The Cal-look Lounge

Sept 1989-March 1990, No Direction
I am referring to time period between 1990 and 1994. Some of you commented on my short bit about Mason's '62 and rather than run that thread into the ditch, I thought I'd start a new one, basically about a pretty vivid time period concerning hot rod VW's and what was going on with me at the time. I apologize in advance for the onset of boredom this may cause you.
Not very relevant, but it kind of starts in December 1986 when I got my '67 Bug for Christmas, yeah same car in my garage today, almost 30 years later. It was stock height, ran chrome 5.5" wheels with '67 hubcaps, Zenith Blue, Euro-blade bumpers with short guards, P3 185/70 Pirelli's and a stock motor (except for 009 and gutted stock tailpipes). In about 6 months time the car had a 1641 with Weber 32/36 and an S&S header with dual aluminum glass packs. Early summer of 1987, with a fresh driver's license in my wallet, as the sky turned purple-orange on an early Sunday morning, I set off on a 30 mile drive, alone, to Baylands Raceway in Fremont CA for one of the VW only events held there. I had spent the previous day doing my damndest job on detailing what I had to work with, using my mom's good dish towels and Brasso to polish the chrome wheels and her white vinegar and old newspaper to clean the glass. After 6-7 hours I was proud. Anyway, that early morning drive through the riparian woodlands of south Pleasanton and Sunol, and into the warm smells of hundreds of VW waiting in line along Durham Rd (outside raceway) got my gears turning. By the afternoon I had watched cars like Tan Fastic and Dom's Dragon Slayer car rip through the 1/4. I had heard kids at high school brag about their fast VW's but I had no idea..... so from this day forward there was "Life before seeing VW's race at Baylands" and "Life after seeing VW's race at Baylands." A new mindset, and way to kill time had been introduced.
As I mentioned in my comments about Dave Mason's car, there was another turning point, the night my buddy and I sat across from each other at the pizza place we worked at, eating free cheese pizza and sipping beer from to-go soda cups with lids and straws (we were 18). We each had a copy of Dec '89 Hot VW's and were tripping out on the blue shock of Gary Berg's '67. We each found the car perfect. Both us were tired of what was going on with the VW's we saw regularly. One kid had a very low yellow sedan with the wide-5 lug copycat 911-alloys, and a clear decklid that showed off a chromed, but otherwise stock motor. Another kid had a Ford Grabber blue '69 with pink and day glow green striping and matching colors on his Rivieras. Another guy had an orange '72 Super Beetle with gold Rivieras and a stinger on his stock motor. Had none of these guys been to Baylands and seen what a VW can do? It was frustrating that all the VW guys we knew of were a bunch of guys that knew nothing about building anything that would scaring chicks or their moms (Though we did know one guy that had a 2086cc in a very rat-trap of a '64 Bug that hauled holy ass...). In any case, seeing Berg's car in the magazine, very gleamy blue, with full stock bumpers, a full-tilt 48IDA ("What are Eye Dee Ays?" "Didn't Cobras run those? Maybe Ferraris did?" we used to ask each other, as I had DRLA 36's and Frank had a Cadillac), but the thing that really set that car apart were the EMPI BRM mags.
So at this point I was making pizzas, about to take a new job, baking sourdough bread from 10pm at night until 6am the next morning. The cool thing about this new job was the money at the time. It was good, actually great. I figured in a few weeks I'd have a Kawell Turbo motor in my car and a set of those wheels like Berg's car, no problem. The not so cool thing was those hours. And what all my friends were up to while I was at work. They were out having fun. I was stretching dough in 125F bakery. And just months later, I had been part of a rocky break up after an even rockier relationship at the end of high school. I won't elaborate, but when you're young and heartbroken, you tend to be looking for some kind of direction...
So fast forward 3 months. March 1990. The job at the sourdough bakery didn't work for me. I was tired of getting home at 7am, with flour stuck to my sweat and dead tired. Everybody else was getting on socially, scholastically, and financially. I was making decent $ but never had the gumption to work on my car now. So I quit. Then one day Frank and I were hanging out at the local VW shop, just over the hill from us, known as Buggy House. If you lived in the East Bay and had an air cooled VW you knew this place. There was a great motley group that kept the place running, a big tall guy with a perm and a beard (he always changed my mind for me when I would ask for certain parts: "I need a 200mm clutch disc"/ "Stock?" /"Yeah just stock"/ "You got a stock motor?" / "It's just a 1641 with a cam and Dellortos..." / "Yep, well, listen guy, you need a Kush Lok disc, whyddya think you need a clutch already? All the horsepower is killin that disc, guy...let me get you a Kush Lok.."), then there was a big tall military type that had no idea how to speak in a normal tone or volume level. Everything he said W A S  L I K E  T H I S. The owner was a big tall guy that lived up the street from me, and since we were neighbors, I imagined there to be some kinship there. But he was rarely there. Then there was this guy Jerry. Jerry was then in his mid 40's and was the machinist and authority figure. He had huge hands, a tucked in VW t-shirt, a mustache and was very animated and high strung. He also swore more than anyone I had ever met. Over nothing. Anyway on this particular day, here we were, no money, just wasting our time and theirs, asking how much Super Flow heads were, can I hold a 44IDF, what do you think about CB's turbo kit, all these questions we had with absolutely no resources. Mr Kush Lok Disc was the manager, and after about the 16th dumb question from me, asks me "You wanna work here? You're in here often enough you oughta be on payroll." I thought he was joking, and I didn't know what to say. So I said "I'd work here." That was all I said. So he explained to me that the boot camp guy was going back into the marines and they needed somebody. And could I start tomorrow?
Well of course I could.
By that summer, I was defined by that job. Before I worked there, I thought I knew VW's. Within about 18 minutes of my first day, I realized I knew next to nothing. There were 3 phones that could and would ring every second between 9am and 6pm. The only questions I could answer were the shop's address and what time we closed. Otherwise I was useless. Everything, I had to go find somebody to re-ask the question. "Do we have VW 412 wiring harnesses?" "Do we refill nitrous bottles here?" "Can you line bore this guy's Bus case? In the car?" But being ignorant and green didn't discourage me. I heard Jerry talking about bearing clearances and initial advance and Weber main jets and that's what kept me going. Besides, I was busy and that kept my mind focused and not thinking about the void of the breakup. Full steam ahead. I was even memorizing a few part numbers... 111 298 051A, muffler clamps....   111 198 007A, 13-1600cc gasket set. Too bad people didn't just didn't just need those two things. I would look like a pro already.
At night Frank and I would hang out. We still hung out at the pizza place we had been employed at the previous year. We could walk in the back door, sneak beer and eat cheap. Or we'd drive around and talk about the fast VW's we'd have in a few months.
At work, the shop had two glass display cabinets. One was full of repro vintage crap that didn't interest me in the least. Who cared about flower vases on your dash and mudflaps and stock horn buttons? The other case had the good stuff. A counterweighted crank, a box of Rimco modded VW rods, a black-oxided VW lightened flywheel and a set of DCOE Webers for a Rabbit. For the longest time I thought the crank was stock 69mm, which I already had in my car. Then one day the manager said "Hey Jimmy, if you get some time, will you take that stroker crank and those Rabbit carbs out and dust them? They look like crap." Wait a minute.. Stroker? That crank was a stroker? So of course.... "What size is that crank?" / "It's standard-ten."  WTF does that mean? "No what stroke is it?" /"Oh it's a 74mm some guy ordered and never paid or picked up."   Really...? Hmmm.....

