Clementine: The Curse of “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit”

Whenever you start into a car restoration project there are always two specters in dark robes hanging around in the shadows waiting to strike. Their names are “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit”. Your day gets much more expensive and difficult when they decide to show up.

With Clementine, my vision has always been to make her into a fast daily driver that can do some drag strip work but still be civilized enough to take on cruises or errands around town. The idea of a complete nut-and-bolt restoration seemed a bit much to me as I did not want to worry with creating a 100-point show car. However, as I started taking parts off for restoration or replacement, ol’ “While You’re In There” started running the bill up to darn near the cost and complexity of a full show car build and “That Don’t Fit” began to ruthlessly bloody my knuckles and furrow my brow. Regardless, I have refused to go too nuts or give up but damned if I am not learning how to take apart Beetles in a hurry and my first aid skills have definitely improved. My shed is now full of old Beetle parts and the trash can in the shop is home to a pile of bloody Band-Aids and empty Neosporin tubes.

The first priority was to get the car to where it could run and drive safely and reliably so I decided to tackle the chassis first and leave the drivetrain and body work for later on. Clementine’s suspension consists of a torsion beam front suspension (the “beam”) and an independent rear suspension (IRS) that connects up to her transaxle. As I got the car up on jack stands and began to poke around, it became very clear that not much had been done to the suspension in a very long time and that the brakes also were pretty tired. The shocks were Sears brand dampers that probably were new somewhere during the Carter administration and many of the lines, bushings, and hard parts were clearly original to the car. The previous owner had attempted some freshening in recent times but pretty much everything else had reached the end of its useful life.

So, I called up good buddy Jeff Lain at the Kaddie Shack and we started putting together a pretty impressive shopping list of gear to get the old girl back up to speed. Jeff and his crew put together a new height adjustable front beam for me with drop spindles, polyurethane bushings, KYB GR-series shocks, a bigger sway bar, and Karmann Ghia style disc brakes. He addressed the rear suspension with height adjustable spring plates, the same KYB’s as used on the front, new bushings, and an add-on rear sway bar to really tie down the handling of the car. I also sourced parts to redo all the brake hard and soft lines, change out the master cylinder and brake fluid reservoir, freshen the rear drum brakes, and refurbish the rear control arms and axle bearings. Unfortunately, “That Don’t Fit” was in the house and the rear control arms refused to get along with the trick spring plates so I had to go old school and just dial in the ’71 vintage stockers with an angle finder and plenty of swearing despite Jeff’s best efforts at remote tech support. “That Don’t Fit” also sprinkled magic dust on the new brake hard lines with leaks galore and a janky fluid reservoir which refused to fill correctly that took up two days of fiddling, two rolls of paper towels, and two of the economy size bottles of O’Reilly’s finest DOT4 fluid before I finally got a hard pedal with no dribbles.

Of course, ol’ “While You’re In There” came calling too which added in a new fuel tank and lines since I had to remove the old crusty stuff to get to the beam, rebuilt drive axles, a new hood release cable, a rebuild of the pedal cluster when it came out to fit the new brake master cylinder, and some paint work to repair some damage caused under the hood by leaky brake lines. I also couldn’t help myself when my OCD kicked in so I ended up getting $100 or more of new bolts to replace the old nasty ones that were holding together some key components. The guys in the loose hardware department at the Davis Ace know me by name now and I have nearly earned enough in rewards points to buy that smoker in the leisure department that I have had my eye on.

Next up will be an upgrade to Clementine’s rolling stock with some wheels from a Porsche cousin along with dialing in the alignment and height settings to get her just low enough to look cool but not so low that I end up stranded on every speed bump in town. Get ready, greater Willowbank, 45 horsepower of sheer Teutonic fury is about the hit the streets…

 

Enjoying some Quail in Monterey

Every year in August, the Monterey peninsula in California turns into a mecca for anyone who is into cars. Technically the week is just for vintage cars, but the major OEM’s put on big bashes and test drives for the well-heeled folks who tend to buy high-end vintage cars which of course results in an amazing variety and quality of cars on the roads around the auctions, golf courses, car shows, and of course near Laguna Seca which is the site of the Rolex Motorsports Reunion which is one of the premier vintage racing events in the world.

