Hey guys. I know this is a long shot. A woman who drove up to Oswego, NY in her '65 Ghia from the NYC area (350 miles?) called me a short while ago. She needs a knowledgeable ACVW mechanic to take a look at the engine before she attempts the drive back to the NYC area. She says there's something wrong but can't determine what. She's at least 150 miles from my house so it might be risky for her to try to get it to my place tomorrow. There may still be a place in Rochester that works on ACVW's but I've forgotten their name. Is there anyone who could tell me where she could go in the Rochester or Syracuse areas?
...........The best that I can recall from speaking with her over the telephone is that it has some loss of power and runs "rough". I asked her if it felt like it was firing on all cylinders and she said that it was but that it felt rough(??). She said that she and her dad did a tune-up including a valve-adjustment, timing, etc. just recently before she started out on this trip from the NYC area and that it was fine until near the end of this trip up at Oswego. If any of you are curious, Oswego is about an hour's drive northwest of Syracuse and is on Lake Ontario.
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:10:53 -0500, "Tim Rogers" scribbled this interesting note:
I was out of town once. When I got to my house I found a squareback in my driveway. I've never owned one of these, but my first thought was my dad bought it and parked it there, not having enough room in his own drive! So after getting all my stuff unloaded from my car I decided to take a look at the car. It looked pretty good. But I came to the conclusion that it belonged to someone as all his stuff was in it!
A friend of mine had befriended a fellow in desperate need. This guy had come out from California to Texas for some reason I since have forgotten. He met my friend at the camera shop where my friend once worked as this guy was a relatively good photographer of the amateur sort. They got to talking and his car ended up in my drive because my friend knew I knew one or two things about VWs.
This engine was a basket case. Scott may correct me since I may have forgotten some of the details, but what I remember was one head was so loose it had to have no compression on those two cylinders, when we checked them the points were either closed or very nearly (to be fair by that time the owner of the car may have messed with them while I was at work), and it had lots of other issues from neglect. I really don't remember what all was wrong with that engine and if it hadn't driven into my driveway I would have said it couldn't have run at all.
Over the course of that week Scott, my friend Shawn (the reason we got stuck with this problem in the first place) and I, with help from the previously mentioned Angel at Knight's (different thread, go and read up on it) got this car running reasonably well and the fellow took off to try to make his was back to California.
I later heard from Shawn that he made it as far as the far side of Arizona before it gave out again.
We did all we could. It ran when it left...I know this because I did the test drive around the block and had to re-adjust the clutch as that was yet another thing that was wrong with this poor car!
I wouldn't have trusted it to the corner drugstore and back, but you know the saying about how God watches out for fools and children. To this day I think we could have been God's tool to help this poor fool on his way. Either that or just suckers for a hard luck story. It could go either way.
The fellow we helped out did repay us in the best way he could, and he did a reasonable job of it. He cooked us a very nice meal before he left. Simple fair of the meat and potatoes variety, but tasty. Besides, it was a heartfelt gift and just about all he had to give at the time...
The moral of the story is sometimes these things run when it seems they shouldn't. 150 miles isn't all that far. Take a drive and check it out for yourself. Could be a simple problem, you know, check the points, make sure all the spark plug wires are connected, make sure a plug hasn't blown out or fouled out, check the distributor, and check all the vacuum lines, timing, etc. Probably something simple. Just be sure to drive something that can tow a Ghia back home!
-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
.................She has my cellphone number and she can call me later today. If I hear from her, I'll do what I can to help her out. In a worse case scenario, I could even use my type1 towbar to get her Ghia back to NYC.........It's about 200 miles.
I'm here in Syracuse.Just a hop,skip and a jump away. Email me if you need another set of eyes or brain to help. I'm not the best,I'm sure but a good deed is just that.
.............Thanks David. I haven't heard back from Jennifer since Wednesday night. She said that it was running better around the Oswego area than it did when she first arrived and that she wanted to try driving back to NYC the next day (yesterday). I tried to convince her to have it checked first but she was determined to try driving it the way it was and get home first. I gave her my cellphone number and told her to give me a call if there were any problems. Since I haven't heard from her, I'm hoping that she did OK and is back home now. Along with you, I now have contact information for two other guys in Rochester (Steve & Colin). So if it turns out that she's still up in your area, I'll pass everything on to her if she contacts me again. I'm no Bob Hoover myself but it's good to help others when you can. A twenty something young person who loves their ACVW enough to travel cross country with it is a remarkable thing these days. Thirty years ago, I remember driving from Texas to Florida and back with barely enough money in my pocket to buy gas and candy bars........lol.
It only goes to show that although no engine will fix itself, an aircooled Vw will seem to do just that.After Heather ate an exhaust valve,I was still able to get her home.(20 mi.+) The full flow filter saved the day..
I,personally,haven't been the happy recipient of "good samaritanism" very often ,it seems that when I am assisted by a passing motorist, it has followed an act of same from me.What goes around..............
John did you have to remove the frt bumper. There was no way I could have towed a ghia with out extending it. It could be that the newer tow bars are longer then my 15 year old one.
Mario Vintage Werks restorations must have been sick that day
On 12 Nov 2004 20:30:17 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Kafertoys) scribbled this interesting note:
Not on either one of them. And the bar I have is easily over a decade old, probably closer to fifteen to twenty years old because I got it over ten years ago and it was pretty well used then.
-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
------------------- Chris Perdue "I'm ever so thankful for the Internet; it has allowed me to keep a finger in the pie and to make some small contribution to those younger who will carry the air-cooled legend forward" Jim Mais Feb. 2004
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