Part 2 tomorrow

:-) Can`t wait till tomorrow... :-)

awesome read thanks. cant wait till tomorrow

April-June 1990, the Dream Job, or Was It?
Over the next week or so, I spent my free time walking by the glass cabinet with the performance stuff in it. That set of rods, that crank and the flywheel were going to be mine. I had no idea how all this was going to work, but it seemed real easy in my head. Buy this stuff, get my case and heads machined, spend a night putting it together in a night and stick it in the car and be done with it.
I don't remember exactly how much the crank and rods were, but we got a decent discount as employees. I think I got the 74mm DMS crank, the 12lb flywheel and the rods for under $400. We stocked Engle cams, W100 through W125. Being 19 only the biggest would work. Back then I think I paid $45 for the cam. So what was left? I planned on stripping my 1641 down and cannibalize it for the dual relief case and the 044 Magnum heads it was made of. The 1641 ran dual 36DRLA Dellorto's, which I thought for sure would work fine. One thing I really, really wanted was a true competition merged header. In the 3-4 years I had owned my '67, I had run many different exhausts, but never a real merged header. Nobody I knew ran a merged header. Only the baddest rides in the magazines had merged headers. Only the bad boys seemed to not give a crap about losing heat. I wanted that. Plus that long collector poking out from under the apron looked the business. What diameter would I run? Who cares, just get one.
So the build process seemed super simple in my head. It was as if everything would just go by the book, and free time would just be there for the taking. I'd give the parts to Jerry to machine and hot tank, he'd blow them off, and then I'd take boxes of the stuff home (in my Fiat X19) and that night screw it together. Nothing could be more of a fantasy.

I eventually pulled the 1641 out of my car, which stranded the Bug with its ass in the air, on jackstands. I tore the engine down, now seeing really no value in the poor engine any longer. But just a year or so before, I took great care building it, my first VW engine build. I tore through the top end, with concern for only the heads and case. Stripped the bottom end, stacked the heads and wrapped them in a black trash bag, stuffed the case halves in another bag and the next day brought them to work with me. And on that day, nothing else mattered, other than the heads and case getting machined and cleaned. In my mind, by my 10am donut break, it should all be done. Never mind the full schedule the shop had. Or the cases lined up  needing case saver inserts. Or that my sole concern at 19 wasn't a concern to anyone else at the shop at all. Once I got to work, I carefully placed the heads and case by Jerry's mill. ("He'll know what to do, and since they're mine, he'll do an extra careful job, Jerry likes me"). As the morning wore on (and I never heard the mill on), I was making up reasons to walk back to the machine shop and would sigh when I saw my stuff just sitting. Didn't I forget my pen in my car? Yeah probably. I better go check. Case and heads sitting there, same spot. I'm tired of wearing my sunglasses on my head, I'll got put them in my car. Case and heads haven't moved. By lunch time nothing had happened. And Jerry's taking lunch? How in the hell is he going to find time to do all my machine work?
At 3pm stuff started happening.
From the front counter, I could hear Jerry, now pretty upset, in the machine shop: "Who in the F*%K left this g*dam* crap in my f%*cking way? I want to know which sumbitch stacked all this SH%T right in my F**cking way!" Oh crap. Throat swells up, mouth goes dry. This is going to be torture. I hear the manager say "Wasn't me, I'll ask Jim if he put that crap there."
I didn't understand what the big deal was. I needed the stuff machined, so it could be like the big engines in the magazines. Everybody knew big engines needed machine work. And now that I worked at a shop, it should be no big deal. You just got your machine work done. Right?

Problem was-  I had no idea what "machine work" was.

The case I had intended to use was a dual relief with 10mm head studs and 14mm OD inserts (in 1990 I didn't know what any of this meant). Oh and being 19, only one bore size was going to work for me: 94mm.
So once Jerry came back to Earth after his tantrum about my crap in his way, he summoned me to the mill, and asked me "So what in God's name are you wanting me to do to sh*t? Who's garbage is this anyway?!?!"
"It's mine. I'm building a big engine. A 94 by 74. Can you machine it? Now?"
"What are you doing? A 94 by what? With this fu*cking garbage? Huh? What?"
"Yeah remember? I bought that crank? And the rods?" (Didn't the whole world care as much as I did about my engine plans?)
"You're not building ANYTHING with this junk case. Did you even check the line bore? Did you see these godd@m 10mm case savers? Where in the f*ck are you gonna bore this thing? You think you can just jam a godd@m 94 barrel in there?"

I just stood there, staring at the floor. I didn't know what the issue was, but obviously, things weren't going the way I hoped. Aw man, it was mid-week there was a slim chance that the stroker motor would be in my car and running by the looming weekend.

That night, out driving around in the Fiat with Frank, I spilled the beans. I was totally dejected, what seemed so easy in my head had turned into a fricking nightmare now. Working at a VW shop was supposed to make my life easy. No shipping parts, cheap prices and all the advice in the world was supposed to be available in unlimited quantities. But it seemed the only things unlimited was flaring tempers and me looking stupid. After hearing this Frank said "I have a case. Remember? The Hecho En Mexico Case?"

More later.

Below: a picture of Frank and my '67, December 19 1989, on our way to Los Angeles via CA Highway 1. This is south of Big Sur but north of San Simeon, the car was lowered, had the 5-1/2" chrome wheels, copy 356A hubcaps (no emblem) missing its decklid and a stinger exhaust.

Great story.

Wow what a great story! And great memory of you jim, thank's for posting! Those are the storys that make this place soooo special.
....
"It's mine. I'm building a big engine. A 94 by 74. Can you machine it? Now?"
"What are you doing? A 94 by what? With this fu*cking garbage? Huh? What?"
"Yeah remember? I bought that crank? And the rods?" (Didn't the whole world care as much as I did about my engine plans?)
...
That really got me into the day ;D
And now go on and on  ;)

An inspiring story. Makes you realise that we all have our hills to climb. I just thought everybody else had it easy ;) ;D

reminds me of the building of my first 1776 in 1989
nice read, go on!

You made my day, Jim! Thanks! 8)

Tobi

Great story Jim.  Looking forward to the next installment.  :)

I'm jumping the gun timeframe wise, but I can still hear "The Voice" yelling up to the counter from the shop.

"being 19, only the biggest would work."

"In the 3-4 years I had owned my '67, I had run many differrent exhausts."  Not true.  You had torn off and had leaks in many different exhausts. 

Great thread.  Unadulterated love of a car.  Who amongst us can't identify with this story.

"No oil spots on the driveway young man!"

"My dad's a television repairman............he's got the ULTIMATE set of tools!  I can fix it! 

Anybody that earned a nickel there has long term effects from that Voice. I still catch it echoing in my head daily... "JJJJIIIIIMMMMMM... where in the F**K are the keys to this godda#n car?!?!?"

or the misboxed Vanagon headlight switches he crushed in the bench vise to "prove a point" to the WD vendor.  ::)

Or the morning I did the 7500rpm burnout in front of the shop, just before one of the in-house shows and my HP1 lost it's seal. Green Kendall showering most of Cherryland. He didn't talk to me for 8 straight hours that day. Kind of a blessing?  ;D

Great stories as always. Thanks Jim  ;)

More to come. You guys aren't getting off that easy. Stick around for the blood and guts, at least.  ;D

Loving this Jim. I remember having similar thoughts about timescale when I bought my first crank - if a 1600 is better than a 1300, then a 1776 is great, but why not go for a 2007? And if an 82mm crank is the same price as a 78mm, then that's even better still, right? That crank Sat under my bed for another 4 or 5 years! :D

Great thread, thanks for sharing! (:

Remember just biting the bullet and going down to Johnny's Speed and Chrome and buying the 2180 kit in a bunch of boxes and bringing it home around 1980 or so... Only had to call Jim Bangs, Reggie Leslie, Kevin Homar and Mark Christensen once or twice to get it together LMAO -- -- awww those were good times........ Keep the tale coming Jim, I can tell more good stuff is on the way!!!!!