This year I was lucky enough to purchase a couple of tickets to an event called The Quail. The Quail is held at the Quail Lodge golf resort out in the Carmel Valley and it is something very special indeed. I also managed to finagle a test drive in a Porsche Boxster S at the Porsche Zentrum at The Quail so it was shaping up to be an epic day of fun.

I have always thought the Boxster was probably the purest sportscar that Porsche has made in recent years and this year’s drive proved out that thought. I took a great drive down Highway G16 to Laureles Grade and back with minimal traffic, which resulted in maximum grins. It did not hurt that my chaperone Lonnie was a massive Rodney Dangerfield fan and we spent most of the time popping off quotes from such classics as “Back To School” between the apexes. However, even though the Boxster was indeed brilliant at everything I asked it to do and even snorted a little like a GT3 Cup racer when it popped off PDK upshifts, I found myself still longing for the twitchy steering, road noise, and oil stink of the older aircooled Porsches. Guess I am just not a new sportscar kind of guy because Porsche has baked the new Boxster just right.

After the drive, I met up with my pal Tom and we headed into The Quail. The first thing that struck me was the stunning quality and history of nearly every car on the field. Within a span of 20 yards, I saw Steve McQueen’s Jaguar XK-SS, a selection of Ferraris from the glorious years of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, and a display of incredible new supercars from Pagani, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Galpin Auto Sports, and McLaren.

As Tom and I walked around we had to stop every few feet to soak in the excellence and history spread out before us. We listened to some fascinating interviews onstage, saw a skydiver in a wingsuit swoop over the precious metal to a perfect landing, and then literally almost bumped into Formula 1 Champions Sir Jackie Stewart and Michael Schumacher having a  chat with former Ferrari team manager Jean Todt.

The final joy of The Quail is the food and drink spread they laid out for folks attending the show. There were a number of buffet style options to choose from and everything we sampled would have been just the sort of plate you would expect to get from a joint with a Michelin star out front. We ended the day stuffed with prime food, full of wonderful memories, and slightly sunburned. As a good friend of mine used to say, “not too shabby at all”.

 

Enjoy the pictures below and try to get down to Monterey during car week in August 2014-hope to see you there!

Gearhead Smorgasbord: The Goodwood Festival of Speed

We are blessed to live in a time when nearly anywhere in the world can offer up a pretty enticing calendar of automotive events. However, there are certain special gatherings that really truly are unique and capable of popping the circuits clean out of your average automotive enthusiast. The Goodwood Festival of Speed held on the grounds of the Goodwood Estate in the Sussex Downs region of England is one of those flat-out amazing events.

The Festival of Speed is the brainchild of the current Earl of March, Charles Gordon-Lennox who is a massive gearhead. The Earl put together the first Festival 20 years ago as an effort to provide a venue for car fans to see rare and significant cars in action and also up close. The first event saw a fairly small amount of cars on the roster, but the concept was proved sound when 25,000 people show up to enjoy a day in the English countryside. The Festival has now grown in provenance and popularity to the point that it sells out every year with 150,000 souls through the gate and the line up of cars, drivers, manufacturers, and teams reflects the top echelon of the automotive worlds. The auction held on Thursday during the event by Bonhams even managed to net the highest ever sale price for a single car when Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes racer crossed the block with a final hammer of nearly twenty million pounds. The Earl also hosts the Goodwood Revival in the fall which is dedicated to vintage races and other period activities, but the Festival is open to all eras of sporty cars.

 
To really appreciate how huge this event is you need to take a survey of all the different types and eras of cars and motorcycles that show up. I managed to see modern and vintage Formula 1 cars driven by world champion drivers from five decades, drag racing cars and bikes, versions of the world’s fastest sports cars from the earliest to the modern day, rally cars from many different eras racing through a forest stage, a great selection of competition motorcycles, and other significant cars up close and personal with only a stack of hay bales separating fans from the racing surface or with no separation at all in the paddock.

 The event also included huge multi story outdoor displays from all the major auto manufacturers, an airplane display area, flyovers by Vulcan and Typhoon war planes, and paddocks full of interesting things to look at. As noted above, Bonhams holds an onsite auction on Thursday where you can take home a very nice souvenir if you can swing it. There is even a “moving motor show” on Friday where ticket holders can try out the latest offerings from dozens of manufacturers on test drives around the estate.

