"Ping!"

Hi guys.

Nice to see some of the same "old timers here". For those who don't know, I used to read and post here a LOT, (was even the king for a day, wasn't I???).

Anyway, I moved a couple weeks ago. A new house with some new space for shop and VWs.

About 45 mins from my old house. Also have a new e-mail that I would really like to keep the spambots away from. It's ten.ret$rahc$.skrewr$az Reverse it and take the $'s out if you are inclined to de-cypher...

Still have my 3 oldies (the '57, '50 sunroof and the rare '51 standard sunroof who's restoration has not yet started but I have been buying some of the few missing parts (that's the easy part).

Want to read about in interesting recent adventure where the generator on my '50 sunroof ingested it windings on I-85 in CT, go to kabriolett.com, strictly vintage, discussion forums, discussion, and go to the second page of topics and look for ...

Shoot, I see that I uploaded the pics to my old ISP and have canceled them. So since there are no pics, I'll just paste the text here below.

Anyway, I'll pop in now and again, you guys behave yourselves.....

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So I set off from my house at 6:10 am for the nearly 3 hour drive to Litchfield. My finicky gen light is winking at me, a quick stab of the gas and high revs makes it go out. I?ll fix that one day.

On the highway, I start to smell something. Smells like something burning, maybe electrical, faint. I turn on the heat and it gets real strong. Gen light winks on, then off a few times, engine hiccups when it does, but no problem.

I pull off at a rest stop and open the lid, engine running.. Everything looks cool, nothing hot. No smell. Oh well, I continue up the highway. I conclude that something mouse-like must be in the heater ducts as I can now only smell it when the heat is on.

A lug up a double tiered hill I call the ?Widow-maker? north of Hartford on I-84. The Oval will make the hill in 4th, but the split never has. But I re-gapped the points the night before and the engine seems just a tad stronger. As I get near the top I lug below the self imposed limit of 60kph for 4th, but I am close so I decide to go for it and keep the pedal on the floor. I creep over the top of the hill in 4th, at around

56kph. Just at the top, I see the gen light on. So with the pedal on the floor I dip the clutch in then out to rev the engine.

There is a howl, a grind and then a squeal from the engine. A VERY unpleasant sound. 0.3129 seconds later, I turn the ignition off and slip to neutral, no coasting down the hill. I smell rubber. I remember the spare fan belt in the top of my spare tool kit? which is packed in an old suitcase in the garage at home.

And it sounded way worse than a belt. Exploded pulley? Rod? I coast to a stop dreading to lift the engine lid.

I do, and immediately notice some ?shrapnel? on the tin surfaces. Some burnt paper and lots of short pieces of copper wire. The belt is intact. I look at the gen which I have been running without the collar for a while to see a rats nest of copper wire spewing from the brush slots. I try to turn it, it is seized up.

I step back and try to think about the options.

1) Call a flatbed, have the car carted maybe 70 miles home, spend a couple hundred at least.

2) Pull the generator out, remove the copper wire mess, cut the field windings, replace it only to serve as a means to spin the fan.

I grab my cell phone and call Gary who I know is coming along behind me.. Turns out he is just two exits away. ?How bad is it?? he asks??

?Doesn't look good? I reply??.

He pulls over, and donates a real nice padded blanket out of his Toyota and we set to work removing the generator. T cleaner, decklid come off, decklid brackets, gen bracket, wires, fan housing bolts, accel and choke cables, we?re getting pretty greasy and dirty now?

We finally get the gen out and on the ground. Think is completely seized up. We get one end off and try to whack it out with big ½? ratchet. I?m smart so I put on of the big nuts (yeah, this is real 25 hp stuff) on the end of the shaft and hit that to save the threads? but I end up breaking the nut right off its bored center section. This is SO not good.

I pound the end of the shaft on a rock in a nearby ditch while holding the housing and the armature finally frees up. We clip a good half pound of copper wire off the armature and I unwind 2/3 of the wire off the field windings (the guy who mows along the highway will love us?) and reassemble the generator. It now spins freely (but obviously generates nothing) we leave the brushes out and the regulator off.