Wow great writing Jim! I had to google what 'riparian'. Nice style.  :)
We made a couple trips down the I5 from Vanc to LA with my beetle in tow during the 80's. Once I had Small Car Specialties install the J tech lowered spindles. Fun times especially when we couldn't figure out how to bleed the brakes and drove the freeways with only front brakes, yikes! The shops were stellar with their service then, and I bet they still are. Keep it coming.

Summer months 1990, Frank Solves the Case
Thanks for comments. I'm glad you guys are enjoying meandering rambling of the good the bad and the very ugly.

So back to the case dilemma and my week and impending weekend being crushed by what I saw at the time as my boss' inability to "cooperate." If I didn't have this 2 liter running in my car this weekend, then it was just going to be another weekend. Work Saturday. Try and find something somewhat legal to do Saturday night that was cheap. More time to look at my car up on stilts in my parent's garage, and more time to re-read article about Rag to Ripper 1800, Galassi's blue Notch, and the article on Berglar.

But my friend Frank mentioned he had a case. I had forgotten about the case he had. Sometime earlier in the year, he heard about some deal on a Claude's 76 crank, where and why now escapes me, but I remember he wanted to build a 94 x 76 motor. All he had at the time was a case, not even a car. One of the cars Frank really admired was also in that Dec '89  Hot VW's it was a green '67 with chrome wheels and nipple caps and some kind of 2.0 liter or bigger motor. I know he dug Berg's car but I remember him going on and on about the green '67 too.
The case was a real sweetheart, especially in context of today, what with seconds, blems, rejects and worn tooling everybody seems to worry about now. This was a AS41 brand new Mexican 8mm stud universal case, fresh from a round trip to Rimco and back. Bored for 94's, stroker clearanced, full-flowed, shuffle-pinned, and still olive green, but twinkling where it had been gone over by Rimco. Secretly I guess Frank had lost steam in his plans to build the stroker, and if I wanted it, the case was mine. Those were the days. A brand new case, not getting auctioned off on the internet. Buddy needs it, there it is. And in 3 years, Frank got his favor back... but that's later. We didn't see monetary value of our stuff, if it came down to a buddy needing it and we weren't using it. It was communal hot rodding at its best.

So I picked up the case from Frank and took it home. I can't believe this, but at 19, after just one engine under my belt I knew to de-burr the sharp corners and chips away in the new case. At my parent's kitchen table. Using a whetstone you'd sharpen a pair of grass shears on. I sat there filing away, for hours, then proceeded to follow up with 400 wet dry. I wish I had pictures on the handwork. I look back at the time I used to take, to do stuff like this, and what I realize is how levels of patience for stuff changes. I had unlimited patience to sit there and basically polish all the webbing etc inside that case, but couldn't be bothered to fix the e-brake that had popped apart a year ago (first gear doubles as a parking brake). Or attach the copper ground strap between the nosecone and the pan. (Why am I constantly replacing throttle cables?). In my mind now it was just a matter of hot-tanking the case and bolting it up with parts inside. Easy.

The next day the case rode in passenger seat of X19 to work with me. Summer mornings in Pleasanton were typically warm and cloudless, but not hot, until 11:00am or so. So targa top stayed in the front trunk. I was flying high, summertime, free bad-ass case riding where a chick should be, targa top stowed, Jane's Addiction live album pouring from the stock hopeless Fiat speakers. Air drumming to "Whores" and living life, on my way to my dream job, gonna get my case cleaned, gonna be running 13's by Sunday this weekend, life was as good as it could get. Mentally I went over and over, the list of stuff that needed to be done. Clean the case, bring home all the bearings, a gasket set ("I know that number... 111198007A, I'm a parts genius"), get my heads bored for 94's, hell- I'll spring for new windage pushrod tubes. Case of non-detergent Kendall. Probably put new cradle mounts in......   Crap... exhaust. I don't have a merged exhaust. And Buggy House didn't stock them at the time. Son of a b-

Thanks for sharing this Jim. I know how long it takes to put all this down on "paper" and it is totally appreciated. Thank you.

"THAT'S ALL YOU NEED!!!" I've driven by said shop every day multiple times for the last 9 years working at their local fire station.  The memories are awesome and Jim the way you're able to put them to words is amazing and couldn't come at a better time.  I've pulled my head out of my @$$ and finally gotten back into the VW scene after about 12-14 years of lurking "The Lounge" and others with no running car.  Keep them coming Jim, it truly is awesome to reminisce.

Love the bit about bad ass rides having merged headers - the first exhaust I ever fitted to my beetle was a 1 5/8" Berg merged. The engine was a 1300 single port...

Cool reading Jim  :D ;D

cool as always!  :)

Mike, good to hear you've hung around. I talked to Geoff a bunch last week and he mentioned you were getting into trouble with these cars again. Made me feel good to hear that. he mentioned you still have the motor and trans from the '60. Cool deal.

I remember one day, towards the end of my career at the shop, Darrell stopped by with Naval and had dropped off a large Canton-Mecca filter screwed to a big filter adapter with AN10 nipples in it, and a rod bolt stretch gauge. While we were bullsh#tting over the counter, Jerry walked up and saw the stuff and just had to walk over... "What in the Christ are you guys gonna try to do with that stuff? Every time you guys get together, another god#m scheme comes up. Why in the f=ck do you think you need that crap, you're not goin' to god#m Indianapolis!!! And is somebody gonna answer line 3, somebody's dyin' on hold. Where the hell is Geoff?" (pen clicking)

I just purchased a '63 sunroof Notchback with a 1914 and 40 Dells that is getting 15x 5.5 and deep 6 heart alloys but will be sitting on the Sprint Stars from the '60 while I figure out the brakes.  I couldn't stand it, let alone drive it, with the randar wheels and sitting in the weeds.  Ironically the guy I bought it from lived right around the corner from Darrell's house.  I bought it for a most of the time driver while I do my $100 '65 "barn find" in a more traditional "Cal Look" fashion, BRM's, 48's, Sepia Brown, "fat biscuit" interior.  

Reading that ran chills down my spine, "DRAG HIM OUT TO THE STREET, DONT LET THAT F$&^*R DIE IN HERE!!!!"  Please keep the memories coming.

Summer months 1990, Punk Rock and the Fiat
"First rule is: The laws of Germany!
Second rule is: Be nice to Mommy!
Third rule is: Don't talk to Commies!
Fourth rule is: Eat kosher salami!"