To try and describe everything I saw would take pages and pages of droning on, so I will let the pictures and video below do the talking. If you truly love sports and competition cars, you need to find a way to make it to this event at some point as it is truly nirvana for gearheads. There are many fine tour companies that organize all-inclusive trips (I used Grand Prix Tours www.gptours.com) so save some bucks, block off a week to head over the pond, and prepare to have your mind completely blown when you visit the FoS in 2014.

 
Video can be found by clicking here

 

 

 

Clementine: Kid in a Candy Store

Many years ago, someone coined the term the “Go-Fast Crack Pipe” to give a name to the horrid obsession that grips racers in the quest to always go faster no matter the cost. One of my favorite authors Peter Egan once said that “(r)acing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty”.

As I have been poring over issues of Hot VWs, Volksworld, and countless posts on The Samba trying to plan the path for my build of Clementine, that same old feeling of wanting to feed the need for speed is back in my blood. Turns out that there is way more cool stuff to throw at your Beetle than there was in 1988 and the state of the art is pretty impressive yet remarkably affordable when compared to my days trying to campaign two racecars in competitive amateur series. I probably will be able to get away with the full build minus bodywork for less than I spent on tires for my AIX Mustang “White Lightning” in one season. Sheesh.

Of course in order to get your hands on the good stuff, you need a reliable quality dealer who will get you only the best uncut finest grade hop-up parts. Although I have bought a few things from my local Bug shop to address some small problems, I needed to find someone to advise me on the critical parts of making Clementine go faster, turn with authority, and stop reliably. After some reflection, I decided to engage Jeff Lain from the Kaddie Shack in Pasadena, Calif. (www.kaddieshack.com) to be my guru for all things Beetle.

Jeff and I connected a few years back when I found my high school friend Tonia on Facebook. Turns out she is married to Jeff and she shared that he is as sick on Beetles as I am but even more so. While I am only up to one Käfer in the backyard, he has four including one that he has had since he was 19 years old. Jeff and I met up at the Sacramento Bugorama two years ago and I always had his shop in the back of my mind as where I would turn when I finally got a Beetle of my own.

Jeff started the Kaddie Shack a little over three years ago as a service to rebuild and tune the Kadron (“Kaddie”) carburetors that were standard issue on VW’s during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The business kept growing so Jeff decided a year ago to open a shop in Pasadena and he is now up to five employees and has an impressive volume of business based on the calls he was fielding and the walk-in business when I visited recently. The shop is a bit small but carries a full line of parts including ready to go carburetors, fully built engines, as well as suspension, brake, interior and body bits.

With the grand plan in mind, I headed down to Pasadena to meet with Jeff and also get a demo ride in the Kaddie Shack race car that I saw up in Sacramento at Bugorama running high 13-sec quarter mile times which is around where I wanted to end up with Clementine until we go full race. Jeff’s key man Miguel owns the ’62 shop car and he took me for a ride around Pasadena to show me the wholesome virtue of the motor and also demonstrate the sort of sauce it was packing. To be clear, this is a real racer with license plates and not a slammed “waxer” show car. There is no carpet, no sound deadening, and the car is ready to rock on the street or the track at a moment’s notice. However, despite the noise level the car was very well behaved. It was an easy 90 degrees out when we took our ride and the car idled like a champ, had zero flat spots off the line, and did not show a hint of overheating or stalling while we put it through the paces. I was sold so as soon as we got back, Jeff and I laid out a game plan for a 1968cc twin of Miguel’s motor using an aluminum case that came in on trade and perhaps with a few deviations to accommodate the primary street mission of this engine. This is Miguel’s ’62 along with its very capable pilot after our ride.

The next part to sort out was getting some reasonable brakes and suspension under Clementine so that she would not be a menace to drive with triple the stock power on board. Jeff and I talked over a few strategies and settled on 2.5-inch drop spindles with Karmann Ghia style discs up front as well as a new front suspension beam narrowed an inch with height adjusters to allow me to dial in the ride height to where it needs to be. Adjustable rear suspension arms in the back with new stiffer bushings with let me drop the back end a bit and I will fit new shocks all around to replace the roasted and leaky units still on the car. Here you can see all the goodness crammed into the shop with Jeff manning the phones as well as the guys out back stuffing a rebuilt motor into a ’69 that was in for a transplant.

So, things are coming along quickly and the next task will be to get the stock beam out of the car so Jeff can work his magic on it. After that, it’s time to yank the 1600cc engine and clean up the engine bay in preparation for the new bullet. Fun times and you can almost see the old girl smiling as she contemplates her return to the street ready to tear up some tarmac.

