticipated. However there was another, probably bigger problem in that this Beetle restoration lark was not what I'd anticipated:

When I looked into getting the bug I thought that given the length of time these things have been around, I'd be able to buy a book or something that told me what to do with it. As it turns out there are lots of sources of information... but with no real consensus about the best way to go about things. Just search VZi for which oil to use and you'll see that even with something as apparently simple as that, dub owners have to make their own decisions about who and what to believe.

Then there's the situation with parts, because while there's loads of stuff available, I've been astounded by the poor quality. A few months back for example I bought a stock pulley from VHW, and the centre was two millimetres off. TWO! I've had other parts that were equally useless and it would appear that needing to bend, file, re-drill, and generally adjust things to get them to fit is par for the course... and the situation is getting worse:

Having ultimately decided to sell my bug, and the plethora of parts I'd acquired to restore it, (I tried to sell them as a job lot but had no takers), I've made some very good money on the parts. Why? Because when I bought the floor panels, heater channels, rear quarter panels, and other parts that have spent the last couple of years in my shed, it was still possible to buy genuine VW, and mine were. These days they're as rare as hens teeth and I'm told the repro stuff is... erm... poop.

So rather than the Beetle being the big Lego kit with step-by-step instructions that I'd anticipated, it's a big heap of frustration with conflicting opinions about what's best for it, and parts that don't fit well into anything other than a dustbin.

The sale of my Beetle clearly represents the end of an era for me. I'm keeping my van but she's in pretty good condition and provided I protect her she should see me out. But I'm inclined to wonder whether my personal adventure might have also spanned the end of the era in which it was practical / worthwhile to undertake a major restoration.

The Major Oil Leak That Wasn't

Last November I set off in my van to do a 200 mile trip up to Manchester. However, after 40 miles or so she sprang a major oil leak and I ended up being towed home by the RAC. It's taken me a while to find out and understand what went wrong and it turns out to be an embarrassingly stupid mistake on my part. Rather than keep it to myself however, I thought I'd write it up in some detail, in the hope that it benefits somebody else.



As you can see, my van's engine, like most, is not entirely stock. For one thing it has a progressive carb with a paper air filter, and for another the heating system is not connected up. One of the first things I did when I got my her was to block up the gaping holes in the fan shroud where heater pipes would be attached. Given that the Manchester trip was to be a significantly longer drive than I'd ever done before, I'd decided to attend to a few other things too, including blocking up the holes where said heater pipes, and a stock air filter's warm air intake hose, would go through the rear tinware.

All of the above is as it should be but I'm mentioning it here because it gives context to the mistake that I did make. The fact is that if you look around you'll see a lot of VW engines with these orifices left gaping; and they shouldn't be. The ones in the fan shroud will result in air being blown back into the engine bay rather than being sent to cool the cylinder heads. Gaping holes in the tinware will result in warm air from the lower engine being sucked back into the engine bay.

So what was my mistake?

Well, the oil filler neck has a connection which, on a stock engine, has a hose connecting it to the air filter; thus, you might think, as I did, allowing the crankcase to breathe filtered air. Replace the stock air filter (often done when a non-stock carb is used) and you might not have a place to connect this hose. Have a look at a few dub engines with non-stock carbs and you'll see that the breather on the oil filler neck is often left unconnected to anything. This did not strike me as being a good thing and in my bid to close up 'unnecessary' orifices, I put some tape over it to stop any crud getting in there.

As I discovered later, the crank case is in fact more inclined to breathe out though that tube as it takes air in through a (surprisingly to me) unfiltered opening behind the pulley wheel. The tube on the filler neck connects to the stock air filter not to supply it with filtered air but so that the oily vapour it breaths out goes into the carb; to be burned up in the engine rather than dumping it elsewhere. Block the pipe on the oil filler neck, as I did, and the crank case will breathe its oily breath out behind the pulley wheel. Result: the pulley wheel flings the oil all over the engine bay.

Combine my faux pas in closing that vent with topping up the oil to the max (she always leaks a bit so I expected to lose some on the trip) before I set off and I was all set for the incident that followed. This part of the story is worth telling because it helps to show why it took me a while to find out what went wrong. So, in a nutshell:

I pulled into a service station, smelled oil, and when I went around the back I found that there was oil sprayed all over the back of the vehicle (it must have been hitting the hot engine and vaporising) as well as all over the engine bay. In a bid to save a potentially dry engine I grabbed a can of oil and glugged it in fast. Well, most of it went in. However a good deal didn't so by the time the RAC man arrived there was additional oil, spilled by me, all over the place making things look even worse. It's also important to note (we'll see why shortly) that because I just glugged it in, there was now way too much oil in the engine.

So the RAC man arrives and a can of degreaser and a shed load of paper towels later the engine is somewhat cleaner and we're trying to work out where the oil came from. We drive down the road half a mile and take another look. This is where having glugged too much oil in the engine plays it's part in the story because of course it's immediately been forced out of the vent behind the pulley and thrown all over the engine bay.

Of course we didn't realise at the time that this is what was happening so we conclude that there's a major leak somewhere that we can't see. The greatest concentration of oil seemed to be on top of the tinware over no. 4 cylinder (where I've marked an X on the photo accompanying this post) and as we could see that it wasn't coming from the oil pressure switch or anywhere like that, we figured that the oil cooler was a likely candidate, it being hidden away, up top, on that side of the engine. Given that accessing the oil cooler is an engine out job we concluded that my trip to Manchester wasn't gonna happen and the RAC man towed me home.


I've already explained what the problem turned out to be but it took me several weeks of research to find and piece together the parts of this puzzle.

One of the first things I did was to post the photo shown above on VZi but I felt fairly sure that the oil cooler was the most likely cause of the problem and was kinda distracted by the idea of swapping the engine with the one in my (project) Beetle to get myself back on the road ASAP. So nobody thought to question my diagnosis and it wasn't until a while later, when watching the Bug Me Video on stripping/rebuilding an engine, that I began to realise that oil from the cooler is unlikely to end up on top of that tinware. Of course with hindsight it's obvious why there was a concentration of oil there. Clue: consider the direction in which the pulley wheel rotates and where most of the oil it flings/flicks is going to end up.

My first breakthrough came when I stumbled across some information about a "sand seal". For those who don't know, and to air my new knowledge, this is something that's needed on dune buggies to prevent sand from getting into the crank case through the vent behind the pulley wheel. WHAT? There's a vent behind the pulley wheel?

This in turn lead me to find an article about crankcase ventilation over at
Rob & Dave's Aircooled Volkswagen Pages which pretty much describes the problem. Oh how I wish I'd found that sooner but I have to say that when I did I was sceptical that the amount of mess I'd seen in my engine bay was down to just that. However, having cleaned up my engine, unblocked the breather, and syphoned out a litre of excess oil that I'd glugged in when I panicked, she's working just fine.


Coda:

You can get little "breather filters" (SSP part no AC115551) to go on that filler neck connection. I've heard they can leak oil but they've got to be better than nothing and certainly a hell of a lot better than what I tried. On closer examination however I found that the rectangular filter on top of my carb had a connector for a hose. The filter was fitted with this hidden away around the back; which is why I hadn't seen it before. I've turned it around however there's still an issue in that the most direct path for the hose would be at risk of fouling the fan belt. This would not be the case with a stock filter.