I have no idea what we are going to do about the busted nut. We?ve spent about an hour so far.

An unmarked state cop car (apparently off duty officer too) stops and asks if the State Police have been by. We say no, he says that he will alert them but they may come by and tell us that we can?t work on the car on the side of the highway. He is astonished at how much of the engine we have taken apart.

We try to thread the other good nut on the fan side, but I munged up the threads wacking it on the rock. We spend another HOUR trying to re-dress the threads with a pair of wire cutters and a small pocket knife file Gary had. We get no where and just get more pissed. We can get the nut to thread on the pulley side, but not the back.

Looks like an M12 thread. I think about the places where they might be such a nut on the car. I look under the back end at the spring plate/axle tube bolts. I take one off and try in on the good end of the gen shaft? it fits.

We decide to use it on the pulley side as we?d need a big washer to use it on the fan end. So we put the other good nut on the fan and after we are successful ?re tapping? the threads with the spring plate bolt nut and some engine oil. I see glimmer of hope.

We get the fan housing back on and try to get the belt on. When we put the gen pulley together and the shims in place, it becomes obvious why the gen nuts are designed that way. The shaft threads are recessed into the pulley hub and there is no way that spring plate nut will work. Only hope is to use it on the fan end somehow, and use the good gen nut on the pulley.

A full sized red fire truck pulls up from behind, lights on. A real young driver gets out and says ?Man, you guys are into it, huh?? He asks if we need anything, watches for a while, then backs the big truck up and takes off?.

We look around for a big fat washer. Nothing in any of the tool bags or on the car. So I grab the gen nut with the busted out center section, and try to hammer the spring plate bolt through it to enlarge the hole. Doesn?t work, but reaming it with a big fat flat blade screwdriver does. Eventually I get the hole big enough. By slipping it over the gen shaft upside down, with the missing center part facing out, there is enough space in the cavity in the center of it for the spring plate nut. Gary holds the front while I torque from behind the fan shroud, and we get it all tightened up.

We cuss a bit more trying to fish the choke cable back through the shroud and get the decklid back on. I tape up the regulator wires good and gingerly hop in start up the car. It sounds OK, but the fan seems to rattle a bit when I hit the gas.

We roll along down the hill and off the next exit. I pull into an Exxon station and approach the guy in the service bays. I tell him I had car trouble and ask if I can leave my VW in his front lot for 3-4 hours while we go on the show.. and hand him a $20 bill. He says ?sure??

I take the rotor out of the distributor and notice more copper wire shards in the engine bay.

We go on to the show and get there around noon. I sweep the swaps, and I find a few reasonably priced split parts. We go look at the splits and crawl around a ?52 standard that I had not seen in the area before. We grab a bite to eat, say hello to some friends, and Gary picks up some widow regulators from Humberto Lapa. Then we had out at around 2:30.

We get back to the exit and I breath a sigh of relief to see my Bordeaux Red split still parked in the service station lot. I fire it up again and hit the gas, to hear it rattle some more. I shut it down and look in the engine bay to see now even more copper pieces. The gen is still spitting copper at higher revs, but is at least spinning. The belt is fairly loose and there is no woodruff key in the gen pulley hub so I feel OK about going on back home.

The thing spews a few more copper shards leaving the lot, but then proceeds to run perfectly for an hour an 45 mins to Gary?s (since he will be keeping my cars while I move next week, we figured to just take the split up there while it was running) ? just on battery power.

So, the last 5 years of driving vintage car all over the place without a single breakdown, my time came due. HUGE thanks to Gary (and his wife who sat patiently in the grass all that time) for sticking with me and helping out. I don?t think I would have attempted that on the side of the road had I been alone.

I have another gen, but of course it is packed away. At least the car can be driven a bit with a charged battery. I think I?ll start taking my spare parts box along, and will make sure there is a gen nut in there too?..