the vw’s I drive look like this
http://images.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/pix/2720543.jpg

My only other experience with a Beetle was in shop in highschool where some enterprising idiot had installed a Porsche engine in a Beetle and blown a head. The car drove in on the other three cylinders leaking oil like crazy.

The shop supervisor and I took the cooling shroud off the engine without removing the engine. After about eight hours of work, with the very last piece off, some Beetle nut mentioned the fact that the engine comes right out, shroud and all, and then the shroud is very easy to take off. Kinda like Subaru, another Boxer, the Beetle ends up being something that drives normal car guys to distraction.

And yes, I have fond memories of the padded area behind the seats, but much fonder memories of the back end of an Estate Wagon (when my parents moved back to MI) with the rear seats folded down where I could play with my Hot Wheels in all that space.

We had the same problem of get pushed away from the truck, especially worse in the Praire Canada.
Later on in 80 I bought one for the summer coming home to Van from school in Toronto. I have a fnd who cut a piece of plywood to mount it under the front bumper, it became an Air Dam, ground effect. Lo & Behold driving across Trans Canada Autobahn was nothing, it create a small vacuum under the front wheel, the traction was exceptional. Onetime we drove on 401 pinned the speedo too at 90 MPH i am sure is not correct.

Also bought one of those elec fan from JC Whitney 2nd hand, it gave continous air so it doesnt fog up during winter. The air rely from the engine fan was too intermittent u get lots during throttle but soon as u stopped on red light the hot air died.
None the less it deliver the goods for any needy students at the time.
Told my fnd the heater box does leak exhaust every so often, I think in the end I had it welded together. My fnd reply as Fuhrer’s revenge.

This typically only occurs on Minis when poorly trained mechanics install the fan blade back to front. Mini fans push air from under the bonnet (hood) to the wheel well. The can be and frequently are reversed.

Very well put.

Just the same…

I recently purchased a 72 bug and kept it for a few months. I found it to be, for the most part, very easy to work on, and a blast to drive. Driving a car flat out, but still well within the law, is tremendous fun. And I loved the car’s simplicity, what could possibly go wrong?

What the eBay seller did not disclose in his ad, is what led to the blue Beetle’s elimination from my life – cancerous rust that could only be addressed by a full body off — something I would not undertake. I actually smiled as the wrecker hauled the rotting carcass from my property.

I looked to purchase another Beetle, but ultimately, the heater channel issue and the crappy heating that goes along with it, changed my mind. If you live in the southwest, I believe the Beetle could be a fun car. But anywhere else, the car will disolve in front of you, after it leaves you cold.

The Mini was a highly entertaining car. Even a Cooper S wasn’t particularly fast, but it had a kind of banzai spirit that was a lot of fun. It was like the friend you had when you were a kid who would talk you into mischief. A friend of mine had an early-60s example with a later, bored-out 1304 engine — she called it Emmett. Emmett was well-suited to hell-for-leather driving, but, like all early Minis, it suffered the dilemma of having been built by Englishmen. It overheated in traffic (typical; the side-mounted radiator doesn’t get enough air at low speeds), and a wide variety of interesting pieces fell off at inconvenient times. On one memorable occasion, that included the steering rack, which she did not find amusing. I told her, “There’s an old saying: If you give an Englishman a piece of metal, he will do something foolish with it.” She wasn’t amused by that, either.

Long story short, none, absolutely none of my friends dreamed of a Beetle. A Beetle would have benn the leat fashionable, the worst to get girls, and would easily be the slowest and, generally, the biggest letdown. If given as a present would be taken with a smile of course, but not, absolutely not, enjoyed. Beetles were for poor old men who knew no better!

Thankfully, none of us got a Beetle. I even lucked out as I was handed down my Dad’s Fiat Uno 1.5 ethanol (a dream car confronted with the quartet mentioned above). So, Beetle, neh, never meant anything for me.