For now I have a long tube, taking a path over the generator and around the back of the carb to connect the breather to the filter. However I'm also investigating other possibilities ranging from returning to a stock set up, to installing twin carbs and a breather box. More about that in a future post.

Starter Motor Bush Puller

I remember my friend Tex commenting that my father "wasn't a bodger". An odd thing to say and while it wasn't a compliment, it wasn't an insult either. Merely an observation.

You see my father, in his capacity as a bench joiner had amassed an extensive collection of tools. Some of them sat in cupboards and drawers for years on end between uses however when they were used, having the right tool for the job made a world of difference. Not having the right tool, on the very rare occasions that it happened, was an intense source of frustration to him.

Tex on the other hand, though also a joiner, made his living going out and about fixing things. His need to be mobile meant that he could only carry a relatively small number of tools and he often found himself having to use things for purposes other than the one for which they were strictly intended, and having to implement less than perfect solutions in order to just get the job done - or "bodging" as he called it.

The reason this comment, which was made some 15 years ago, came to mind is that I have just installed a new starter motor in my Bay, and while the removal of the various nuts and bolts went a lot easier than I expected, the bush seemed determined to stay firmly in the clutch housing.

Not wanting to damage anything, I abandoned the job overnight in order to post on VZi asking how to remove it. Moby5153 came to my assistance as he has done before and pointed out that there's a special tool available for the job, or that I could tap into it with an M12 tap.

I didn't have an M12 tap but as the bush is copper, a high tensile M12 bolt did the job quite nicely, tapping into it and then pushing the bush out as the bolt made contact with the clutch housing. The new starter motor is now in place and all seems well.

Now, while this might be the first starter motor bush I've ever had to deal with, I dare say it won't be my last so I'm looking at that special tool in the VW Heritage catalogue and thinking that perhaps I should add the 40 quid item to my shopping list. Thus I find myself with miniature versions of my father and Tex sitting on my shoulders like angel and demon (although I'm not sure which is which), with my father reassuring me that it'll be 40 quid well spent, and Tex shaking his head in despair.

Red 9 Design EZRider - Shocks

It's taken me a couple of days longer to post this than I expected. Damned CFS. However:

In my previous post I explained my reasons for purchasing Red 9 Design's EZRider kit and my thoughts regarding the safety concerns expressed by some. In this post I'll describe what I've installed so far, namely the shocks/dampers (which I will refer to as "shocks" from here on).

The EZ Rider kit consists of 2 elements:

The first is a pair of metal bars that replace the torsion bars. These are metal rods with the necessary dimples machined into them and swivelling ends that will allow the trailing arms to pivot freely.

The second element is a pair of Spax coil over shocks.

In order to lower a van from stock height you need the rods in place or the torsion bars will continue to determine it's height, however as my intention was to raise a van that had been lowered too far it occurred to me that the shocks alone might do it. Given that they were going to be easier to fit than the rods I decided to try them on their own first and see what happened.

The only problem I encountered in fitting the shocks was that the bushes in the lower end of the dampers wouldn't go onto the spindles. I didn't measure it but we're talking about maybe a thousandth of an inch too tight, two at most. Given that this was an issue with the shocks I decided to phone Spax as opposed to Red 9 Design and they suggested, given that it was such a small amount, that I check there was no rubber fouling things and if there wasn't then maybe making the hole in the bushes a little bigger. There was no problem with rubber and I found that a 12mm drill went snugly thought the bushes. Running the drill backwards and forwards a few time removed a tiny amount of metal after which they went snugly onto the spindles. Everything was easy after that and it was unnecessary to compress the springs.

Before moving on to the results I'd just like to mention an interesting aspect of the phone call to Spax: while talking to them I found out that these shocks are made especially for Red 9, to their specification. Given that I was wanting to raise my van and was speculating that the shocks alone may be enough to do, I had wondered whether the purchase of a pair of coil over shocks alone might be enough. Indeed I asked VWHeritage about using their GAZ coil over shocks for this purpose however they doubted that their springs would be powerful enough to actually raise the van. I didn't fancy gambling 200 quid on something that might not work. Better I thought to pay 320 for something that WILL work even if it turns out that I don't need the entire kit.

So how about the results?

Here she is before:



and after the shocks were fitted:



As you can see she's now about 2.5" higher at the front than she was before; which is just what I wanted because I now have about 4.5" inches of ground clearance under the low points on the beam.

She still has low profile tyres on the front and although I'll leave them in place for now I'll change them to something bigger when they need changing. That'll take her up about another half an inch however at that point I might use the adjustments on the coils to bring her down half an inch, maybe a full inch.

She is actually about an inch higher at the front than she is at the back now but I'd like to take her up an inch at the back. At the moment you have to deflate the tyres to get them out from under the rear arches. Going up an inch will remove that hassle.

As for the ride, I can't really say at the moment. To be honest it doesn't feel much different but:

1. I haven't driven her much since doing it.

2. I haven't fitted the torsion bar replacements.

3. I haven't touched the adjustment screws on the shocks.

I'll report back on the ride in a few weeks time. By then I'll have done a few more journeys and will have Dee's opinion too. Up until now she's been complaining that if I couldn't improve it she'd have to invest in some sports bras so we'll have to see how the ol' bounceometers rate it now. I may also have twiddled with the adjusters (on the shocks, not on the bounceometers).

What I do about the torsion bars is another issue. As I said before, if I were lowering the van I'd have to swap them but given what I'm doing I can't really see much point. As I understand it, it can't improve my ride as her height is already being governed by the springs on the shocks i.e. the torsion bars ain't doin' nuffin' guv. The rubber seals on the ball joints are fubar (torn up, I've been told, as a consequence of her being lowered to much) so maybe I'll swap the bars when I deal with those rubbers. Maybe not. I haven't decided yet. At the moment I'm just chuffed that I don't have to worry about scraping the beam on every little bump in the road.

Raisin' Up The Van

My van is too low. The previous owner lowered it as much as he could and even put low profile tyres on the front. I guess there must be no bumps in the road where he lives because I managed to scrape the low points of the front beam on the ground within my first week of ownership, and not on an obviously bumpy road either.

Raising her up a bit should have been simple given that there are adjusters on the beam however when I tried to move them, they wouldn't budge. I posted about it on earlybay.com and took her to a local-ish VW garage. The conclusion is that the installation of the adjusters was probably botched such that the internal collar has been locked in place by excessive weld penetration. The garage said they could fix it by removing them and fitting new ones at a cost of 250 quid.

At about this time, somebody posted on earlybay.com asking if anybody had any experience of the EZRider kit from Red 9 Design, thereby bringing the product to my attention. This is essentially a system for lowering a bus or bug by effectively doing away with the torsion bars and installing coil over shocks. It occurred to me that if the torsion bars were made redundant then my stuck adjusters would no longer be an issue and although the kit was 320 quid, Red 9 reckon that their kit gives a much better ride than a standard lowering job.

The idea of making an improvement rather than just a fix appealed to me however opinions about the kit seem to vary. The aforementioned thread on earlybay.com quickly turned into a discussion about safety rather than ride quality. A number of posters, and some mechanics that I've asked about it, point out that the damper mountings were not designed for this purpose. On the other hand, Red 9 Design have been making these items for several years now and there don't seem to have ever been any problems. I checked with my insurance company (Adrian Flux) and they had no concerns or warnings about it and all of the doubters on the forums seemed to be simply that i.e. doubters. I could not find, and I checked several forums, a single instance of anybody having had a problem with the Red 9 kit.

