1970 Bug Arrives from California!

[hydralique]

Bad Parts . . .

BAP burned a few bridges with me when I had to replace that fuel line. I haven't been into one of their stores since then. I ended up using OEM Alfa fuel line intended for the electric pump to injection pump run, which will support 30 psi and should last a good long time with only 6 psi in the Citroen.

I don't know about Taiwanese or Chinese parts, but a lot of real crap comes out of Russia and Poland. I sold my '87 Fiat X1/9 a few years ago because it became impossible to get OEM Fiat parts in this country, and I just couldn't rely on the Polish and Russian parts in my daily driver. After three X1/9s in twenty years, that hurt. At least I can get parts at the dealership for my current daily driver, an '02 VW TDI, although even VW parts aren't what they used to be. I've had premature failures of both the turbocharger (Romanian built) and the timing belt tensioner (Canadian built). The first failure toasted the whole engine, and I was just lucky the second didn't as well.

One real irony of Porsche's use of the Type 4 engine is that the 914, famous for having a VW engine and sold as a "VW-Porsche" in many markets actually had it's own block but the 1976 912E used the VW block and of course no VW badges were allowed near that car. The reason for this is the differing requirements of a mid-engine car vs. a rear engine car, but it always strikes me as funny.

 

[nurdlinger]

VW 411

In the main, I did like the 411 very much. It was the first new car I ever owned. I was just out of college in 1972, and I wanted a Volkswagen but more than a Beetle. I planned to buy a Type 3 squareback, but when I drove it, it felt just like a Beetle. (front torsion bars were stiff, transmitted every pavement joint to the steering wheel) IIRC, Beetles cost under $2K, Type 3 was $2400, Porsche 914 was $4K, and the Type 4 was right around $3000. It was a reach, and it never got better over the car's lifetime. What ultimately made me sell it was that I could not afford to maintain it properly and it became unreliable. I lived in Michigan and Missouri when I owned this car. (cold country) It had a gasoline-burning heater which kept it quite warm, *when it worked*. Within a couple of years, it stopped functioning. It would trip out the circuit breaker in the engine compartment. Nobody wanted to work on it, not the dealers, nor the independent VW mechanics I contacted. Ultimately I was able to purchase the factory manual for the heater, and a EE friend of mine diagnosed the problem and we kludged up a fix for it. By the time I had owned it four years, the MacPherson strut front suspension was worn out, and it would eat front tires in 10K miles. (could not afford to replace struts) Eventually it would not start when the temperature was below about 40F. In the winter in St. Louis, this happened a lot. My boss was tolerant for a little while, but eventually I needed a more reliable car. I wound up buying a Ford Pinto, because at the dealership the salesman literally dug it out of a snowbank, stuck in the key, and it started right away. I owned the car from 1972 to 1976. I drove it 87000 miles in that time, literally from coast to coast. I remember it with fondness. Here is the only picture I could find this morning, showing it parked alongside the Mississippi in St. Louis, adjacent to the Gateway Arch.

 

[hydralique]

412 story . . .

In some respects the 411/412 series was a neat car, but it had a rep for being expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and not particularly reliable. It was well made, but German electrics weren’t always the best. Add that to a noisy engine and mediocre performance and it can be seen why it didn’t open up the middle class market to VW as was intended.

My favorite of the lot is the 412 station wagon, as it has both the wagon bed and a front trunk. The wagon bed is compromised by being very high to clear the engine, but the front trunk is pretty good - the only rear engined VW with a decent trunk. I drove one briefly years ago and remember the situation clearly because it was one of those rare cases of getting the best of a rather petty civil servant (in this case a border guard), and the 412 with its’ faults was my ally.

It was 1981 and I was a student spending some time in Strasbourg, France. That is the biggest city in Alsace, just across the Rhine from the smaller German city of Kehl. The 412 was owned by a German student named Bernd who had spent a lot of money at the VW dealership in Kehl trying to get some major electrical problems fixed, but the car ended up back in France with a very dead battery. It would start fine if pushed, but even turning on the radio would kill it instantly as the power antenna cycled. Bernd asked me to help him get it back to the dealership as the work was still under warranty. He wanted someone else along for an odd reason: although he was German his passport listed Kuwaiti or Saudi residency as his father was an oil executive and the family lived there. Back then you had to show your passport when crossing the border and Bernd claimed the German guards always hassled him, especially if he was alone. I didn’t believe him, but we were buddies so I agreed to help.

We got several guys to help push start the car and headed to Kehl with me driving. At the border the German guard had utterly no interest in me, but sure enough the moment he saw Bernd’s passport he decided to search the car. I was appalled at this, and when he opened the rear tailgate and started meticulously going through an old duffle bag Bernd had left there I cranked the idle up to about 2000 rpm. That old Type 4 engine ran pretty well, but had spent a lot of hard miles on the Autobahn (typical student hand-me-down car) and it smoked . . . soon the guard was coughing and asking me to turn it off. I pretended to not understand, so Bernd had to translate. I told Bernd to ask the guard if he would help us push the car since it wouldn’t start if turned off. Bernd pulled out his huge stack of bills from the dealership and started explaining the car’s problems in great detail as I added another 500 rpm to the idle. The guard gave us a really nasty look, threw the duffle bag back in the back, slammed the tailgate, and furiously waved us on. We left him in his little cloud of smoke and laughed all the way to the dealership . . .

 

[whirlcool]

Great story about international customs.

Today we got to drive in the Fourth of July Parade! I had never done this before and it was a LOT of fun. This was in conjunction with the North Houston VW Club.

Queing up

 

[whirlcool]

Driving The Route...

Lots of people came out for the parade. Reminded me of when I was a little kid and we used to go see parades.

 

[rp2813]

California Plate Color Combos

Scott, the single reason you're seeing California and other states switching to plates with white or light background is because of a lobbying group that has pushed legislation through that requires a reflective background to be used. I doubt we'll ever see anything other than dark blue letters on light background in California going forward.

The palm tree design on current issue California plates costs extra and helps fund arts programs/organizations. That's the one I'd opt for if I were personalizing any plates, especially if they were going on a convertible.

I recently sold my '64 Lincoln convertible, my dad's '69 Mark III, and still own a 1950 GMC 100 that belonged to my dad. All have original black plates (well, the original plates on the pickup weren't black) and that was a big selling point on the two Lincolns. The plates on the truck could be purple on pink and it wouldn't matter. It's a man magnet and they all ask if it's for sale. It's NOT!

Ralph

 

[hydralique]

Reflective plates . . .

Funny thing, Texas requires that plates be replaced every so often (ten years perhaps?) to keep the reflective properties good as the plates fade in the sun, but to my knowledge California never, ever requires replacement. I've seen some of the old yellow on blue plates so faded they are nearly impossible to read.

Assuming that you have both plates and they still have stickers on them, old California plates can be worth some money.

 

[rp2813]

I've noticed on the transit authority buses around here, the plates are nearly unreadable. I don't know what they use to wash the buses with, but it's murder on license plates. I notice this more on the older plates, like maybe they've fixed the problem. Or maybe they've just been washed more.

Sore subject re: both plates. The Jimmy was parked out in front of my sister's house in Berkeley about 25 years ago and somebody stole the front plate and holder off of it. Haven't every been cited for it, and I can't bring myself to put current plates on it. Besides, it has a great easy-to-remember alpha-numeric combo that I wouldn't want to get rid of either. I'll take my chances.

Anybody know of any reproduction operations where I could order a "new" front plate? I've seen personalized plates in the yellow-on-black combo, which can't be legal since personalization didn't start in CA until the blue background plates were implemented for 1970.