1990-1993 (FORMERLY 4 YEARS- NOW CONDENSED TO 3)

[Jim Ratto]

Cleaning out the garage today -- Thought It would keep the ambience of the story in place



Damn -- just looked at the date and it's 10 years to early  --- I tried!

I miss old impact-printed triple copy invoices. I still have a pile somewhere, most of the printing has faded beyond comprehension on most.

I'm going to get going on the next saga soon. Maybe this afternoon, if time becomes available. This next segment is really about the easy part coming to an end for me. It's about me getting caught up in a 25 year long struggle trying to find VW utopia, which in most cases, I was allowing intuition to direct me, instead of really making sound decisions. I suppose some were based on mathematics and some common sense, but the results almost always ended in some form of pretty heavy disappointment. In the beginning of the next segment, you'll notice it was sheer ignorance, combined with an over-abundance of enthusiasm that began this spiral. In a few years though, some of what was going to go wrong began to become a reason to force myself to learn a lesson from some of it, because often I couldn't afford to relive the same mistakes.

Thanks again for following along.

Jim

[Bryan67]

That's funny because we still use those invoices at my work.

[Jim Ratto]

Winter 1990, Cold Weather Blues and Streetlight Shootout

That's funny because we still use those invoices at my work.

I can remember the sound and smell of them. And what my boss' voice would do when the printer ran out of invoices and we had a line out the door.

Back to cold winter Saturday nights of 1990. The last thing I wanted was to be caught home, at my parents' place, with nothing to do. Somehow I envisioned my ex-girlfriend, coming back into town and doing a drive-by, in some kind of mean one-upping thing to see if my light was on, on a Friday or Saturday night. No way in hell I was letting that happen. So even if I had no jingle in my jeans, as long as I could put gas in my car, I was not home. Hardly ever.
So where would I be?
In no meaningful order:
1. Original Sam's Pizza- I could eat cheap there and knew everybody employed there from my tenure there in high school.
2. San Gregorio State Beach, located right where CA highway 1 and CA highway 84 met, about 10 miles south of Half Moon Bay. There were cool caves there, and though technically, you weren't supposed to be on the beach at night, the sand would sparkle green in the dark, when you disturbed it. Something to do with some kind of bacteria or enzyme in the sand. For a few years it was customary for my friends and I to hit this beach on July 4th to blow stuff up and drink and build big bonfires. We did the typical old engine case thing here, which was scary. We also got flushed out of a cave, quickly and unexpectedly by the tide one drunken and cold night in February.
3. Often linked to a night at number 2 was driving up and down CA highway 35, which kind of ran through a part of the Bay Area I was just getting familiar with, the spine of the coastal range, west of the peninsula. A silk smooth 2 lane highway which you could run from San Francisco all the way to Santa Cruz, shrouded in redwood trees. At night, especially in winter, you had to be wary of fog.
4. Sometimes linked with numbers 2 and 3, afterwards was going to planetarium in Golden Gate Park to see Pink Floyd laserium show.
5. Sometimes I was just out and not really sure where I was or where I was going. This often involved cheap 7-11 coffee and the sun coming up and no sleep.