The main concern regarding safety seemed to be what would happen if the mounting failed however Red 9 are also able to supply lowered bump stops at an additional 47.50 per pair. I figure that having them in place is a reasonable safety precaution and added them to my shopping list. As a matter of fact I received the kit a few days ago and I fitted some of the kit today. I'll describe what I did, and report on the effect it's had, in my next post.

Fireflex Installation (Bay)

Apparently old VW engines have a tendency to catch fire!

I don't know if there's something about the design that makes them more prone to this than other vehicles or whether it's just an age thing. Whatever the reason, regular checks to make sure that the fuel lines are in good condition and carrying an extinguisher should be considered mandatory. I've already been doing both since day one, however today I took things a stage further and fitted an automatic extinguisher into the engine compartment of my Bay.

Automatic extinguishers consist of a pressurised bottle of gas, foam, or powder to which is attached a length of 'hose'. In a nutshell, you clip the hose around the engine bay and, in the event of a fire, the hose ruptures spraying the contents of the bottle all over the fire.

There are a number of decisions to be made before you buy:

1. Gas, foam or powder.

2. 0.5kg or 1.0kg bottle.

3. Horizontal or Vertical mounting for the bottle.

I initially purchased a 0.5kg upright gas bottle from VW Heritage but after seeing it for real I decided to use that one in my Bug (where I can easily mount it to the firewall) and bought a horizontal version for my Bay. In both cases I went for the 0.5kg bottle because I've been assured that it's plenty for use in the confines of the engine compartment in a Bug or a Bay. I went for gas because I liked the idea that there would be no additional clean up required as a result of it being activated. We discussed this on earlybay.com where some folks suggested that foam would also be a relatively easy clean up and less prone to dissipation. Their argument was that gas would disperse after putting out the fire which could then reignite. The counter argument is that the vehicle would have stopped by then and although there may still be fuel present, the source of ignition would have been removed (the heat of the engine is insufficient to cause petrol vapour to auto-ignite - it needs a spark).

Having made my choice the next job was to fit it. As I said, I originally purchased a vertical bottle but although there is plenty of space in the Bay's engine compartment there are not many suitable vertical mounting points. On the other hand there are plenty or opportunites for horizontal mounting, including the roof of the compartment.

The roof is covered with hardboard, which has holes in it, and glass fibre insulation behind above that. The hardboard is fixed to an arrangement of beams which support the metal floor of the luggage compartment above.

Now I have seen bays with the hardboard and glass fibre removed and although I don't like the idea of hardboard in the engine bay, I figure that it's been doing it's job of keeping noise and heat out of the interior for the last 36 years so why remove it now?

My reason for mentioning it at all is that I figured that one of the beams to which the hardboard is attached would make a good mounting for the extinguisher bottle. You can tell where the beams are by looking at the fixing points for the hardboard and if you look at the floor of the luggage area you'll also see where they are spot welded.

The image below shows the roof of my engine compartment with a pencil line drawn between two of the fixings in preparation for drilling holes for the extinguisher bracket.



Holes were drilled and self tapping screws used to fix the bracket in place. Then, after clipping the cylinder in place and tightening the large cable tie (supplied) I moved on to the job of fixing the hose.

I'm not the first person to write on the web about installing one of these things and if you look around you'll find that everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY, who has ever done so says that there are not enough cable ties supplied with the kit. Why the manufacturer has not taken notice and put a few more into the kit I can't imagine. I can't accept that doubling the number included would seriously affect their profitability however, forewarned is forearmed: get some more cable ties because you will need them.

As far as the installation in my Bay was concerned that hardboard ceiling with it's pattern of holes was a blessing because it gave me loads of places to attach the ties without having to drill holes or attach sticky pads. Given that I'd made sure I had extra ties available it was no big deal when I decided that some were in the wrong place. I also made a point of attaching them loosely at first so I could slide the hose around until I was completely happy with the layout. As you can see from the final picture I spiralled the hose over the engine i.e. around the area where a fire is most likely to break out.

Panel Van - Day 1

If you're in the UK and reading this within a short time the date on which I'm writing, then you will be well aware of how unhelpful the weather has been recently, and given that I have no garage, you will understand why I've made little progress with the Beetle. My server and MacBook are doing nicely, hence the recent lack of blog entries, however another factor with the Beetle is that I still haven't managed to get my hands on a replacement heater channel for the right hand side. VWHeritage have been telling me that "we should have some in a week or two" for a couple of months now however I'm inclined to stick with them a) because they've given me good service on all the other stuff I've needed and b) that if they have none I reckon my chances of finding one anywhere else are probably so low as to make it hardly worth looking.

The relevance of the right hand heater channel, given that it's the left hand side of the car that failed the MOT, is that the one on the car has been welded to the floorpan by a previous owner. Thus I cannot lift the body to sort out the left hand side without also replacing the right hand side. The Beetle is therefore off the road until I get that heater channel and although there are things that I could have been getting on with, on the odd days when it hasn't been raining, I've been more inspired to work on erecting a summer house Dee and I can now sit 'in the garden' enjoy the English summer without getting wet.

However, faced with the prospect of being grounded for an as yet unknown length of time I began to look for alternative solutions, and when my dear old dad announced that a savings policy had matured and that he'd like to by me a prezzy, like another car maybe?

Now while I wouldn't really want another car, even as a stop gap, it is a fact that when I was reading through all those back issues of VolksWorld magazine as part of my research for buying the Beetle, I also found myself looking at vans and wondering about the advantages of such a vehicle. I'll post more about it later but the bottom line is this:



i.e. I now own a 1971 Bay Panel Van as well as a 1969 Beetle.

Look Ma: No Engine!

I took my engine out for the first time yesterday. It's not that hard actually but don't tell Dee because she's under the impression that my voice is a little deeper and my underwear a little less roomy today.

Vol 3 of Bug Me Videos shows how to do it but Rick fails to mention what to do when you're up to your elbow trying to undo one of the top nuts that hold the engine into the car and your other arm gets attacked by the world's most determined horse-fly. The little bastard had me dancing all around the garden trying to escape it before I eventually managed to clap my gloved hands on it - a shame really because in my new found masculinity I might have mounted it's head on a plaque in the hall had it been in one piece.

Another small problem was that the same top nut was a little reluctant to come all the way off the bolt. It came far enough that the head of the bolt would release from it's locked position and turn with the spanner. Most irritating, but with my right hand reaching up through the wheel arch to push the bolt back and my left hand on the spanner I eventually got it loose.

The final problem of the day was the when I came to lower the engine onto the dolly that I got from VW Heritage and discovered that the wheels of my 3-tonne jack were too wide to go between the wheels of the dolly. It hadn't occurred to me to check. Luckily the rear valance on my bug is bolted into place as opposed to being welded so I didn't need to raise the car up as much as Rick does in the video before pulling the engine back and was able to use my 2-tonne jack to lower the engine the necessary few inches onto the dolly.



At this point I was able to remove the louvered panel attached to my firewall and unclip the wiring that runs behind it. Although that was mission accomplished (the whole reason for doing it was that I needed to get to those wires) I obviously had a good look around and while I was at it I found the bits shown below inside the clutch/flywheel housing on a little ledge next to the gear from the starter motor:



Obviously I was shocked because no way should there be any bits of loose metal flying about in there and judging by the little marks on the inside of the casing, they had indeed been flying around at some point. I posted about it on VZi and Moby5153 identified the clips as being transit clips for the clutch pressure plate that should have be removed after clutch installation. I already had evidence that the garage who fitted the engine didn't really know what they were doing and this merely compounds it.