Part of the early 1990 "anthem" was certainly punctuated, for Frank and I by the tinny buzzsaw of early Ramones albums. The short 3-chord songs were best played (too) loud and just seemed to meld nicely with the lack of responsibility and the abundance of freedom that seemed to be around every corner. We both were making decent teenage incomes and weren't chained to scholastic endeavors, or worse yet, attention-magnet, remora-like girlfriends. The Ramones made music one didn't need to think about. It was loud and annoyed those that needed to be annoyed. Other choice bands during this time were Jane's Addiction (during their musical peak), Stone Roses, Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain, Mudhoney, The Misfits, Bauhaus, Syd Barrett solo stuff, in addition to old Stones' albums, very early Pink Floyd stuff (especially soundtrack from More album, and live Careful with that Axe, Eugene track) and The Doors. But I'd say most of that spring and summer was dominated by a wretched excess of songs like Rockaway Beach, Judy is a Punk, Up the Beach, Three Days and Ted Just Admit it. The then new "Goo" album and Bad Moon Rising album, both from Sonic Youth were in the mix as well.

As mentioned when I last posted, the summer was soaring along, money in my pocket, big engine parts multiplying all around me and I was becoming more and more entrenched in the VW parts business as the days went by. Nineteen years old, and now filled with a sense of purpose and hard-headed determination. In my nineteen year old mind, it was simple, buy the right parts, clean them, and bolt them into my car, and it would be that easy. Bring the revs up, step off the clutch and blast off into the 13-sec inner circle. Frank and I had found boxes of 1970's Hot VW's neatly organized behind the counter of Buggy House, all separated by year. I'd ask Jerry "Can I borrow a couple of these for a night?" To be honest, I doubt if Jerry paid attention if they were the newest issues then out or the old dusty dog-eared ones the shop had been saving since about 1970. I'd bring them home and look for mention of fast street cars. Some of the cars I read about not only ran deep into the 13's but were doing so with 1700, 1776 and 1835cc engines! Every once in a while you'd see some old yellow and grey faded picture of a stripped down street sedan wearing those same BRM wheels like Gary Berg's. A rewiring of my brain began to take place. Things that made up my day, which to the casual observer, were as unrelated as they possibly could be, began to link up in my way of thinking. These old black and white pictures of BRM-shod sedans from 25-30 yr prior, lined up in the summer haze, with starbursts of sunlight bouncing from their paint-jobs seemed to conjure an entire environment in my head. Almost like a movie that had never been filmed (but should have). I didn't know who had once owned or raced these cars, but all of the sudden these guys were a band of outlaw heroes to me. Everybody that was into cars, knew a 13 second ET was serious. Anybody in high school that had spent money at Super Shops or Vic Hubbard claimed that either their car was 13 sec material, or would be soon. And being the dorky kid that drove the underdog VW at school, I wasn't about to be outdone. The V8 crowd would be on notice.... and soon.

But as I mentioned a few days back, I was header-less. And more importantly, I had a stock transaxle in my car, and not a healthy one. The previous 1641 in my car was enough to snap the flange off the nosecone, and burn up a few 200mm clutch discs. In my mind the pending 94 x 74 would have no problem chewing the stock, original trans into a paste of 75/90 and gear teeth. Now what?

Wow, i can literally hear Jerry's voice in my head while reading this.  I wish I had a quarter of the memory for detail you have.  I can't remember most of what i did last year much less 25+ years ago.  I'll say it again, you should have a column in Road and Track.

So, now what? ;D ;D ;D

great writing like always! can't wait for the followup ;)

Summer months of 1990, or more specifically, The Weekend It All Changed

Ok back to summer of 1990,  8)

So when I realized not only was I missing a suitable merged header and mufflers, but also a gearbox which would live, I had to accept none of what I was planning was going to happen in any kind of hurry. Luckily my parents hadn't been on my case about the mess in the garage, with the old engine gutted and spewing oil onto the floor. In addition to the black-green Fiat X19 I had been driving around, I also picked up a 1970 Kombi Bus for $300.00. It was cosmetically not the greatest, with an original wine-red lower and white roof, but it supposedly had a fresh rebuilt in it and mechanically seemed alright. I thought it would be good for camping and hauling parts around in, though the Fiat had worked ok for both conditions as well (yes seriously). A few weeks later, when driving the bus, I noticed the oil pressure light glowing more on than I was comfortable with. I figured, optimistically, that the guy before me probably had 5W30 or something in it, and I'd just drain it and refill with Kendall 40W. But when I drained it, the oil twinkled and pooled in a shimmering metallic blob in the catch pan. Obviously now the Bus needed a motor too. So it would sit while the stroker was attended to for the '67.
I asked at work about what to do about my trans. I got conflicting opinions, of course. Mark, the manager at the time, thought I'd better go full tilt with axles, gussets, etc. Jerry, who seemed to never take anything I did seriously, thought I could get by with a snap ring Super Diff and "some good god#mn mounts, you're not goin to Indy!". In the end, I talked to the guy that did the shop's off road trannys and got his advice. He merely said "I know what you need, no problem kid." (This was Mike Collins, later he'd be the same guy that tried talking me out of running 48IDA's on my street car, but then caved in and sold me his for $400.)
And in a day or two, Mike pulled into the back parking lot, in his yellow Mitsubishi pickup truck, with a swingaxle trans, complete with axles, tubes and boots. He walked up to the counter, quietly approached me and almost in a whisper said "Kid, your tranny's in the back of my truck. Don't let Jerry know it's yours. He's still waiting for me to get his stuff done. Where do you want it?"
I blinked in disbelief. (How could this guy I barely know moved me "up the list", even ahead of Jerry?). "How much do I owe you?"
Mike: "Four hundred bucks. Not now, whenever you can. Don't starve over it." .
Wow. How come that went so easy? Nobody yelling at me. Nobody making me feel dumb. Nobody trying to get rich off a dumb teenager. Only problem was trying to figure out how to get a swingaxle trans home in a Fiat X19....

Oh yeah, Frank to the rescue again, he had a 1973 Ford Courier truck.

So now it came down to the header. What to do? I believe it was this week, on Friday morning, Mark the manager said "You hear about that show tomorrow in So Cal? Cost Mesa fairgrounds? VW Jamboree?"
I replied "yeah I saw something about it in Hot VW's last month, why"
Mark: "Jimmy, take the day off tomorrow, go check it out. You should see one of those Orange County shows. It'll blow that little mind of yours. Go ahead buddy, take tomorrow and head on down..."
I stammered out "You sure that's cool? They have swap meets down there too? Think I can find a header?"
And Mark didn't say anything, he just did his typical big wide grin, squinted and put his shades on. I learned soon what that meant.

And so the following day was The Day. It would be the day my aimless teenage life went from flopping around between dead end girls and dumb ideas, towards a real sense of focus and accepting who I was and was about to become. It would be the day I stopped caring about the trivial and started to give a crap about making the most out of what I could do. I would start noticing detail. I would start listening. I would start to weed through bullsh*t.

The next day I quietly threw a change of clothes into the boot of the Fiat, stuck a wad of cash in my shorts pocket and pointed the Fiat towards Los Angeles.

More soon,

Loving the stories. It makes me think I was born too late and in the wrong part of the world :)

That's the kind of things I'd like to read in a car magazine :) Thanks for sharing!

Holy hell, Jim... this is incredible.

Thanks for sharing your memories. Reading the storys is great!
I think it would make a nice book.  ;)

Love those stories Jim. I'm impatient to read the next chapter :)

Perfect! Can't wait for the next part! 😄


Manche fahren so langsam - die werden nicht geblitzt, sondern gemalt!!!

