Lit Up

While I was taking a some pictures of the Bug inside the warehouse a few days ago, I snapped off a few shots of the interior as well. The lighting was kinda cool and I knew I could do some neat effects with the pictures in photoshop. Here's a shot showing the instruments all lit up. There's just something neat and clean about the early VW Beetle dash that I love. Simpler times maybe. The tachometer, although kinda silly in a 40 hp Bug, gives the interior a little touch of attitude. The Scat Drag Fast shifter with reverse lockout helps with that too but you really can't make it out in this pic. Nice to have them already with the car since I will be putting in a healthier motor later.

Anyways, enjoy the photo. Now go out and drive your aircooled V-Dub....don't have one? Go get one or get in one!

Daily driving a 43 year old Bug

I've been driving my '67 Bug just about everyday now since the beginning of February. My 1988 Mustang GT daily driver is at the shop getting a couple repairs and a new performance transmission installed. In the meantime I've been driving the Beetle and really getting to know all of it's unique "characteristics". It really is an easy car to drive, although getting up to speed can take a bit more effort and patience but it's part of the vintage V-dub experience. It scoots through traffic very well, highway speeds though are more of a challenge with my Beetle being happy at speeds below 75 mph or in my case 120 kph.

It gets a lot of attention, it sips gas, and it's just plain old fun to drive. You get used to the couple small squeaks, the slightly bouncy ride, all in all it's not a bad little car to cruise into work in as long as you're not in a hurry. Just get 'er up to speed, kick back, put your right arm over the tops of the low-back seats - drive and relax.

Above is a shot from today outside of work. Little soggy out, but still no problem for "Euri"!

Panscrapers Barcelona

Here's a fun video on You Tube of a couple guys cruising around in their slammed V-dubs! I have a soft spot for Yellow Beetles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN70nJic7XY&feature=player_embedded#

AirCooled Addicts Cruise - Marietta Diner

I get a call from Carl this morning..."Hey are you going on the cruise?" I pretty much forgot about it. I had a couple things apart on the Bug, no big deal. I said sure I'd go. I scrambled and got the new heater hose replaced, put the air cleaner back on, hooked the battery back up and put the rear seat cushion back. I hadn't really driven it enough to see if the new adjustments made by John and Charles at Scatts Auto were dialed in but "Euri" seemed to be running pretty good. I guess this will be the shakedown test.

After I meet up with Carl at his place, we get everything together and we head out to meet up with the rest of the Aircooled Addicts gang at Discovery Mills Mall.

We got there and by the time we needed to leave we had a good group of air cooled v-dubs to cruise together with to the diner. It wasn't the nicest day with the temps in the upper 30s, cloudy, damp and windy but it wasn't raining so I was good with that.

We all arrived at the diner and another VW club was there so we parked in the back of the lot with them and got out to check out the other rides. Cold but once you got to lookin' around and talkin' with other V-dub freaks you forgot about it for the most part.

Time to eat! Good food and HEAT! We hung out for a couple hours sharing volkswagen stories and ate good food. Once we got warmed up and had enough food we headed out to cruise back home.

Even though traffic was pretty tricky down and back on 85 we had fun cruising together and getting a lot of attention from the other cars in traffic. Just about nothing gets more attention than a really cool old V-dub!

I had fun, my '67 Euro Bug ran great, I had a blast on my first ever VW cruise. I look forward to the next event - Thanks Gary and the Aircooled Gang for putting on a great event!

To see more photos from the Aircooled Addicts VW club event, I put together 2 slide shows. Here's some other photos I took....

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg277/JohnnyGMachine/Aircooled%20Addicts%20Marietta%20Diner%20Feb%206%202010/?albumview=slideshow

Here's a few photos taken by Gary Kohl and other members of Aircooled Addicts....

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg277/JohnnyGMachine/Aircooled%20Addicts%20Marietta%20Diner%20Part%20II/?albumview=slideshow

For more info on VW clubs in the Georgia area, please visit http://georgiadubs.forumotion.net/

Some new Photos of Euri!!!

Had a little spare time during lunch at work to tinker with Euri. So I wheeled him into the warehouse and when I was done checking a couple things I looked around and thought it'd be neat to take a couple inside warehouse pics so I positioned the car for a couple poses and shot some pics. I put the car back outside, then brought the pics back to my desk and manipulated them in photoshop a little.

Here's one that I made into a B&W with a slight sepia tone to it....

In this low angle shot, I made it into a B&W photo as well but thought it would give it a neat effect to leave the euro-spec yellow headlights in their real color.

Pertronix Ignition and Degreed Flywheel Installed

I've been away from the blog for awhile, haven't posted much lately but have been enjoying the Bug anyways. A few weeks ago I drove the Bug over to my buddy Carl's house again to do some more minor surgery. I finally got the Pertronix electronic ignition installed along with the new anodized black flywheel. I'll have to do some minor modifications to my engine tin that installs in front of the flywheel for proper fitment. Now we're able to really dial in the ignition on the bug and it's running like a dream compared to before. Found out that I not only had bad points but my condenser was bad and causing coil failure. The I've been using a used Bosch for now but have a new Bosch to install when i get to it.

Carl came by last Thursday night with his wife and his 1970 Bug tagged along with me, my family in our bug. Had a lot of fun. Noticed a low idle and a little sputtering intermittently but I think I got a little trash to clean out of the carb. So that's next on the agenda along with new valve cover gaskets, plugs, ignition wires, and distributor cap. Installed a new rotor button but the cap and wires I ordered are wrong. I think I will get my tune up parts locally, Cip-1 isn't sending me the correct tune up stuff. Learn as you go.

Hope to keep this more updated. I may not have as much to post for the next month or so due to winter and cold temps.

The man who got me back into aircooled VWs - Will Torres.

This is a tribute post for Will Torres - fellow VW enthusiast, past college classmate, fellow industrial designer, and one of my best friends. Will was a huge influence for me getting another aircooled VW. It's very possible that if not for him I'd not have bought my current '67 Beetle. Will and his wife Monica came up for thanksgiving. Will and I hadn't seen each other since 1995 when we graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Currently will has a mid 80's Vanagon (which he drove to Atlanta from the Tampa area) , and a clean red 1972 Super Beetle which is really sweet I must add. Will is very meticulous, thorough, and detail oriented when it comes to working on cars - specifically VWs. SO the day after thanksgiving, Will and I decided that we needed some "garage time" working on something...and that something was my Bug. We didn't have anything in mind so we started looking around the car and Will decided he was going to help me out in the battery compartment area beneath the rear seat. Will did a great job making everything clean and we even made some minor improvements.

Here's will sorting out what's needed to be done here in the battery area...

Here's Will working on the battery area and I'm cleaning up the battery hold down bracket preparing it for fresh paint.

Will and I are hard at work to get the task at hand completed. Here's me laying down some self etch primer on the battery hold down bracket. We noticed it wasn't even being used and just laying on the floor under the seat.

The hard work paid off. Battery wires were cleaned of over spray, terminal connection insulators were added to keep any contact with the seat to the battery. Also note the freshly painted gloss black battery hold down and new clean hardware.

We also noted the dome light not working. After fixing a faulty wire connection and adding a new connector and bulb the dome light worked great.