As for how the hell a spade connector got in there...

Rust Sandwiches

Although I've made a number of posts relating to my research and planning, I haven't said much about the actual work in progress on my Beetle. Alas things are not going too well. Bad health, bad weather, and a need for out of stock parts have all played their part in delaying things however the largest factor has been that I keep discovering even more bits that need replacing.



I knew when I bought her that the left hand heater channel was in poor condition. I was quite pleased with myself at the time for spotting it because it wasn't glaringly obvious and in a matter of weeks, I'd gone from knowing almost nothing about cars to knowing enough about Beetles to spot it. However I failed to spot that during a previous repair, the heater channel had been welded to the floor pan. It's really obvious when you see it but I just didn't notice and the fact is that it's the same on the right hand side meant that both sides looked the same and didn't alert me to it.

That in itself is not a huge problem but in the process of removing the left hand heater channel and floor pan half I've also come to realise that the corner of the front-head base-plate is rotted away, along with the end of the front chassis support, where they bolt to the heater channel. At the back, the outer part of the rear cross member is rotten and there were so many bad areas lurking beneath thick layers of underseal in the rear wheel arch (covered by glued on carpet on the inside) that it probably makes more sense to replace the rear quarter rather than repair it.

Now while all of that is possible, it would be a heck of a lot easier with the body off. However, while I've got replacement floor pans for both sides and a new heater channel for the left hand side, the heater channel for the right hand side is out of stock. Remember that the one on my car is welded to the floorpan and you'll relised that I can't get the body off and make the car roadworthy again before I get my hands on a new right hand heater channel.

Vol 7 of the Bug Me Videos shows them removing a heater channel in one piece, and while that makes a lot of sense for demo purposes (and let's face it the new one is going to have to go in in one piece) it's not necessarily the most practical way to do it if there are 'unknowns'. I've already said that mine was welded to the floorpan but in the video they say that there are no welds along the top of the channel where it meets the front wheel arch on the inside of the car; just spotwelds on the outside. There clearly was a weld on the inside of mine and things became even more interesting when I started to cut it out. It turned out that there were four, yes four, layers of metal.

On top of the original, rusted to bits, heater channel was a patch. Presumably this had also started to rust at the bottom at some point because there was another patch on top of that, and another patch on top of that.

Now that I've got it out of there I can see that the bottom part of the front wheel arch also has a patch on the outside, plus a patch on the inside, and the original rusted piece of metal is sandwiched between the two. Clearly that's going to need replacing too.

Apparently there's a saying in VW circles about having replaced the bottom six inches of the car. I seem to be discovering what that means.

Thoughts About Paint

Car paint is pretty tough stuff and readily stands up to the range of temperatures and humidities thrown at it by our British weather. The reason that paintwork needs maintenance is because it gets chipped, scratched, and defecated upon by birds (which, if you judge by the effects of their excrement, live on a diet of battery acid and paint strippper). Thus we need to repair damaged paintwork before rust takes a hold on the metal beneath.

Maintaining paintwork would be easy if we were happy to just rub off (note that any wax and dirt should be removed BEFORE you start with the abrasives) the damaged paint, and any rust, and blob on a couple of coats of paint. So why the hell are we so hung up on the idea that a car has to have a super-smooth, high-gloss, paint job that's a really pain in the ass to achieve and even harder to repair? Metallics are even more difficult to patch up, and even more popular!

Of course this is really good for the manufacturers because it means that most people simply won't bother, the car will rot, and the owner will be back to buy a shiny new one a heck of a lot sooner than if maintenance of old one had been easier. Given that maintainability is my number one priority with the ol' bug I'm determined not to go down that route. On the other hand, the rat look isn't to my taste either so I needed an alternative solution. Thus I began to consider things like camouflage and other patterns that would allow me to divide the surface a the car into smaller areas.

To be honest, the Beetle isn't that difficult to divide into small areas. All four wings can be unbolted. Hood, decklid and doors can all be removed or treated seperately. However, as I don't have a garage or suitable shed in which to paint panels and will have to work outside, dealing with areas of this size would still be very difficult. It's also the case that no matter how hard you try to match them, newly painted panels tend to look different to the others.

Having considered lot's of different patterns I've decided upon a cubist inspired (check out Picasso's analytical cubist works) pattern of rectangles and shapes in shades of pinky blue. Here's a mock up that I did on the computer:



I intend to apply the paint with a brush because it will be easier to get the effect that I want and using a variety of shades means that I won't be tied to any particular colour that may prove difficult and/or expensive to obtain at a later date.

Note that the patterns will not hide the shape of the car as much as they do in the mock-up because they'll be following the curves of the surface. I'll also be doing the painting a bit at a time, so the pattern will gradually spread accross the car, rather than trying to do it all at one.

Having come up with a plan for the outside/top of the car, I also needed a plan for the rest and in fact it's the other areas that are more prone to rust. While water runs off the exterior of the car it can get into cavities and get's held onto the underside of the car in a mud poultice. When rust does begin to form, the porous nature of the rust means that it holds moisture thus furthering to rot. Clearly this is something I want to prevent.

Weld-Thru Primer

The first thing I've done is to buy a can of Weld-Thru Zinc Rich Primer Aerosol from Frost and I'll be applying this to all cleaned up metal that I intend to weld.

Hammerite

The next thing is that I've bought tins of smooth black and smooth silver Hammerite paint for use on underbody areas including wheel arches and steering/suspension components. I'll may also be use some other colours under and inside the car before I install carpet and such.

Now I've heard a lot of criticism of Hammerite but it strikes me that most of the problems are caused because people don't use it correctly. Many years ago I used it on with a wrought iron gate and was disappointed to find that the gate started to rust again a couple of months later. It was only afterwards that I realised just how many mistakes I'd made:

Firstly, I cleaned the loose rust off the workpiece. But more than that, I'd cleaned it back to bright shiny metal. I had failed to realised that Hammerite paint is designed to bond to rust. If you're painting bright shiny metal, you should be be using Hammerite Anti-Rust Primer and not the 'normal' Hammerite paint.

Then I shook the tin. This was also a mistake because it introduces air which takes a long time to come out of something as thick as Hammerite. Hammerite, unlike Mr Bond's martinis, should be stirred and NOT shaken.

Then I set about painting by dipping my brush into the tin. Wrong again as this will contaminate the paint in the can as you move the brush from workpiece to can. What you should do is to pour the paint you intend to use into another container and if there is any left over it should be discarded and NOT returned to the tin.

Then I left it to dry overnight and applied a second coat the following day. It seems I really was determined to screw this up because, for it to do it's job, you MUST apply a second coat of Hammerite within four hours of the first such that it does all the chemical bond stuff that it needs to do in order to work. Leave it for more than four hours you're just wasting your time because the second coat won't 'react' with the first coat.

As I say, I've seen a lot of criticism of Hammerite, and the critics generally advocate alternative products that are harder to find and are generally somewhat more expensive. Having done a bit of research, I'm inclined to believe that the main reason that people have any more success with these 'more exotic' products is that they read the instructions and follow them whereas they assume they can use Hammerite like ordinary paint. Hammerite is NOT like ordinary paint and if you treat as such, you will fail to achieve the desired result.