One particular night, sometime early December, Frank and I were just out, with some money, not much. It was working on 8-8:30pm, and had just left a well-known independent record shop in Hayward, Rasputin's. If you thought you'd never find that 7" import Smiths record, you could find it here. If you didn't know about a 1970 Floyd bootleg show recording from Santa Monica civic auditorium, you would after going here. I left that night buying my first CD's (I had yet to give up on the good old cassette tape, and didn't own a CD player yet), a (then) rare copy of Soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point (featured Floyd songs I had never heard... no brainer) and Sonic Youth 'Sister' album. Frank bought a Psi Com CD and Sonic Youth 'Bad Moon Rising'. The night was just getting started and we needed 7-11 coffee and Ben and Jerry's. We headed north up Hesperian Blvd, back towards A Street, in search of a 7-11. And then there he was, going southbound.
Working at the Buggy House, I met all kinds of people. Most were pretty agreeable to deal with, but some weren't. One person in particular was a small business owner, local to the shop and in the automotive realm. He tended to be impolite, wrong all the time, coarse and not very smart. And his 1776 with dual 40DRLA's, was, according to him, the terror of the streets. It was so potent, in fact, he had to run a stinger. And he just drove by us, headed south. A Ford grabber blue early car, with chrome wheels and Wolfsburg nipples. Slammed down on all fours, with blue dot taillights. And, as he drove past, he chucked a rev at us.
It was on.
At next opportunity, not necessarily legal either, we made a U-turn. With some loss of rear tire traction. A few prods on the throttle swang the tach needled around to the end of the scale. By the next signaled intersection we were all he had in his rear view mirror. I felt like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver ("You talkin to me? huh?"). We darted over to the left lane and pulled aside. And there we sat. He rolled down his one piece glass and looked over and snidely said "Guess you wanna try me huh?" followed by a rasp from his chrome stinger. This was all too much. This guy had talked down to me at the shop and paraded around like he had invented the VW, Mr. Big Stuff with his $89.00 041 heads, and his tint and his headlight eyebrows. He took another look our way and then said "Ha! Oh man, you're that dork from Buggy House. Signal still red. I see cross traffic light change yellow. First gear in, bring revs up. ("ok you smart mouthed shit heel, now who's Mr Big Talker?" I imagined in my best DeNiro accent). A cacophony of VW revs, light goes green and we're slingshotted across the intersection in a scream. There's no chance he's going to catch us, but I'm not letting off. Or maybe the adrenaline isn't. At next intersection, light goes red and we wait. And wait. And he finally pulls up. Window rolled up, tail between his legs. No more big bravado of revs and showmanship.

I felt as if I could take on anything.

[67paulo]

Welcome back........

[wolfswest]

great episode, as always!

[Brian Rogers]

Thank you I needed that!

[Felix/DFL]

GREAT, now that made my day!
Thanks

[Jim Ratto]

Winter 1990, Bored Out Of My Mind, and Who Owns These Ported Heads?

Not all winter Friday and Saturday nights were that fun. So don't get too excited. In fact many were spent sitting on the floor in my room, with new books and catalogs, purchased through work- yes all VW hot-rod related. Some that I remember best were the latest Dee Engineering (BUGPACK) catalog, (if my memory is accurate, there was some red sedan on the cover with match painted mags that looked something between 8-spoke copies and Minilites), the JSC catalog from that year, a few different SCS catalogs, Pat Braden's WEBER CARBURETORS HP book, and a copy of the Bill Fisher How To Hotrod book from the 1970's. While I had some decent information available to me, in the form of these books, etc., the issue was I had little to no understanding of much of any of it. The stuff in the catalogs were easiest to comprehend, and not surprising- as the intention was to sell, not educate. Of course the stainless braided econo hose kit (the one that used hose clamps) was what one needed for that "real competition look" and of course the red 7mm ignition wires would "provide maximum horsepower and voltage!" like the blurb said. Some of the stuff didn't interest me in the least- the window cranks with oak knobs and the narrow-eye Baja kits got passed over. Some of the stuff I knew was way too exotic for a 19 year old kid making $5.50 an hour- like the dry sump oil system, the heads with manhole sized valves, and all that HD transaxle stuff. These catalogs became a lot of the reason, that in spite of the new motor in my car, running very cool, reliably, and shockingly fast (again, compared to the 87 x 69 it replaced)- I had a creeping feeling there could be more. That I had short changed myself by not going "to the max" with things like the cam, and later on, the heads. My simplistic reasoning was really just an ignorant assumption- and that would often slide towards firmly believing "bigger is better." Which of course ended up being hugely wrong!

The Weber carb book. I'd read a few paragraphs on main circuit jetting, then re-interpret what I read (often incorrectly) to mean "it's really easy, it's cheap and you'll dig up another 30-40 horsepower if you just change main jet to _____ and air jet to _____." The book didn't say that. My cheapness and ignorance translated everything the book had to say about "volumetric efficiency" and "Port velocity" into "Never mind all that bullshit, it's way easier to just do cheap stuff."

