Shy Posters

This is for you, Mr. Hoover, The reason why I have been a shy poster is because I have been a VW idiot for 23 years. I don't wanna be laughed at by all these experts. It all started in 1984, I got enamored with VW's because a girl I liked drove a Ghia, rust bucket. My brother and I pooled together $500 and got a ruster of our own, a 68 from Ohio, Original but very rusty. We drove it to Mexico and back (from Illinios) and learned alot about Vw's and people. Dropped the battery out at some point from the rusty floor pans and didn't even know it until the next morning when the car wouldn't start. I then got a 69 Texas car, Maco paint and walmart pinstripes, Ok car until it dropped a valve. We overhauled the motor per the John Muir manual, with help from Knights in Dallas, ran great for many years. Fast forward... crashed the 69, front end, Baja'ed it. put in a 2 barrel carb, crashed it again. Got a 68 clean body texas car, bad eng, bad trans. (autostick) Put my stuff from the 69 in it and ran it until I moved to Oregon 1994. Still have that car. In 2007 I got a 73 Super, Sunroof which I really like but the car needs help. I was in a pinch and got an overhaul from a "dirty overhauler" a big mistake that i will never make again. I drive it every day and am saving the 68 for my son who turns 15 next month. I have done everything wrong from the 2 barrel carb, to the 009 to the baja kit to bargain overhauls but still am enamored with the aircooed VW. And even overheated on a long trip because half of the tin was missing and I didn't have a clue. Lucky some people helped me out and thats is what I have gathered about this love for these antiques is that people always have time to help out, and other vw drivers always wave. Lots of luck Bob, Thanks for everything

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Dear Cletus,

Thank you. If you think I can help, just ask.

But you -- and thousands of guys just like you -- make my point better than I ever could, which is that the most valuable thing we will ever own is what we KNOW. And education is very expensive stuff.

Fortunately you don't have to worry about guys like me banging you over the head with a rusty floor panel. Why not? Because your Volkswagen will do that for me. And there's really no need to be shy. I know... it's a human trait found in all of us to some degree. But so too is the willingness to help our fellow man.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that fifty years of experience with WATER-COOLED engines means you are INEXPERIENCED when it comes to air-cooled engines. Hard to believe but there it is. And if you want to see SHY just wait'l you run into one of them water-cooled guru's guessing his way through some minor problem on a VW. Terrible thing to see. He's not only shy, he's defensive about it, since he sees it as an attack on that half-century of good, honest -- and honorable -- experience. Not his fault so tread lightly.

Water-cooled engine, the STOCK cooling system is good for about five times its rated output. Air-cooled engine, the cooling system may not even be good enough for a hot day in Tucson. Sez so right there in the Service Manual. Which nobody reads, of course. Certainly not all them editors working for them VW-specific magazines, trying to sell their 200hp 'daily drivers' to some poor bastard in Barstow.

Lotta folks forget that Berlin is as far north as Winnipeg... or that Brownsville is farther south than Cairo. Professor Porsche opted for air cooling not because he didn't want something that could boil over, he opted for air because he didn't want something that could FREEZE. Good little cars, though. Superb example of 1930's engineering. I really hate to see them going into the crusher.