Note that I've chosen to go for the smooth finished stuff (as opposed to the hammered effect) because I want to be able to inspect it for damage on a regular basis and it'll be easier to spot stone chips and the like on a smooth finish.

Dinitrol

While Hammerite should protect the areas where I can apply it with a brush, spraying it into cavities seems a bit hit and miss. On the other hand, products like Waxoyl and Dinitrol are designed for the purpose. These products can also be use to apply a waxy coating the underside of the car.

Bitumen based products are another option for 'undersealing' however the are frowned upon in car restoration circles. In this case I am inclined to agree as it seems that the problem with the bitument based products is that they tend to harden with age and that when they get damaged, water gets behind them, and the metal rots away out of sight behind the coating. Of course the only way to check for this would be by scraping the stuff off, and of course removing something to see whether it's still doing it's job properly is undesireable.

It strikes me that the same is true for the wax based products, many of which are brown or black. How are you supposed to tell if that uneven black/brown surface is still doing it's job or hiding rot? Thus my plan is not to use underbody seal but to paint these areas with Hammerite which I can then inspect and maintain. It has been suggested that I could use 'clear' Waxoyl however I am told that this is really a light brown/yellow colour as opposed to clear and it also presents the additional problem of having to clean it off in order to replain any damage that does go through to the paint. Better methinks to forget it and concentrate on maintaining the paint.

Of course the cavities are a different kettle of fish because I can't see inside heater channels and other seriously enclosed spaces to inspect/maintain them. Thus I figure that the colour of the protective wax is insignificant in these areas. The blurb in the Frost catalogue about Dinitrol Corromax 3125 says "A specially forumulated wax which penetrates rust and dirt preventing further corrosion." That sounds like just the ticket to me, even if it is brown.

Hot Spots

The final consideration is that there are a few places where special paints are needed. Exhausts and engine blocks need paint that will stand the heat and while I have no immediate plans to paint the engine block I do need to do something about the rust on my exhaust pipework. I've also obtained (from Frost) some special paint for painting brake calipers and drums.

Having formulated a plan, all I need to do now, is to get painting.

Urethane Parts for Beetles

Progress with the Beetle is slow but everybody warned me that I'd discover more problems than I could see initially and that it'd take longer than I'd anticipated to do the work; so while the nature of the extra problems and work is a surprise, the discover of it isn't. I'll say more about that in another post (it's about time I posted a progress report) because in this post I wanted to say something about urethane parts.

I'd seen them on sale in a number of places and was tempted by their pretty red colour. Of course I wasn't about go changing everything just because of the colour but when one of the rear bump stops broke off in my hand, such that new brackets and 'rubbers' were added to my shopping list, I thought I might give them a try.

Before diving in however I did a search on the VZi forum and was surprised to see that hardly anybody had a good word for urethane. I started a new thread to try to get to the bottom of it (click here) and based on this, plus a little reading elsewhere, I came to the following conclusions:

Most of the urethane parts for Beetles are for use in places where they will be flexed and/or squashed (as opposed to having mechanical movement against them). These inclide bump stops, suspension bushings and gearbox mounts. My research indicates that urethane parts are harder than their rubber equivalents so while they will hold a gearbox more firmly, they will also transmit more vibration into the car. This seems even more counter productive in the case of bump stops and suspension components where they will transmit more vibration, and shocks in the case of bump stops, to the metal components they are supposed to be cushioning. I've been lead to understand that this has benefits in off-road vehicles like dune buggies (where you're expecting a rough ride anyway) because they will last longer. It would appear however that the additional life of the component is little compensation for the loss of ride comfort and protention of other parts in a road car.

There is one major deviation from the flex/squash use of urethane parts in a Beetle and that is in the form of urethane bushings for the front beam where they are used as replacements for the original metal roller bearings and rubber seals. It seems however that they have only one advantage over the original parts: they're cheaper. They will (apparently) wear out much faster and the only argument that I've seen that held any water was that if you're using them in an off road car where you might anticipate knackering and having to replace bearings on a regular basis because of the way you are using the car as opposed to through normal wear and tear...

Thus I will be replacing my bump stops, and any other relevant bits, with rubber as I've concluded that while urethane parts might be of use on an off road vehicle or one whose primary purpose is to look pretty, they have no place on a road car intended for daily use.

Planning To Go Topless

It may seem premature to be thinking of taking the roof off my Beetle however I need to replace the heater channels and there would be a lot of mileage in installing carbiolet sill strengtheners at the same time. Of course there's absolutely no point in going to all that expense unless I'm pretty certain that I'll want to take the roof off at a later date. Obviously the idea has some appeal or I wouldn't even be considering it but while I like the idea of cruising around in the sunshine with the top off, our UK weather isn't all sunshine and my car has to spend most of it's time on the drive at the side of our house as we don't have a garage.

To be honest, the 'normal' cabriolet option doesn't appeal to me. I don't like the way the folded down hood perches on the back of the car making it look like a big pram and I don't think they have nothing at all going for them with the hood up. Clearly I've just blown my chances of ever being offered honorary membership of the Cabriolet Owners Club but I don't care. Each to his own and all that, I just don't like cabriolet bugs.

However there are other options. VW produced Beetles (referred to as 'ragtops') with a large cloth panel on the top and although it appears that some of the bits are no longer available, Paris Beetles do kits for some pretty huge 'sunroofs', the biggest of which is as huge 38" x 31" inches and ends up looking to all intents and purposes like a VW ragtop. Paris also do three smaller sizes and of course there are 'normal' type sunroofs available with 'glass' panels. Sunroof and ragtop options benefit over the full cabriolet conversion in that they are a heck of a lot simpler and cheaper to install, largely because you don't need all the strengthening. Thus, if I were planning to go down that route, I wouldn't need to be thinking about installing sill strengtheners.

There is however another option: the targa, which involves having a removable section of roof between the A and B posts i.e. the bit above the driver and front passenger seats. The tops of the door frames are also made removable too.

Apparently there are only about half a dozen of targa beetles in the UK, most of which are the work of a company called Thump Thump and although they are no longer doing conversions, their website at thumpthump.co.uk is dedicated to a number of rather splendid examples of this rare and somewhat love it or hate it style. Clearly I love it but something that wasn't immediately apparent until somebody told me and I did a bit of measuring to check, is that because of the bugs body shape, the removable panel will fit down behind the driver and passenger seats when it's not in use. Thus, if done right, and properly maintained such that the seals aren't allowed to become leaky with age, you have all the benefits of a top down head turner when the sun shines and all the benefits of a hard top when it rains. Of course there's a little more strengthening and other work required than just installing sill stengtheners but that's for later. The important thing for now is that the sill strengtheners ARE on my shopping list.

Engine Oil For Beetles

For me, oil changes used to be something that happened at the garage when I took a car in for service. Why, how, and what oil was used was none of my concern. Given that the whole point of the Beetle is that I want to maintain it myself, I had some learning to do. Before you read on please note that what follows are my own conclusions based one what I found out. I wrote it down to help me make a decision and so that I can refer back to it at a later date when I've forgotten why I made it. I'm making no promises that I've come to the right decision so don't come hammering on my door if you decide to apply my thinking to your own car and it turns out I got it all wrong okay?