Do you know if any of these guys are still around? I’d love to interview them. Contact me at motorlegends@aol.com. Thanks! DAvid

Again it is a vast difference if you bought a new one or as posted so many times here, old heaps that have been worked on by an indefinite number of people.Not the skilled or properly self trainer person is the problem, it’s the morons that think they can do it all and brag about how they set the ignition timing simply by listening to the change of rpm when they rotated the distributor on a running engine.

So if you get one today, look for an original well kept and maintained vehicle.Pay the extra Dollars and you will end up with a fine trouble free set of wheels that will keep you motoring for years to come.

A simple push/pull switch operated a pilot light and supplied current to the blower motor.The fresh air blower supplied heating air and the impeller combustion air.The fuel pump supplied metered fuel to the combustion chamber. The combustion air was preheated by a glow plug and ignited by a spark plug.An ignition coil provided the higher voltage.The combusted gases flew through the heat exchanger thus heating up the thermoswitch which turned after about 45s the glow plug off. From there on the combustion process continued to run on its own( assisted by the high voltage ignition)
That`s pretty much it.

This “feature” only showed that there was no ventilation system. Other cars, even then, had exhaust vents so that air would flow into the car when the front vents were opened. Another car with no exhaust vents was the Ford Pinto. My cousin had one and you could open the front air vents and feel no air until you cracked a window. I don’t remember that anybody thought that was a sign of build quality.

Thanks, for the explanation. A couple of more questions. How did you turn it on? Did it have a separate electric starter? A pilot light?

The “wheelbase difference” between a Standard and a Super Beetle (20mm) contributed to an increased luggage compartement and not to a “further away” windshield. The reason why the windshield is a) more bonded and b) further away from `73-`75 is because the car got a different cowl and “firewall” resulting in a shorter hood and slightly longer roof.
The “Autostick” you described was a manual transmission with an automatically operated clutch.The low, low gear you described indeed was the gear acutally reserved strictly for driving up steep hills/ downhill using the max engine brake power.Max acceleration if that terminology can be used with this setup only was achieved with driving range 1.Sometimes reading the manual before operating a vehicle does help though.
About long shift delays:
It also was mandatory to keep your hand off the shift lever once you shifted as any movement was detected by the clutch sensor and the selected gear would not engage until such was achieved.
Again everything in the operators manual.

The fuel tank in the front was a much dicussed item, but never let to any crash test failures.Note, all 911 and rear/mid engine Porsches until this day have the fuel tank in front.

And as usual if nothing else works with the VW one tries to play the “Nazi” card. Well, there even are Volkswagen clubs in Israel.Go figure

My college-age sister bought a Super Beetle as her first car in the ’70s. We tried to talk her into a Corolla or Datsun, but she wasn’t listening – she considered the VW “cute,” and gave it a first name. Later on, she would pre-emptively snap before we could say a word that yes, she knew her choice had been a mistake.

I drove the car several times. It had the infamous clutchless manual. I started trying to use the low-low-low first gear just to get a little snap off the line, but it was so low that you had to shift out of it at about 10-15 mph anyway, and the time needed to make the shift itself offset any gains. Everything else about the car was as others have described it here, except that the extra wheelbase of the “Super” version got the windshield away from your face a little. It was so underpowered that you couldn’t maintain a steady speed on the highway, constantly surging and then falling back.

Around the same time, I borrowed my older sister’s Sedan De Ville with the 472-cubic-inch V8. I was astonished to discover that my entire on-road personality got a transplant, from paranoid to imperious. From behind its Queen Mary prow, I practically felt like daring other motorists to let me hit them. Being an inexperienced driver and used to the VW, I was surprised by this. It was actually a pretty educational experience.

My sister did get one compensation from owning the Veedub: I wrote a speech for her speech class, humorously castigating the car as unsafe. (Let’s not forget the gas tank in your lap here.) The money shot: “From the man who brought you Auschwitz.” She reported that the few smartest people in the class laughed heartily. She got an A, I think.