Clementine: Getting to Know You

Whenever you bring an old car home, it always has a few surprises waiting for you. These surprises can be good or bad and I have had many of both flavors.

I really did not check Clementine over in great detail once I saw solid floor pans and aprons on a car that drove pretty well and was way better in all respects than the other beaters I had looked at. I did miss a couple of rust spots on each front quarter and also the usual luggage tray rust which turned out to be worse than I thought. However, neither are a big deal as scads of replacement metal is available and I should be able to get away with a quick patch or two with the help of my welding guru Jay Hitchcock from Jay’s Hotrods in Sacramento (yes, shameless plug for a pal- www.jayshotrods.com).

 

As soon as I got Clementine off the trailer, I took her for a brief but terrifying drive around the neighborhood. Although she started right up and happily pulled away in low gear, the old girl started to stall at idle once she warmed up, the steering was looser than a politician’s morals, and the brakes only worked at every third stop sign. None of these were unexpected given that the car was off the road for 20 years and is sitting on ancient tires but it did tell me that we had a ways to go before I would be comfortable leaving the confines of the greater Old Willowbank area. It’s nothing short of amazing how loafing along at 25 miles an hour in an old fairly clapped out car on a quiet street can be scarier than doing 150 miles an hour down the front straight at Willow Springs in a sorted racecar.

Although there is going to be some serious work involved to get the car back on the road, there were some little things to fix that the Lindsey Family Jalopy Shop undertook in furtherance of our quest to get Clementine roadworthy and cruiseable by the end of summer. The big projects to come will be brakes, rolling stock, and suspension but there were a bunch of little tasks that looked like they would pretty easy to knock out. I was confident that we could get them done with three generations of the family on the job.

 

 

The first problem was that although most of the indicator lights worked, the right brake light was out, the 4-way flashers were dead, the marker lights were MIA, and the license plate lighting was not working. Fortunately, old VW’s have very simple wiring and a quick surf of the Samba revealed that a short in one particular circuit was most likely the culprit. I traced out those wires and found that the previous owner (the PO) had hacked into this circuit to wire up the running lamps to take power from his tow rig when he flat towed Clementine. Over the years, the wiring in the 6-way trailer socket had gotten crusty and eventually shorted out which in turn melted the fuse for this circuit and also blew the tarnation out of the lamps on the circuit that were wired in front of the fuse that should have protected them. Since Clementine ran and drove fairly well, I began to think this is what might have taken her off the road in 1993.

 

Fortunately, the fix was pretty easy. I simply removed the trailer plug wiring, repaired all the breaks in the wiring, and then added new bulbs. For good measure, I replaced all the faded and cracked lenses with new repop pieces and also added a nice front turn signal housing that I took from a roached out ’71 Super at the local Pick-n-Pull to replace the bodged one on the car. It also seemed like good practice to freshen up the fuse box since many of them looked like they have been microwaved so I replaced all 12 fuses and cleaned all the contacts. Once all that was done, a quick pull of the light switch and 4-way flasher switch confirmed that all was well with working lamps and steady voltage throughout the system.

 

 

 

 

The next easy project was hooking the oil pressure warning wire back up which gave me a working oil lamp on the dash. Not sure why this had been unhooked but it did cause me to look closer at the motor which revealed another surprise. In this case, the surprise was that Clementine’s engine was not the original “AE” series 1600 but rather a “B6” case from a 1970 model with the proper later dual port cylinder heads. While I had the deck lid open, I decided to also try and cure the crappy hot idle. This led to me discovering the engine had a Bosch “009” mechanical advance distributor instead of the usual vacuum advance model and that someone in the past had tried to cure the idle problem by just jacking the set screw on the fast idle cam into the stratosphere instead of using the proper adjustment method. After a quick check of the timing and using the adjustment method of incrementally setting the volume and bypass screws in concert, the idle smoothed right out and the car lost the stink of unburned gas that I had noted during my initial drives. There is still some hesitation just off idle, but the wisdom in cyberspace says that this is just a quirk of the 009 distributor so I will have to live with it until I install the hotter motor that I contemplating.

 

So, next steps are to get the brakes and suspension fettled along with fitting some fresh rubber to meet the road. As usual, the credit card is smoking and my knuckles are skinned so stay tuned…