As far as a 'modern' car is concerned you can look in the owner manual, a Haynes manual, or ask a retailer and get the same answer; although the retailers will of course want to sell you whatever brand they happen to stock (but we'll return to the the subject of brands later). With an old car like a Beetle it seems that everybody has a different opinion. For starters, the owner manual will be at least 30 years old and quite a bit has changed since then. The main problem however is that most folks are just not used to dealing with vehicles that are more than 10 or 20 years old. For example, I asked the guy I bought mine from what oil he was using and he didn't know because the garage put it in at the last service. He assured me however that it was being done properly as the car had a 'new' engine 7000 miles ago and he showed me the guarantee/service booklet which showed that it had an oil change at 500, another at 5000, and was due another at 10000. Now you don't have to read much about Beetles to know that everybody, but EVERYBODY, says that they should have the oil changed every 3000 miles. Clearly neither the previous owner nor the garage he was using knew much about Beetles.

Incidentally, while we're on the subject of "how ofen?", as I've come to understand it, the reason for this increased frequency (apparently 3000 miles was failrly standard for most cars before the development of modern lubricants and filters) is that: a) the oil plays a bigger part in cooling a bugs air-cooled engine than it does in a water-cooled engine and 'wears out' faster and b) the bug has an oil strainer as opposed to the type of filter that you get in more modern cars and it's better for this to be removed and cleaned out more regularly.

Thus I began to ask around (a lot) and although at first it seemed that everybody had a different answer I eventually saw that they fell into three groups regarding the specification of the oil.

The first group, and these are generally people who are into Beetles, suggest SAE 30 mono-grade. This seems to be largely because VW originally specified SAE 30 for "general driving" but my research indicates that VW said this at a time when multi-grade oils (recommended for pretty much every modern engine) were in their infancy and (apparently) not very good. However, when you consider that some of the guys who swear by mono-grade have been running their dubs for donkeys years then you have to wonder if they might have a point. It also occurred to me however, that for many people, their bug is a summertime play thing that'll rarely suffer the indignity of being rained on never mind being used to haul groceries back from Tesco in the depths of winter.

The reason that climate and season are important is because an engine oil needs to be 'runny' enough to be pumped through the system when the engine is cold and 'sticky' enough to adhere to the parts when it's hot. The two extremes occur when you're starting up on a cold winter's morning and when you're on a long journey on a hot summer's day; so how cold it gets in winter and how hot it gets in summer in the climate where the engine is being run are factors in choosing engine oil.

This is why VW specified SAE 30 for "general driving" because they also suggested other 'weights' for hot and cold climates. In fact in the days when mono-grade oils were standard it was fairly common practice to use one grade in the summer and another in the winter. The engine oil FAQ over at Morris Lubricants says that "it used to be the practice to put a thin monograde, such as a SAE 30, in the engine during the winter and a heavier monograde, such as a SAE 50". So I guess SAE 30 should be just fine for use in the UK.

The second group of people you will encounter suggest the use of a multi-grade oil. Multi-grade oils are specified with two numbers e.g. SAE 10w/40 (the w means "winter") and what it means is that the oil behaves like a 10 weight oil at the cold temperature and like a 40 weight oil would at the hot temperature. Aparently they define 'cold' as 0° Fahrenheit (-18°C), while 'hot' is 212° Fahrenheit (100°C). "They", just in case you are wondering are the Society of Automotive Engineers which is what the "SAE" bit means.

Now this is where it starts to look really complicated because what you need to do is to figure out which of the myriad variations are right for your engine and climate. Life would be a lot simpler if a single product covered the whole range however it seems that multi-grade oils are made possible by the addition of polymers and to get a range that would suit all possibilities you'd end up with more polymers than oil (and it's the oil that does the actual lubricating).

Just about the best way to get yourself really confused is to ask or look on the Internet because you'll be asking people from lots of different climates so what is right for them will not necessarly be right for you (something that may or may not occur to them when they answer). It's also important to realise that even if you ask around UK forums, not everybody will be wise to the need to consider climate and may well have based their own decision upon information gleaned from inappropriate sources. (See my previous post about tyre pressures for an illustration of people on forums thinking they know their stuff when in fact they don't.)

The good news for those of us in the UK however is that we don't have to deal with the really hot or really cold weather. The lower figure stated for a multi-grade will be 0, 5, 10, 15 or 20 but when you consider that this figure describes the viscocity at -18°C it's probably not something that we need worry about too much here in the UK. The higher figure on the multi-grade spec is generally 30, 40 or 50 and again, here in the UK it's not something that we need to worry about as much as somebody in the Mediterranean.

Having said that, we still have to use something and rather than just closing my eyes and reaching towards the shelf I made the following observations:

Rick Higgins of Bug Me Video (as you already know I'm something of a fan and have a high regard for his opinion) generally reaches for a can of 20w/50 but he's in Florida and as he said when I got the opportunity to ask him: "20w50 works good here since it is never very cold and real hot in the afternoon". He suggested that "In the heat of summer in UK you could likely use 20w50 there." He didn't comment on the UK winter and I didn't feel inclined to press him as he'd already said that "I am not really an authority on oil so what I can share is just my experience and what I have learned from others", but the implcation is clear that something thinner may be more appropriate in the winter.

My Haynes manual also suggests 20w/50 but makes no mention of climate and although it's printed on the UK the nice picture of a left hand drive Beetle on the front cover makes me wonder. VWHeritage, Volkspares, Halfords and a number of other suppliers in whom I have some faith suggest 15w/40 and from what I've seen the 15w/40 will be better at lower temperatures than the 20w/50 making this sound like the answer to my needs. However the 15w/40 is generally to be found sitting on the shelf right next to the 10w/40 which presumably would be even better?

In his "Rap On Oil" in "How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive", John Muir says that "the multi-grade oil's ability to lubricate is not as good as the mono-grade oil's ability at the high temperatures at which an air-cooled engine runs." Rick Higgins also told me that "I like to stay as thick (sticky) as reasonable so the cylinders retain some lube after the motor is shut down." In both cases they're talking about the behaviour of the oil when hot i.e. the difference between the 40 and the 50 bit of the spec as opposed to the 10, 15, or 20 bit.

John Muir is actually an advocate of SAE 30 and also states a strong bias towards the Castrol brand when he says that it "lays a load on my back to carry my own oil wherever I go because this oil is found only in racing and hotrod stores" This raises the question of availability and I figure, given that our mild UK climate appears to give me some flexibility on the weight of the oil, it probably makes sense to consider some of the other factors before I opt for something that's a swine to get hold of for the sake of what may well be a negligible difference in oil's weight.


If the weight of the oil is the most confusing issue, then the brand name is surely the most controversial with those who believe that the well know brands are a rip off facing off against those who believe that you get what you pay for (and arguing amongst themselves about which of those name brands is the best).

The argument in favour of the well know brands is that you're paying extra for the superior quality of the addititives that they put in to make the oil do its job better. Of course you're also going to be paying more for the name but consider this: it's a name they want to protect so they're unlikely to use it to sell product that would get them a bad reputation are they? We'll discuss a few of those additives in a minute but as far as the brand name versus cheap stuff debate is concerned, the bottom line for me is that the price difference generally works out to be less than five quid on the cost of an oil change. Given the amount that I anticipate spending on petrol and other car related expenses I figure that if I can't afford an extra twenty quid a year to err on the side of caution I ought to sell the car and get a bus pass.