Thanks again for all the nice comments. This was a slice of time that meant a lot to me.  8)

In fact, the day I am about to discuss, (actually the weekend, as the drive down was Saturday and the show itself was on Sunday) is probably more responsible for me still being into this hobby than anything else.

We'll begin the long, strange trip to Southern California shortly. 

A Searing Day, Headed South on Interstate 5, to Costa Mesa

Going through glovebox of the '67 over the weekend, while looking for more old pictures, I found this, the original map that had been used so many times to find stuff in Southern CA, including my way to Costa Mesa for Jamboree.

My plan, as I headed south on Interstate 680 out of Pleasanton, was to catch CA Highway 1 down in Monterey, and take the coast down as far as I could, then eventually weave and snake my way through greater Los Angeles, and hopefully end up in Orange County sometime later that night. Highway 1 runs exactly along the western edge of North America between basically Carmel CA and San Luis Obispo, CA. From there you hop on US 101 and head inland a bit and drive through the central coast wine country, and then skirt Santa Barbara, meeting up with Highway 1 again near Ventura CA, winding south through Malibu and the snarls of Santa Monica, etc. My plan would avoid Malibu and the crowds near there. Actually south of Ventura, I had no plan. Hence the map.
The drive in the Fiat through San Jose and south to Gilroy was quick and boring. The weather was typical early morning East Bay Area mid summer, clear skies and moderate temps. By the time I got to Gilroy it was nearing 11am and the sun began to penetrate the targa top of the X19. I stopped while heading west on 152 (towards the coast) and stowed the roof panel in the front trunk. As I drov closer to the coast, the sky began to turn to gloom. Fog banks were just beyond the beach and the air took on a definite chill. This wasn't what I wanted. My trip all alone to So Cal was supposed to be sunny and celebratory. This overcast crap was the pits. Hours of headlights on, poking around in fogged in coast highway just spelled boredom and frustration. In Carmel I made a decision. I would change my route, and take CA 152 back inland, all the way back very deep into the armpit of the San Joaquin Valley and catch Interstate 5 south. I was somewhat familiar with 5, only in that if you stayed on it long enough, and your car didn't fry, you'd eventually end up near Disneyland. Which had to be near this VW show...
As I headed east, past the yellowed grassland hills near Mission San Juan Bautista, the weather did, of course, warm to my liking, and beyond. Summiting Pacheco Pass, the Fiat was being buffeted by waves of hot wind from the east. Descending into the bowels of Santa Nella, the heat seemed to double upon itself. I kept one eye on the road, one on the map sprawled out on the passenger seat, and one on the coolant gauge (which was edging to the trouble end of the scale.... a true Fiat trait). In the distance I could see the mirage like image of I5 and the silhouettes of diesel trailer trucks heading north and south. By now it was 1pm. I was running way behind some imaginary schedule. I met I-5 and got on, southbound.
If you traveled I-5 in this area 25 years ago, you'll know that there was little in the way of anything for what seemed like hours. No road signs or exits with any type of means to rescue an overheating Italian junk sports car with 58,000 miles on it. Or a kid with just cash and a change of underwear, but no water or food. As I headed south, I grew silently afraid of the what-if's, what if I run out of gas. What if the car boils over. What if a wheel falls off. What if I get lost. What if there are no merged headers in the swap. To hell with the what if's. I stuck a cassette in the deck and turned it way up. Rolling Stones Hot Rocks, (like a best of) with all the songs that made the band famous. Songs like "Ruby Tuesday", "19th Nervous Breakdown", "Gimme Shelter" came and went, as I thought I was getting closer to Costa Mesa. The lack of road signs did that. As the tape came close to finishing side two ("You Can't Always Get What You Want" {ain't that the god@m truth I thought to myself}), a faded green road sign came into view: Bakersfield 149 miles, and Los Angeles 251 miles. I was pushing 66 miles per hour. You do the math. This was way before the days of Siri, GPS, sat nav or cell phones. I glanced over at the wind-blown road map. I had no idea where I was. It seemed it was about every hour or more, I'd see some kind of sign, but they didn't say much, just "Kamm Ave" or "145 North", never mentioning any city names. Maybe because there were none. There was nothing but heat, and this weird aroma of cattle and hot Fiat. The landscape wasn't reassuring either. To my left was nothing but flat. Ahead of me, flat. To my right, west of me, wrinkled hills of this strange yellow-grey dust crawled by. Huge insects were splattering all over the windshield. It grew hotter and hotter. From trips as a child with my parents, I knew I-5 was a long, straight, boring drive, and that the "halfway marker" between the Bay Area and Los Angeles was a place called "Coalinga." All I remembered about Coalinga was some gas stations and when I was a kid there was a bad earthquake there. So as I pressed on, I kept on the watch for this Coaling place. And the temperature gauge continued to creep in the wrong direction.
Maybe this was a mistake.
By the time I reached the Coalinga exit, I was on side-two on the Stones tape for the second time. And I froze as I remembered something: I was supposed to be somewhere at that time. I had met a girl through the pizza place where I was previously employed. We had gotten to know one another, maybe for a month or so. On the day I was now driving to Orange County (alone), I was supposed to be at a family picnic with her and her mom, etc. Oh crap. Now what? I know, just don't think about it. Just think about your motor-to-be, that header, your Bus and the engine it needs, the sound of merged dual mufflers, practice knowing part numbers, early 200mm pressure plate is 311 141 031.. something. Gasket kit, 111 198 007A... holy crap now look at the temp gauge. I slowed my pace down to about 61 or 62 mph and it began to fall. Next sign was for a place called Avenal, and a prison. Los Angeles was still 190 miles in the hot distance....

More later.

Great story! Brings me back to those trips we did heading south down the I5 from Vancouver. I remember we always freaked each other out with stories about the I5 Killer (who killed 44 people along the route) and played songs from the Pacific Northwest early 90's was quite the era. Here's a taste - I-5 Killers, Vol. 3
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/i5killers3

As Night Falls, on Interstate 5, Orange County Bound (Summer 1990)