And so it became a way to start thinking about things. Bigger was better. If some was good, then all I could get would be best. Cam catalogs were tricky. I understood lift, but most of those other columns of numbers didn't register. So they didn't matter. They all cost the same, but if you bought an "FK65" through "FK98" cam, that meant trouble- because that meant you had to spend (waste) money on really expensive ratio rockers, and everybody knew, those were only really needed on race cars. But the VZ series cams, look at that! (never mind that nobody really ran them).
So soon, it was all I could think about, the VZ35 cam. Almost 0.500" lift, and more duration than my 125 Engle. I let my vision fog over when it came to stuff like lobe centers or duration @ .050. Didn't know what it meant, so it didn't matter. I had no idea what "coil bind" was, or "valve float." All that mattered was it was bigger. In fact it was the biggest. I had discovered a loophole that nobody else seemed to know about. (what an idiot).

And, when in the machine shop at Buggy House, I had, on a few occasions, noticed a brand new set of strange looking dual port heads. They had stainless valves, like my 044 Magnums, but the combustion chambers sure looked different and the intake ports were egg-shaped. Again, bigger than what I had. Somewhere, in one of those books, I remember reading about "porting" and these big intake ports sure resembled the term, as far as I could tell. The heads were brand new VW 040 castings, just like the stock VW new heads we sold. Just better. And next to them, were another set of even stranger looking heads. These were flat black, and "blocky" looking, with even bigger ports and bigger valves. But thick fins. But my eyes always fell upon the VW-casting based heads.

One day I asked the boss about them.... and if they were for sale.....

[Clatter]

"It's not how big you build it, it's how you build it big"...

 

[dames]

This thread is great. I'm on holiday with wife 4 kids and mother in law! Spent the morning reading this on my phone. Eyes are aching but worth it☺

[Jim Ratto]

A New Year, 1991- And New Heads

For the next few days, on my lunch break, I'd sit in the engine shop and ask Rob about the ported VW heads. All he knew is that they had been sitting there, didn't know who they belonged to, and that Pauter Machine had ported them. I picked one up and looked closer at it. The finish work was much nice than on my ported CB heads and I could see the heads had some kind of dual valve springs, the outers looked like any normal valve spring, but wound inside was a flat, tapeworm looking thing. In the months to come, these springs would be the root of yet another big issue.
One day after work, while totaling the tags and cash, I asked Jerry if we could talk about "the heads in the back." Half paying attention he asked me "WHICH heads?" I'd been there almost a full year, and was learning, but he still made me wonder if he was mad at me or what. It was just his sharp tone, about everything. Really unsettling. I asked, if when we were done closing the day up, if I could show him WHICH heads I was interested in. We walked back to the engine room, and I showed him the Pauter heads.
"Now what in the hell do you want to do with those? Those are nothing than a pair of goddam dual ports with some valves jammed into them. They aren't going to do what you want!"
He grabbed the black, blocky looking heads next to the Pauters and said "These heads, now these are starting to make some goddam sense. These are a good stiff head and since you aren't running your goddam car at Indianapolis, these are more than you need."
But I didn't want those. I wanted the Pauter heads, and not even knowing why. I liked that they started life as a VW part. So I asked him "Are these heads bored for 94 cylinders?" He just wrinkled his forehead and said "How in the hell do I know? Grab a son of bitching cylinder and check it"
So I did , and they were. I asked Jerry "Would you sell me these?" And again, I had to hear how they were bored and flycut and they were really nothing and what I should be doing is ordering a "goddam ARPM 3 piece case and some Super Flows", but he agreed to sell them to me. How much?

$400.00

And there were match ported Weber manifolds in the parts room, where we stocked the Redline Weber kits. I found them, and sure enough, I found a pair of brand new manifolds, with the inside runners glimmering away, and at the head end, were the same egg shape. But they looked different than my Weber manifolds. They looked longer and wider. All because they were 48 IDA manifolds.

The next day I brought $400 in cash and that afternoon, took the heads home with me. The weekend was coming up and I'd have time to yank the 2.0L from my '67, tear off the old heads and bolt these on and go waste the V8 guys soon after.

If you've read any of the preceding posts about any of these engine schemes that began when I started this job, you probably know trouble was right around the corner. And you'd be right.

[Brian Rogers]

Boy Howdy Jim. Thought you'd given up on us. I enjoy each time a new episode comes.
Thank you!

[Stephan S]

Love reading that stuff!
Thanks Jim

[Stephan S]

... oh, just found this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS38Ypsr4c
1990 VW Jamboree, which is the event you describe on Page 1-2. Not much Cal Look stuff in that video. But man, the Jamboree offered TONS of show cars.

[Bryan67]

I was there!