As for which brand then: John Muir has (as we've already seen) a very strong bias towards Castrol. Rick Higgins also told me that he "started using Castrol when I had a friend that worked on these million dollar racing boats here. He said that the Castrol would handle whatever beating they gave it and he swore by it."

Other things that we need to condsider are the differences between mineral oils and those with synthetics, and the difference between oils with and without detergents.

When I asked around, the consensus of opinion was that bug engines are better running on mineral oils but very few people had any idea why and even when an explanation was offered it didn't always make a much sense. Along the way it was suggested that the whole point of synthetics was to make the oil keep working for longer but as you should change a bug's oil every 3000 miles (because of the filter if not the oil itself), then there isn't a whole lot of point paying extra for a longer lasting oil. I've also been told that the heat transfer characteristics of mineral and synthetic oils are different and the bug engine, with it's increased reliance on the oil for cooling, needs mineral oil.

Regarding detergents, John Muir says that the VW community was originally dubious about detergents but now favours them. The point of the detergents is that help keep the engine clean by carrying the 'soot' in suspension. If you use an oil with detergents then the old thinking about brown oil being due for a change whereas black oil needs changing, goes right out the window because the oil will go black due to the soot long before it's in desperate need of a change.

The argument against detergents is that the oil strainer in the bug isn't good enough to filer out all the small particles of crud that get cleaned out of the engine. Thus they will circulate causing damage. I don't like the sound of that however the other side of the coin i.e. if the detergents are not putting that crud into suspension, is that they stay stuck in the engine. Is that really a better option?

From what I've learned I think the most important thing about detergents is probably that you shouldn't suddenly switch from non-detergent to detergent oil. In his book John Muir tells of an occasion when he bought a bus from a guy who had been running on non-detergent oil so he had to stick with it until the next engine rebuild. Had he changed suddently, the detergents would have immediately set about cleaning up what was probably a relatively dirty engine thus putting a whole heap of crud into suspension all at once.

Given that my engine is only 7000 miles since the last rebuild I figure that I'm probably safe to use detergent even though the previous owner couldn't tell me what was in there.


Now, I did say way back at the start that the folks I asked fell into three groups and thus far I've only covered two. That's because the third groups are the ones who will direct you to this weeks special offer or whatever they happen to stock. If they are way too cocky and you're in the mood for listening to some bullshit, try asking them how often you should change it and use some of the information given above to see how long they're prepared to carry on talking through their arses before they finally admit that they haven't a clue; otherwise just feel sorry for them for having such a crap job and walk away.


So what did I buy? Well, availability had quite a lot to do with it but by the time I started checking out what I could get my hands on without too much trouble I'd concluded that I wanted a name brand multi-grade mineral oil but I was still wavering between 15w/40 (because of the 15w bit) and 20w/50 (because of the 50 bit).

The local garage (5 mins walk) have Castol GTX High Mileage 15w40 (£16.96/4l) and Duckhams Q Classic Engine Oil 20w50 (£10.99/4.5l). VWHeritage (somebody I can see myself ordering stuff from on a fairly regular basis) have VW Quantum 15w/40 (£16.95/5l) but as it'd have to be posted, and they calculate postage according to order value, I'd have to add a couple of quid onto the cost of that for postage. The only VW specialist within reasonable travelling distance is GSF - who sell Fuchs Titan HD 15w40 (£11.95/5l) - but they're in a town that I rarely visit and I'd have to go past Halfords and my local garage to get there. The Halford's candidate were Halfords own brand 15w/40 Enhanced Mineral Oil (£12.99/5l) or the Castrol GTX High Mileage 15w40 (£16.99/5l).

In the end I went for the Duckhams Q 20w50 for three reasons:

1. I like to support local businesses where I can (use them or lose them). I already buy my petrol from the guy around the corner even though I could get it a couple of pence a litre cheaper if I went to the one 5 miles away. I figure that if I don't I'll have no right to complain if he shuts down and I'm forced to travel 5 miles for petrol. Thus I wanted to buy from him if he had something suitable.

2. I decided in the end that I was more concened about the oil's performance when it's hot that when it's cold. Health problems mean that I'm forced to sponge off the state rather than work for a living so I'm never obliged to go out when the weather is bad. I decided therefore to go for a 20w50 as opposed to a 15w40. I will however be monitoring it when the weather gets cold and if it starts to look a bit thick, I'll let you know.

3. The Duckhams Oil is a pretty green colour like my car. Only kidding. ;-)


So there we have it, Duckhams Q 20w50 is my oil of choice but as I said at the start, these are my conclusions based on what I found out and I make no promises about them. If you want to read more then check out http://www.carbibles.com/engineoil_bible.html which was one of the more comprehensive documents that I found on the subject of car engine oil, while perhaps the best (my opinion again) summarisation of oil issues relating to VW Beetles that I found was in the Vehicle & Part Information section at VW Heritage.

Tyre Pressures & Karma

Although I haven't posted about it before, one of the first things I wanted to do when I got my Beetle was to check the tyre pressure.

Strangely, neither John Muir's book nor my Haynes manual seems to contain the necessary information. In the end I asked on the VZi forum and the results were rather surprising, not just because of the numbers (a mere 18psi on the front and 27psi on the rear) but because of the number of other VZi members who responded to the information with posts along the lines of "Really? Are you sure?"

Laurence Fletcher, the guy who posted the info, said it came "straight out of VW's own dealer service manual" and indeed I've since found some stickers over at VWHeritage (click here to see them) that are reproductions of a sticker that VW (apparently) used to stick inside the glovebox. The sticker says 19psi and 27psi but either way it's a lot lower, especially on the front, than a lot of the folks over at VZi had been using. Indeed my own bug was at about 30psi all round and after dropping them down to what they should be, the ride is quite a bit smoother.

While we're on the subject of tyres, the Haynes manual suggests swapping the wheels around every 6000 miles such that they wear evenly however John Muir is quite emphatic, he even puts it on bold text, that you should not do this. Mr Muir says "it takes about 500 miles for a tire to get used to its position on a car, and changing it around just messes with its head. It will last as long or longer right where it is." I'm with Mr Muir on this one because I'd be pretty pissed if somebody swapped the soles of my shoes everytime I got them all worn in and comfy, and I don't need any bad karma for messing with my tyre's heads. ;-)

10 Years Ago This Month

I said to Dee a couple of weeks ago that I wondered what the chances were of me spotting our bug in one of the back issues of Volks World magazine that I'd acquired, and then today it happened!



To add to the general weirdness, the advert comes from the May 1997 issue i.e. 10 years ago this month!

Judging from the asking price she was in better condition back then but she looks pretty much the same. The colour looks a little different to the previous picture I posted but I'm pretty sure that's down to the photo. She also has purple running boards and wing mirrors these days, and a different number plate. Same number, different place.

I've blanked out the area code of the guy who was selling her but I'm tempted to dial it and see if I can speak to him. Maybe find out a little of her history. I wouldn't want to weird the guy out though.

Beetle Electrics

Vol 9 and 10 of the Bug Me Video DVDs deal with wiring (you can see what's on each by visiting http://vw-diy.com). It has to be said that they are not the most exciting volumes in the series (Vol 3 Complete Engine Rebuild and Vol 6 Floorpan Repair & Replacement are much more inspiring) however Vol 9 & 10 have been an absolute blessing this weekend.

