well, first the wire. when the rubber started melting, which was a couple weeks after i put the clutch in , i thought it was melting from inside the wire, and started changing ignition parts. first the points and condenser, still melted. so i changed the coil, still melted. so i put a ballast in place, still nothing, so i put the old coil, with the resistor in place, still nothing. so i took the resistor off. i have had to put 4 condensers in within the last 400 or so miles, because of the melting and the crimped part of the connecter grounding out on the body of the distributor. so i stripped back the wires of one of the old condensers and looked at the wires and they look fine, no signs of heat internally. i dont have a power pulley, right now everything on this engine is stock, except i have an electric fuel pump on it, which gets its ground from the generator housing, and power from the coil + im pretty sure all the tins are correct. or at least they all went back on, and i dont have anything left over. there are what look like holes made the by vw to let the air out, but thats all that isnt covered. the oil level is fine, i did recently replace the oil pressure switch, and the light works fine now. but thats the only pressure test done. as for the gauges, on this last test run i started out with an analog gauge that went up to 220F and it got up to whatever back around to 20F would be, so i stopped at wal-mart and bought a digital meat thermometer, and thats where i got my readings from. what should the pressure run, and will a manual gauge work for this test, seeing the plastic oil line woulg be so long? thanks again for the help matt