[2manytoys]

Love reading that stuff!
Thanks Jim

I agree, and thanks Stephan for posting the Jamboree Video link. I never knew it was out there, searched for the 1989 show and found the Green MnM.

Keep up the writing Jim, loving it.

[Brian Rogers]

Sorry to nag. I'm in the hospital and bored. Read all my friends books watched to much tv with pathetic offerings.
Thanks Jim.

[Jim Ratto]

Winter 1991, Cold Drive Until Sunup in the Sierra Nevada

Sorry to nag. I'm in the hospital and bored. Read all my friends books watched to much tv with pathetic offerings.
Thanks Jim.

Sorry hope you're feeling better.

Where to pick up again. This was very end of 1990 now, going into 1991. I had made a down-and-back in my X19 again, to GBE to buy a 6710 shifter, sometime in late December. I remember Gene was working the counter when I walked in and sold me the shifter. I asked if I could buy some of his tech articles too, on cooling and the one on valve springs. Pretty cool, he asked me what I was planning on doing, told him I truly wasn't sure yet, but was hoping reading the articles would point me in the right direction. Asked me if I was local... no, I was actually having to get on the road back to SF Bay Area (it was now 3pm).

Outside of the VW hobby, life was confused. My job at the Buggy House had obviously taken front and center stage, not leaving much free time for stuff like my half hearted attempt at local junior college. Or much of anything else. If, given the choice to make it to class, or hang out at the shop after work to learn or work on stuff, it was a no brainer. But if nothing else was going on, I'd amble my way into a class (late). I was going maybe 40% of the time I was supposed to, and it didn't feel good. The day I walked in (after missing a week or more) and found everyone silently churning away at their midterms was too much. I sat down with my exam and knew nothing. Completely helpless and it was all my fault. I walked to the instructor, and handed it to him, blank and walked out. I knew I was only wasting his time and mine. I knew at the right time, I'd go back and get serious. (It would be a few years.)

What always seemed to work was to tweak and tune and find bugs to work out of the VW, and then go drive the wheels off of it. The new heads were sitting on a bookcase in my bedroom, as I was having too much fun driving the car- and didn't want to tear it apart and be resigned to driving only the Fiat again (as good as that little car was). I remember, the night I gave up on college temporarily, I headed to Frank's place, it was now 8:30pm or so. The distinct growl signaled my arrival and the porch light clicked on. "Wanna take a run out to the beach?" And so we did. It became the night ritual. We'd end up in Santa Cruz. We'd end up in Salt Point. We'd end up drinking 7-11 coffee and just going. Hours would go by and we'd being to see signs (Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park 45 miles.....  or Lakeport 16 miles).

One night we belted into the Fiat instead of the Bug, and, at around 11:30pm began to head east on CA highway 4, past the lit refinery yards in Martinez, then out along the slough roads east of Bethel Island. We found ourselves in the filth and grit of downtown Stockton, now after midnight (not a smart move). Soon we were on the undulating 2 lane of Highway 4 as it made its way across the eerie, pitch black plains east of Stockton. Why? Just killing time and sipping coffee and talking about our big plans. Frank didn't yet have a VW, but had his mind made up, he was going to find a '67 sunroof, and build a sleeper out of it. By the time we got up into Angel's Camp we had determined the engines parameters: 94 x 69 with some kind of D port heads, an Engle K8 and Weber 48 IDA's. I remember specifically, as we turned left from 49 south on to 4 east, we had this sort of epiphany... compression ratio was really determined by cam timing. Holy crap. Let's go back to that open gas station and get more coffee, this was just now getting interesting. If we could mathematically figure out what cylinder volume is between intake valve closing (on compression) and TDC, we could figure out if we could start raising compression, and by how much. Oh, but- I had dropped all my college classes. I had no frigging idea how to figure this out, but knew it could be done. Upward and eastward, now 2:45am, fueled by caffeine and here we were, up at Monitor Pass, thinking we had really figured something out. Then I remembered. I have to be at work in Hayward at 8:30.

This was how the winter months went. A very cold and wet winter and 1991 began. By late January it was time to think about those beautiful new heads and getting the IDF manifolds match ported.

1991 will turn into a very fun year. We'll get closer to the fun next time.