I maintained a balance of pace and engine temp, slowly, in a southerly direction. In another hour or so, I came upon the dusty, lonely exit for CA 46, Lost Hills. Unlike this exit in today's terms, in 1990 it was little more than a few gas stations, and a Jack in the Box. I needed fuel and I needed a break. A quick fill up and a large Dr Pepper and I was back headed south. As I got back on the 5 freeway I thought about the weird names all these gritty little towns had. Who settled in a patch of dirt and tumbleweeds and decided to "spruce up" the area with a cheery name like Lost Hills?
Within 15 minutes, the coolant gauge had my attention again. By now it was after 5pm and the valley was being baked. In another half hour, I decided to try something, and exited at Highway 58, Buttonwillow. This was much like the stop at Lost Hills, nothing but flatland, a few fast food places and the smell of heat and diesel. I pulled into one of the truck-stop refilling stations and looked for the water hose (which was free to use in those days, no need to pay). After seeing the pink hose laying across the corner of the lot, I parked the X19 near it and proceeded to soak the radiator, through the small grill under the front bumper. I flooded the entire front fascia of the car for a good 10-15 minutes. A sun-hammered half-bake, with a big brim hat and no shirt approached me and just stared down at me. I ignored him at first, figuring he was gonna ask me for money or a ride. After an awkward minute or so, he growled out "That ain't gonna work." I turned and glared at him. He stood over me, blocking out the piercing sunlight. "Huh?", I asked.
"You worried 'bout Grapevine? You goin to LA?"
"Car's running warm, I'm just trying this to cool it off, but yeah I'm going to LA"
"That ain't gonna work. You got 50 miles before you even get to Grapevine."
And with that he limped off into the weeds.
Well, I had a car and clothes on, so I figured I was the brighter of the two of us, and kept watering the grill, while the car idled. I checked the temp gauge and it had fallen a measurable amount. Mr sunstroke didn't know. I was right, as most 19 years old always are. Or assume that they are. Back on I-5....
And of course, within a song or two from Doors' "Strange Days" the gauge was mocking me too. Needle had to prove me wrong and sunburn guy right. More juggling speed and temperature and more bad smells, and exits off the freeway for nothing. And in the heat haze, off in the distance I could see a faint line of glowing lights, the headlights of northbound cars, on I-5, coming down the Grapevine. Oh man.
As you approach the incline, the 300 previous miles of flatland begins to angle upwards, pretty abruptly. You don't see it at first, but in a small-engine car, you feel it. If you were able to maintain 75mph, soon you'd be struggling at 55mph. And the real climb was still a good couple of miles south. Big diesel trucks all hugged the right shoulder and seemed to be really laboring, like a line of oxen trying to drag plows through wet cement. I brought the gearshift back into 4th, and gave the motor some leverage. Up I went. Foot down hard, now down to third. Amazingly the temp gauge didn't climb. The extra rpm's must have given the car enough leverage or something. I didn't care. The truth of it is, the ambient air grew much cooler, as I was now up around 4000'. Frazier Park and Gorman exits came and went. I knew there'd be a lake on my right sometime soon. It was getting dark now, the sky turning an eggplant skin color. Now able to keep 70mph on the clock no prob. Through some gaps in the mountains south of me I could see the urban glow of Southern CA. It was 8:00pm. Time to find some grub and somewhere to sleep.

Nowhere to Stay in L.A. (Summer 1990)

The cool of night was a welcome change after hours in an X19 with no roof, midsummer in the heat of Central CA. Soon the traffic thickened on I5 and the freeway exits became more worthwhile. Passing Magic Mountain, I saw a sign for In N Out Burger. Having never had one, I decided it would be dinner. The place was packed. While waiting I noticed they sold T shirts, with palm trees, shiny Corvette Stingrays, all crowded around an In N Out restaurant. Well that looked pretty "L A" to me I guess, even though it didn't look very hot-rod VW. I bought one anyway. As it was I was wearing a red Mallory Ignition T shirt, and that wasn't very VW-like either. The burger tasted amazing, much closer to something you'd have your mom make, than anything from Carl's Jr. This long, hot trip was beginning to shape up. Back in the car and back on the road. Before I took off I checked the AAA map, just making sure I5 got me to Costa Mesa. Looked close enough, I'd look for "55" in a few hours. I'd need to find a cheap room somewhere soon.
The next few hours are a blur of streetlights, traffic and being lost. I don't remember where now, 26 years later, but I got off the freeway somewhere in Los Angeles. I remember going in circles, and a street I do remember now is "Flower Street." I also remember seeing nothing as far as a cheap, but trustworthy place to get some winks. Around the blocks and around the clock I went. It was nearing 10pm and this wasn't working. Back on the 5, south. I knew if I could get to the area around Disneyland, I'd find something. I had been a few times as a kid and my parents always had a room.
Difference was, they also had reservations.
In Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Garden Grove, everybody was blinking their "NO VACANCY" signs. Again, this was 1990. No iPhone to log into to dial up the nearest hotel with WiFi and nearby vape bar. Nope, I stopped at a phone booth and started flipping through yellow pages. Waste of time. Back in the car, now heading south on 5 in Santa Ana, then Irvine, then San Juan Capistrano, then things went black. I had passed San Onofre and was deep into Camp Pendleton. I pulled over to navigate by dome light, and discovered I was way past Costa Mesa. In Oceanside, I changed directions on 5, now going north. It was midnight. Back through San Clemente, and San Juan Capistrano. I never saw any Motel 6 signs. Kept going. Somehow I ended up, off the freeway in Laguna Niguel. I was falling asleep, cooked, hungry and dehydrated. I drove around aimlessly until I found a Spanish style lodge, pretty swank looking, with tile roof, and adobe-looking walls. The cars parked outside the place were a few levels above my Fiat. But I parked and asked at the lobby if they had a room. They did, for $70, for a single with in room coffee machine. Cool I wouldn't have to find a 7-11 for coffee the next morning. I asked the clerk how far Costa Mesa was, "Oh not far maybe a half hour. What are your plans there?"
"There's a VW show I am going to at the fairgrounds"
Got my key, clicked the targa top back on the X19, grabbed my change of clothes and junk and was asleep in no time.

I cannot tell you all, in this writing, how unprepared I was to come across the cars I saw firsthand, the next morning. I had no idea how the next day would affect my life for the next quarter century, plus.

We'll take a trip into VW Jamboree, 1990 from my eyes, tomorrow.

i was there in 1990, flying in from Europe with my first wife. i somewhere have a pack of pics i took, maybe i can find them.

Like others said before -this is great reading! Thank you so much!

not only a great taste of cars , but great taste of music as well.

That would be awesome. I've got a few big boxes up in rafters in my garage, full of old VW show pictures, but unfortunately, many of the pictures from this weekend are lost. I have a few of Gary Berg's car and some of cylinder heads that were on display at Fred Simpson's booth, but many others seem to be missing. I had some great ones of Mason's and Dave Rhoads' cars. I would love if you could share your pics here!

In the meantime I'll keep digging too. Thanks  8)

If anybody else has pictures from Jamboree 1990 please post them if you'd like. Thanks !

Keep in mind people with shoe boxes full of old prints negs and slides that you can send them away for digitizing and easily upload them. One of these days I will go thru mine.. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2000199/the-best-and-worst-services-for-digitizing-your-photos.html

I'll start with this clipping from an old Hot VW's as this was basically the line up of cars that weekend.

Hey I know those dudes,  I saw most of them this past weekend.

Great stories and great pics too. I got into vws around 1990 but it was through volksworld rather than attending shows in california. The cars pictured above are the very same cars that drew me in to the hobby. 25 years later I'm still hooked, and the look and vibes of proper cal look has never and will never get old. 8)

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990

The following morning I made full use of that in room coffee. Up the freeway and found my way into Costa Mesa area, and the OC Fairgrounds. It wasn't hard, as there were throngs of VW's of all sorts descending upon the area. Brightly colored Type 2's with polished 911 alloys tend to stand out in traffic. And there was no shortage of them.
The line wasn't long to park or get into the event. I made sure I had my pocket Nikon 35mm and my swap meet cash (which had been eaten up by fast food and the plush room in Laguna). I think I had about $100 left on me. All I wanted to leave with was a sedan merged header. Mufflers would be nice, but I didn't want to get greedy.
As I walked from parking area, I took a picture of the early arriving crowds. Now that I look at this, the picture doesn't really show much going on, does it? Maybe I was there late, but I seem to remember arriving maybe around 8:30am? The sky was still pretty overcast.