The points on which my bug would have failed an MOT (see previous blog entry) are:

1. Rust on the heater channel.

2. Horn not working.

3. Hazzard lights not working.

4. Beam headlights not working.

5. Windscreen washers not working.

Ignoring the rust problem for the time being I spent much of the weekend going back and forth between MacBook (on which I was playing the DVDs) and the wiring under the bonnet.

The problem with the horn was straghtforward: it's missing from the car. In its stead was a rather nasty sounding air horn operated by a switch that was kind of hidden away UNDER the dash. I removed it and will be ordering a normal one tomorrow which I'll connect up properly.

I can't say for sure what was wrong with the hazzard lights and the headlights, but they work now. There was a rather knackered looking radio cassette player (now removed) inserted into the dash but not wired up. My guess is that at some point there was another radio (that a previous owner wanted to keep) and, judging by the number of lengths of wire that ran nowhere at all, probably a few other 'gadgets' as well. By observing how things should be on the DVDs I was able to confidently remove all of the surplus wiring. This enabled me to realise that there was something odd going on with the 9th and 10th fuses because, amongst other things, there was an inline fuse connected across them at the back. I didn't even bother trying to figure that out. I just removed it and swapped the wires around so they were as per the DVDs and presto hey: working hazzard lights and beam headlights.

With regard to the window washers: after removing the pipes from the switch and blowing down them to ascertain that they were not blocked, I'm pretty certain that it's the pump mechanism in the switch that's kaput. I may or may not replace that because I've noticed that Volkspares sell an "Electric Washer Bottle" which sounds like a much better option to me. I'll give them a call tomorrow and get a few more details before deciding.

In the meantime I'll be refreshing myself on what Vol 7 has to say about replacing heater channels.

MOT - Reconnaissance

After some discussion on the VZi forum, where most folks seem to swear by the tools from the Halford's professional range, I did a trip over to the superstore in Norwich and had a good ol' spend. I came back with a 150 piece pro set (that's on special offer at the moment), plus a breaker bar, a compression tester, a 3 tonne trolley jack (nice big 'cup' on it that'll go right around the oil strainer cover plate for when I want to take the engine out), and a couple of 3-tonne axle stands (they were out of stock of the 2 tonne ones). I also bought a MIG welder and a compressor with air hammer and cut-off tools. Looks like I'm going to need them all too:

I took her round to the local garage yesterday and got them to run through the MOT checklist and tell me what'll need doing in order to get her through the real MOT; due at the end of May. I'm pleased to say there were no surprises as I already knew that the horn and window washers aren't working and I was pretty certain that the nearside heater channel was going to need replacing. Actually the garage said she needed welding on the door sill and floorpan but having seen one of these things in pieces (on the Bug Me Video DVDs) I know it's the heater channel.

The first job however is to create a place to work. The driveway at the side of our house is gravel so there's no way I can start jacking up a car on that. I'm in the process of pricing up concrete slabs.

How to become a VW Beetle expert in 2 easy steps

Step 1: Go to http://www.vw-diy.com/ and buy all of the "Bug Me Video" DVDs.

Step 2: Watch them.

Seriously, these DVDs are the business.

At the beginning of this month I knew next to zip about cars but needed to learn fast because my old car was failing and I wanted to buy a Beetle.

My first purchase was a copy of "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot" by John Muir. This is regarded by many as the bible for Beetle maintenance and I would not argue with the suggestion that every Beetle owner should have a copy. Let's face it, the author died 30 years ago and the book is still selling and is currently in its 19th edition; how could it be anything other than a masterpiece?

As a total auto-dunce however, and without a Beetle in front of me to refer to, I found it hard to get into. (That's the beauty of the DVDs: you can see exactly what they are talking about). I am finding Mr Muir's book much more accessible now that the DVDs have shown me what's what and I actually have a bug parked outside so I can go out and look at the bit that's being described.

Another thing that should be taken into consideration about the book is that the cars were not nearly so old when it was written and this has consequences. For example, the section on how to assess a vehicle that you're thinking of buying makes no specific mention of the heater channels, an area that any current advice will draw great attention to. I guess when the book was written they were mostly in decent condition and Mr Muir would have simply walked away from a bugs with less serious problems in other areas on the grounds that there were plenty more to choose from. These days if you find a bug with good solid heater channels it's most probably because they've been replaced already. Similarly, unless the owner has gone out of their way to keep it original, you'll probably find that your average bug contains parts that were not available when the book was written.

My second acquisition (we'll get to the DVD's soon enough) was about 90 back issues of Volks World magazine that I found on eBay as a job lot. They date from about 1996 up to about 2001 so the adverts are out of date but pretty much all of the other information is still relevant. I found them particularly helpful, as I said in an earlier blog entry, in deciding what kind of Beetle I wanted. Now that I've bought the bug I dare say that they'll come in useful in the future as, with 90 issues to go at, there are articles on pretty much any aspect of maintenance and modifying that you can think of. It would have been difficult to use them for my initial learning however because the pieces of the puzzle would be presented in no particular order; whereas the DVDs start with the simple stuff and progress in a logical sequence.

Of course 90 back issues of Volks World (for 42.50) is also something of a lucky find however if you pay a quick visit to their website at http://www.volksworld.com/ you'll see that it's possible to buy books of articles and indeed, I bought "All practical articles on customising and restoring Beetles from 2000 to 2003." I have to say that I was disappointed when it arrived to find that it was a collection of not particularly nicely bound black and white photocopies of what were previously colour articles. In fairness though, the pictures are quite adequate even in black and white and while it doesn't look like fifteen quids worth of book it can't be denied that the information in those articles is probably worth an awful lot more.

So, finally, the DVDs:

I discovered them via a copy of Practical Classics magazine that I picked up at Tesco. They looked good from the video clips on the website at http://www.vw-diy.com/ but at 15 quid each I wasn't about to jump right in so I bought Vol 1 and 6 to check them out. They arrived a couple of days later, I watched them both the same day, and immediately placed an order for Vol 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10 i.e. I skipped the ones about Type 4 engines.

I think they are superb but the results kind of speak for themselves because by the time I went shopping for my bug (about a week later) I'd watched the whole lot and was in a position to confidently examine the car and negotiate a better price. In fact I reckon I knew a heck of a lot more about the car than the seller and after I pointed out the various bits that would need attention we agreed a reduction in the price equivalent to double what I paid for the DVDs. Thus it is fair to say that they've already paid for themselves and by the time I've done the work that needs doing, work that I now feel entirely confident that I can do myself, they'll have paid for themselves many times over.

No doubt I'll be mentioning them on a regular basis as I document my progress and may even do a bit of a write up. In the meantime, all of the information you need is on the website at http://www.vw-diy.com/, and if you are still not sure, do what I did and buy a couple to check them out. My bet is you'll end up buying the whole lot.

My New 'Toy'

And here she is:

I've had her for two days now and she seems to be behaving herself which is kinda what I expected considering that the engine was rebuilt about 7000 miles ago.

Unfortunately the garden is not quite so rosey in other areas. She's going to need some welding and I feel pretty sure that some of it will need to be done in order to get her through the MOT at the end of May. However, I've learned so much in the last few weeks that I now feel entirely confident that I'll be able to do it myself. I also used that knowledge to get her at what I hope will turn out to be a very reasonable price (650 quid), although only time will tell on that one.