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.

Hangin' out with my fellow VW buddy Carl at his home shop

Another great thing about being in a car club is that one of them is bound to live nearby and when it's VW guys they're quick to call each other up and find any excuse at all to get together and hang out with their V-dubs. Carl invited me over and helped me out with some adjustments on the Bug. While I was there I got to check out his son's Baja Bug that he was changing the brakes on. That Baja had a lot of trick parts including a bus trans and a one off custom built shifter mount and shift linkage tube mounted in place. Neat! I also got a ride in Carl's sweet 1776 powered Bug complete with DVD player and surround sound. Nice ride! Once it started getting late we finished up playing with the timing on my bug and I headed back to the house a couple miles away. After I get back from my trip to China in a week Carl offered to help me convert my Bug from points over to electronic ignition - Can't wait!

AirCooled Addicts Meet at Fox Pizza - Nov. 19th 2009

I'm a little behind on the updates so here's a few photos from the meet out at Fox's Pizza a couple weeks ago. My bug wasn't quite ready to hit the road for the meet so we took the Mustang and my daughter and I snuck in. Reason for not bringing the Bug is it had a bad coil. But part of what makes this VW club great is the people. Gary Kohl brought me a used coil and sold it to me very cheap and it helped out. Lately I've been able to go out and cruise in the bug again until all my new ignition parts show up. We had fun though checking out all the cool stuff and eating lots of Pizza. Here's a few pics I took as well as some of Gary Kohl's pics.

This is one of Jason's Bugs. Matching luggage and cooler with nice patina!!!

Check out the killer single Cab!!!

Nice black oval window! If I remember right it's a 1958 model year and it's still running 6V too!

Me in the blue shirt on the left, showing my first piece of VW artwork to Carl, Jason, and the guys after we got our fill of Pizza. They approve - Cool!

There's me and Caitlin in the back center eatin' Pizza.

Always cool to see Gary's Herbie Bug.

Nice lineup!