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990

First stop I made once I got in was at the WCM booth, as I had recently been given the responsibility of maintaining the WCM line at Buggy House. I think the guy that went back to boot camp was supposed to maintain it, prior to me starting. In any case, I had made new bin boxes and labels for everything from the 111 to the 311 section, we seriously stocked probably 90% of everything in their catalog. Every two weeks, I'd manually count onhand and compare it to what computer thought we had and fax them an order. Sometimes I'd talk to some guy named Steve, so I thought I'd ask if he was working and introduce myself. Sure enough, the guy was there and we talked shop for 5 minutes, probably less, since I had no idea what I was talking about, and was scared to death to be found out. The "I'm from out of town and need to get back on the road" would get me out of a conversation quickly, before I looked like a moron. Next stop was Fred Simpson's booth, where he had all kinds of neat cylinder heads on display. I really liked the heads that only had one half that was done up, the other half was still stock, to emphasize the amount of work that went into making these heads. I think they were called V5, V6 etc. There were also HO and Super Flow heads, with huge valves, ports and all kinds of softly shaped shiny ports and chambers. I couldn't resist sticking my finger in some holes. I remember thinking the heads I had slated for my 94 x 74 looked like junk at the bottom of the ocean compared to this high caliber stuff. I was careful not to say much, as I could really expose how stupid I was and this guy Fred was being super cool. He even said he knew my boss Jerry from sandrailing. Wow small world.

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990

After thanking Fred and grabbing a card, I came upon the Neuspeed booth they had a brand new Corrado G60 done up with all the hip water cooled stuff. I never got into this stuff, but we sold all the Neuspeed springs and short shifters and 5th gear conversions for the early GTI's so I thought I better act interested.

I also saw lots of turbo cars, which we only had one of in Northern CA. Here's a few

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990, Merged Header and Gary Berg's '67 Up Close

I also found the GBE booth, where Dee and another lady were selling T shirts, sweatshirts, decals etc. The other lady may have been Kathie, but I can't say for sure. In any case, I bought a bright yellow GBE T shirt that I had for years. I wore it all the time probably for the next 5 years until I ruined it. I remember Jerry used to kid me and say "I bet that kid sleeps in that damn shirt."

With all the stops and chit chatting I had almost forgotten about finding an exhaust. But, as I walked around wide-eyed and overwhelmed, I found a guy with a swap spot and a bunch of merged headers all tangled up and stacked up. I started talking to the guy, about "safe topics" so as not to look like an idiot, and asked about some of the headers he was selling. Off to one side of his swap spot, he had a brand new Phoenix 1-5/8" merged system, with dual cans bolted to it, and except for the chromed tailpipes, the whole thing was painted glossy navy blue. Man did it look good. Except he wanted $150 for it, and I was now down to under $100. But being a nice guy, he asked me "What are you putting it on?" So I explained the pile of parts I had and he said "You know, I have this Four Tuned inch and a half, with a stinger, but no mufflers. How's $25?" (!!) It was a nice, almost new, full merged competition setup, long collector, small flange with "4T" in weld bead on each side of the merge. I was all over it. And I learned the guy selling it....    it was my salesman at Scat Enterprises at the time, Pat. (BH stocked lots of Scat back then too, all the seats, adapter rails, shifter, their ratio rockers, gland nuts, etc). So that made the deal even sweeter.

But now the real reason I drove all day and night the day before, contending with crop duster spray, 105F heat, and sunburn. I was hoping Gary Berg's car would be there. I kept walking around, now carrying a merged header with a stinger bolted to it, trying not to trip people, or scratch show cars. I saw a lot of flashes of metallic blue, but then as I got close the car would be a Super Beetle, or it would have white 8 spokes. Or it was a Baja. But then I remember this, very well:
I was walking south, near some big assembly halls, and through a crowd of people, I saw the glint of light off a BRM wheel and a ray of very bright blue metallic.
His car was here. I walked up and there was the car I had read about maybe 100-200 times in the last 8-9 months. It was below a blue tent, which was tied down to 4 black lightened flywheels. The doors, front hood and engine lid were all open. I set my header down near the wall behind where the car was parked. The pictures I had seen in Hot VW's really, didn't capture this car. Everything was perfect. Again, you have to remember, I was into VW's for maybe 3 years or so. My car was kind of a rag tag mess, new paint, but old bumpers, run of the mill chrome wheels and an engine which was still just a daydream. This car had mile deep, perfect blue paint, a very simple interior, sat just right, and it had BRM wheels (there were no repop's then, so unless you owned them, you NEVER saw them). And then I started to look over the engine and its detail. Honestly, I had no real idea what I was looking at. But I appreciated that it looked to me like real VW parts were used where they'd work. I came from a shop where we sold cheap, flimsy chrome engine tin and dumb chrome fan shrouds that forced you to get rid of the oil cooler. We sold transparent blue caps for 009's and plastic quick shift kits. This car had all original VW engine tin, all in gloss black. It wore all the original rubber air seals, like the pictures of engines in the Bentley repair books. It had fresh air heaters, but they fed into a big piped header. Also under the car was an oil sump that looked as big as another case. And everything was dirt free. Every nut, wire, brake hose, fuel line, underside of fenders, everything was surgically clean.
I only have a few pics left from that day, over the years I've lost many. But here's what I have

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990, DKP III Cars, BRM's, Slicks and Nitrous

But it wasn't just Berg's car. Lined up next to his car was a row of cars like I hadn't seen before. These cars, lined up, as complete under the radar, outcasts, really did more for me in a few hours than I can really say, write, whatever. I'm not embellishing. It was real powerful. Like I had said, I was kind of lost in the hobby, to some extent. The cars and guys that had them, for the most part, in my hometown, were lame. None of them were fast and to me they looked dumb. I never got why these guys I knew of were even into VW's if they were only going to make them look dumb, but not work to make them fast. To me, the ultimate was something that looked tame and slow, but would drop kick any of the local V8 guys into the next county. Now in front of me were a whole row of cars, that in the context of the era, looked very, very unassuming. None of them were the typical for the time. Some even had stock seats, stock side moldings, and Berg's car and another black car had full bumpers, like only the vintage nerds still ran! There was a dark maroon '67, with polished BRM's and just euroblade bumpers, and no moldings. It had Kadrons, so it didn't strike me as a serious performance car. There was a squeakly clean pearl white oval window, again with BRM's (but grey spokes), and what looked like a huge engine. It had the same 48 carbs as Berg's car. OK it must be fast. There was an unbelievably simple black oval window, with BRM's as well. It had a motor like Bergs, and the white oval, all black tin, and 48IDAs (How did these guys get those carbs to run right? My 36 DRLAs were a big pain in the ass!). There was a super clean salmon-red ragtop with BRMs and another nice looking motor, but it had these short, smaller carbs, with air filters. Most of these cars ran weird rube-Goldberg linkage that I hadn't seen before. Then there was a bright green sedan, with BRM's. For some reason, this car stood out. It wore no bumpers, no moldings and it didn't have a black engine. All of the cooling tin was painted the same cool green as the rest of the car. It had Weber 48's and it looked like it had very few wires in the engine compartment. It just looked simple. I assumed because it was so simple, this car was just a show car (in a few months' time I'd learn I was wrong, in person). And then there was the real misfit. A black ragtop sedan, with its full bumpers, side moldings, stock dash, and stock interior (at least the front half). But the same car had BRM's, treaded drag slicks on the rear, a cage inside, as well as a blue nitrous tank. Under the RH running board was a huge 3" pipe. At the back of the car, a 3" pipe came off the merged header and made a U turn towards the 1&2 valve cover under the car. I peeked under the car and there was a big sump like Berg's, and a rowdy looking little muffler tied into that 3" pipe. Then engine bay was stuffed with 48 Webers and a big funny looking distributor. The bottom pulley was different than everybody else's too. Obviously this car was meant to go fast, but overall, aside from the rear tires, and that pipe, most would never know. But to me it looked like the 65 year old lady that had owned this car from new had been mugged and had her car taken away by some nutjob. I loved it.

