I'm starting to hate cars.

You guys are going to have to excuse me. When insomnia sets in I get real chatty on the interwebz.

Anyway, my luck with cars lately has been... "meh" at best.

I don't know if you guys remember or not but earlier this month my MINI decided to chew through a cylinder head cover and then had to go to the dealer to have the valves cleaned. Yeah, the kids college fund still has a dent in it from that. :incazzato:

This really peeved me because I usually do all of my own mechanical work but this damned MINI is as fiddly as the Space Shuttle and has ten times the wiring. Not to mention an on board computer that could double for the one on the USS Enterprise less the sexy voice ... So, yeah, I stuffed my pride and had the MINI dealership's service department fix it for me. :mad2:

The very day I got the MINI back I discovered that my wife's '05 Jeep Wrangler has a cracked cylinder head. Now, I can fix this myself but it's still gonna cost a pretty penny. At this rate I'm thinking the kids may have to be happy with diplomas from a Junior College. :mad2::mad2:

Today, I noticed that my "toy car" was running poorly. :incazzato:

Allow me to introduce her.

This is my other "go-cart". It's a '63 VW Beetle I built from the ground up in the garage.









Here's a before picture:



We affectionately call her "Bonnie" because when I got her she was riddled with bullet holes down the passenger side with a few exit wounds on her drivers side.

Anyway, when I built the car, I installed a running donor engine from a fellow VW buddy. He had told me it had low mileage since a rebuild so I went over everything and it was all a little too good to be true. Great compression, everything was clean, it fired right up on the work bench and needed nothing. I went ahead and did a tune up and all was right with the world.

That was almost exactly 500 miles ago. Granted, it's taken me 2 years to put those 500 miles on this car. But, like I said earlier, today I noticed the car was running poorly and had a flat spot in the throttle. At this point I'm thinking of selling EVERYTHING and buying a horse, but with my luck lately, the damned thing would go lame and I have to shoot it. :crazy:

The first thing I noticed was the carburetor was wet. So, I took it off and put it up on the workbench. I'm almost embarrassed at the state of this thing but I'm gonna show you the pics anyway.





This is one of the very few parts of the car that I haven't had apart. After this the only thing left untouched by my hands are the internal engine components. I turned every nut, bolt and screw on this car otherwise. I rebuilt the transmission, I installed all the window rubber... Well, you get the picture.

The carb looked a bit crusty to be serviceable so I decided to take it apart. This is what a completely disassembled 1963 West German made 28 PICT VW carburetor looks like:



Holy cat crap Batman! Other than sheer stubborn will and some sort of voodoo magic, I don't know what kept this car running with this carb in place.

I mean, look at how crusty this thing is!



This was a nice surprise. Check out how bent up the choke flap is:



I'm no mechanical engineer but I've been inside a few carburetors in my day and know for a fact that this thing is supposed to be flat.



Then I checked the "slop" on the throttle shaft. Geeez!



And then I checked the shaft itself.



Yup... More than 10 thousands of slop. This thing is not rebuildable by me at this point. I lack the specialized equipment to precisely ream out the throttle housing to accept bushings.

So, after all of this, I dug a little deeper into what I'm now calling the kids "Technical Trade School" fund and bought this:



So, on Friday or Saturday when it gets here, I'll be bolting it on and tuning everything again. I can hardly wait to see how much better this car runs. Hell, I thought it ran good before and thought that lack of power was just the fact that stock 1200s are generally gutless by nature.

If this cars history up to know stands true, mark my words, I'll have the engine out and the case cracked open before spring.

 

Well, given the raw unadulterated power this 1200cc engine produces, It was no surprise that the first thing I noticed when trying to find the cause of the drivability issue was a riced up Honda which had gotten sucked into the air cleaner. I guess that could have done it. :biggrin5:

 

Have a look at what my lovely mail lady dropped in my post box today. :ihih:



HOLY COW!!! It only took a few minutes to install -BUT- boy what a difference!

Night and day. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear this Beetle was brand new. The throttle is so light and responsive. Hell, I'll bet this car will even be able to keep up with traffic now. :biggrin5:

 

Hahaha... Yup. If I had that kind of cash, it would be hard to decide which way to go. Do I install a Judson on my old beat up Bug -OR- do I build up a Porsche engine and gearbox and install it in a Single Cab or 23 Window Bus then install an independent front suspension and 6 pot calipers and carbon fiber brakes and rotors on each corner and top it off with a nice set of late Porsche rims and low profile, directional "Z" rated tires ? Hmmm.... I think the latter would end up being the more cost effective.