Thanks

[Neil Davies]

Jim, from the first time i "met" you on the original insidetheweb CLF back in the mid/late 1990's, you've always been able to explain the mathematics behind component choice. I learned more about the effect of cam profiles from one of your posts back then than a series of lectures at university (Integrated Engineering with Automotive Studies, no less!) taught me. I'd no idea that you'd sacked off college for a while! Probably for the best or I'd have walked out of my degree too...

[Brian Rogers]

Thanks Jim, much needed fix. In and out of the hospital 3 times, treating bowel perfect that don't warrant surgery. Abcess are no fun.
This eppisode brought me some joy. Can't wait to get home to play on my project.

[Dave Galassi]

Jack Kerouac with an oil change kit.  Thanks Jim.

[Jim Ratto]

1991 Spring is Grey and Foreboding

Jack Kerouac with an oil change kit.  Thanks Jim.

But no Be bop music for me.  

The short dark winter days began to slowly grow longer. I remember noticing the drastic slowdown in foot traffic that was coming into Buggy House, at least on the weekdays. There were days that just seemed to drag on, one long unending day of listening to the milling machine in the back. It was the afternoons that were the worst. Maybe it was partly due to the food-coma we'd go into after Jack in the Box (and that was after donuts earlier in the morning). I couldn't believe it, but boredom would set in... even at my "dream job." Counting inventory only intensified it. Ever count 643 late molding clips, only to have the phone ring once you got to 159 and then forget where you were? No? I don't suggest it.
The evening news talked of a "recession" and at 20 years old, I saw it unfolding right in front of me at work. Luckily I was paid by the hour, not commission.

The late winter gloom wasn't helping my outlook on abandoning my scholastic career either. And the lack of interaction in the school setting had sort of short circuited meeting a new girl. And now I was given a week off of work, my first vacation at Buggy House.

That very wet and grey first Sunday morning, I sat on my floor staring again at that same old California road map. Way off in the extreme east. Zabriskie Point... same name as that obscure Pink Floyd CD album I had purchased a few months earlier. In a few minutes I had thrown some clothes in a duffle bag and folded a stack of cash into my shorts' back pocket, and jumped into the icy Fiat.

[Nico86]

Always great readings here

[JeeWee]

since a few days my favorite to read topic! like it!

[Jim Ratto]

since a few days my favorite to read topic! like it!

Thanks guys.

I had intended on continuing on, and was just hit over the head with the awful news that Tom Petty has left us.
So much of his music kind of made up an anthem that didn't just run behind the scenes as my personal story unfolded here.

I can remember the first Southern CA trip my friend Frank and I made in my '67, before any of this story really got started, months prior to me going to work @ Buggy House. We made a very clumsy but memorable trip down PCH, CA Highway 1 from the SF Bay Area, clinging to the left edge of North America. Below us was the Pacific ocean, really the first time we had seen it in such a setting. So much of that trip was fueled by the Full Moon Fever album.

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down
I had the radio on, I was drivin'
Trees flew by, me and Del were singin' little Runaway
I was flyin'

Yeah runnin' down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads
Runnin' down a dream

I felt so good like anything was possible
I hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes
The last three days the rain was unstoppable
It was always cold, no sunshine

Yeah runnin' down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads
Runnin' down a dream

I rolled on as the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down to make some time
There's something good waitin' down this road
I'm pickin' up whatever's mine

Yeah runnin' down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads
Runnin' down a dream


RIP

[karl h]

just listening to "learning to fly" as i write this
RIP

[Sture S]

Jim have been reading the posts for two evenings - Love reading that stuff!
You have really capture the feeling... You have a talent for writing!
(I can remember the places, roads and the lifestyle from my own youth and my trip to California in the 80:s    )

Thanks Jim!

/Sture S,

[Brian Rogers]

Well now that I'm pretty well healed from my troubles and back on my feet. Tom Petty meant a lot to me. He lived his life the way he wanted. I think he said that in the tune "I Won't Back Down".  He was always up to help out a friend. (Traveling Willberrys). He was not a fool, when the record company wanted to up the price of a record by a dollar, he threatened them with changing the title to $8.99.

Thanks for the music Tom RIP

And now back to our feature story.

[Cornpanzer]

Made my first trip to Southern California in late 88. Bought the Traveling Wilburys album in SD. Full Moon Fever came out the following spring. Very personal albums those two. 

[Brian Rogers]

Bump