I found this online today on YouTube. Unfortunately, it doesn't have hardly any footage of the California Look cars present that day, but it gives you an account of the trends in vogue at this show. Yes this is the same show I was at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS38Ypsr4c

Great story Jim... really well written



I wonder if this is the Laguna Hills Lodge? It matches the description. It's about 3 miles from me. on El Toro Rd.

I just want to say I have really enjoyed reading this thread and remembering when I was young and stupid. I got into VW's in 1981 and NO-ONE in my north central Texas high school was into VWs but I was and and I bought every dune buggie and bug magazine I could afford. These cars documented in this thread were HUGE in cultivating my VW ethos. I did really dumb things to my first bug trying to be like the Cal Look guys on a super tight budget! LOL , thanks for the walk down memory lane.

Anyhow Thanks for this and please keep this thread going!

BB

Thank you again for the stories and pictures Jim!

nice story, it is really great fun to read it!

Ah the september 1990 issue of Hot vws, was the first Hot vws I bought.
Already knew the californian look from Colin Burnham book, but the sep 1990 issue pulled me over.
I wanted a Cal look beetle, nothing else.

Cool reading Jim

It's so much fun to see this through another's eyes. I'd bought the OG Feb '75 Cal Look issue just after getting married. We owned a 67 sedan and I was hooked without any way to support the dream.  Wife wouldn't drive a stick and sadly it had to go as there was no room for toys or babies at that time. Now there's an 1835 on the stand waiting. The '67 vert is on jackstands awaiting brakes and suspension and a freeway flier. Yes it's a hood ride but I can dream for a bit yet.
Thanks for the stories Jim! And now back to our regular day dreams.

Please keep telling the story Jim, it's powerful stuff.

My guess is we're roughly about the same age from the timelines, so I can relate, it seems you had a lot of fun in the late 80's and early 90's doing what you loved.

 best regards,

Andrew

I am happy you guys are enjoying these old times too. When I think about this period, it reminds me of how enthused you can be when you're young and before adulthood takes hold of you, and forces you to straighten up.

There's still 1991-94 to cover, so more to come. I do actually get the big engine running, and running better than I expected. All kinds of road trips, nighttime street races, broken parts, being held at gunpoint by cops in South Los Ang, and learning to make 48's work (sort of). It's all part of the upcoming stuff.

Jim

Held at gunpoint, eh? The lounge awaits with bated breath... :o

Great stuff Jim! Thanks brother!

VW Jamboree, Costa Mesa CA, Summer 1990, Berg Merged-Heater Header Mistake

Sorry I forgot to mention in that last post with pics of DKP cars, those are pictures Glenn Gaskey took. The only pics I still have of that lineup, are of GB's car.

Back to that day, so I ended up talking to a guy that was probably a few years older than me, with red, wild curly hair, and a backwards baseball cap. The other black sedan with BRM's was his, if I recall. It had what looked like a serious motor, topped by 48's, a Berg breather can on the generator stand, and a big exhaust. This is one car I wish I still had pictures of. I don't know what ever happened to this black car, I never saw it again. I understand the guy I was talking to worked at GBE at the time and his name was Brody Hoyt. In any case, he was cool to talk too, and I told him about the engine I was hopefully going to build pretty soon, pointed out my merged header, told him about the heads I had, and the Engle 125. Fortunately, in talking to this guy, it sounded like my plan made sense. But... after asking him about some of the cars that were lined up in front of us, and their engines, mine sounded awfully plain vanilla. He did mention the 125 Engle was a great cam for a fast street car, and my car should run hard once I was done. But to hear "that car's running an FK89, that car runs's 12.40's, there's another guy that didn't make it that runs FK87 in his car....", wow, I thought I was pushing the envelope. These guys had blown right through the envelope, and seemed to running drag-race only parts, on the street! How can they do that? The ads in the magazines clearly say "Drag Race Use Only." It was clear to me that these guys had figured out how to get around the "rules", and walk softly, all the while, carrying a big stick. I asked how they all managed to run such big Webers, and make them idle, respond, etc. He answered it was all in how the motors were set up to work with them.
I strolled around the lineup a few more times, and snapped a few (now lost) pictures.
I had a few bucks left, so I thought it'd be smart to cruise the indoor swap meet spots. After passing a few spots that were either selling unremarkable parts, or stuff that I wasn't smart enough to recognize (most of them), I came across a couple of guys and a spot full of pretty radical heads. A bunch of VW dual port heads that had been welded all over, and had huge egg-shaped intake ports, and very organic looking chambers. The fins even had weld bead across them. There was another set of Super Flow heads too, with some kind of tube in the rocker area with an aircraft fitting on it. I asked what it was, the man there said it was an oil spray bar for the rockers, etc. At the time I had no idea what that meant. But again, the guy was cool. He handed me a wrinkled business card, which read "JEFF'S VW SPEED", yep it was a man that was later to become a real friend of mine, Jeff Denham.
A few spots down, I spotted a big merged header, no mufflers, bolted to VW heater boxes. The guy also had a bunch of stuff in Gene Berg skin packages, like oil pump covers, gland nuts, a set of VW rods, etc. I inquired about the merged with heater boxes, which I thought was the holy grail. I don't remember what size it was, but I asked what he wanted for the system. Now this fully shows how stupid I was.... I THOUGHT I heard the guy say "Fifty bucks." I still am incredibly embarrassed that I did this, but I asked him "Would you take forty?" The guy just looked at me and said "What did you think I said?" Man I felt stupid, I felt like I was going to choke, turn beet red, etc. I said I was sorry and walked away. With that, it seemed like it would be a good time to take off. It was now getting close to noon, and I had 6-7 hours in front of me, back in the Fiat, on my way back to the Bay Area.
I remember walking back to the BRM car lineup, and just taking one last look. The overcast had kind of burned off, and the cars were now looking outstanding in the mid day sun. All around were suicide doors, murals, way-out paint schemes and colors, yet here were these almost stock looking cars, that had very few observers, that would change the VW world in a few years. I turned to walk back to the parking lot, and told myself, going forward, I knew where I was going to fit in. I knew how I'd find my career. I knew I'd learn these cars, the parts, I'd learn how to listen, I'd learn how the little things would make a big difference. All of the sudden it was as if my brain got some kind of message from the future, saying loud and clear "keep doing this, keep figuring this stuff out, keep trying and learning, it's all going to make sense someday."

Summer 1990, Back At Work, and the White '67 Sedan with 2276 Super Flow motor

Once I got back to the Bay Area, the focus on getting the big engine in my car pretty much edged out anything else. That week, I had all the internals dropped off at Ashland Grinding, just a few minutes from BH, to get balanced. The header I found at the OC show, was bead-blasted and painted with high temp VHT grey (which I hand rubbed with a cloth to get a gloss sheen out of). I ordered a new set of dual quiet cans from Phoenix too. I started buying all the ancillary stuff, like a full flow filter housing, Mesa cooler, new transaxle mounts, and a set of VDO cockpit gauges. In my head, next time I drove to Southern CA it was going to be in my '67, no matter what time of the year. The next few weeks, I spent time bolting the new gearbox in, painting stuff, mounting oil system, making AN hoses, and eventually building the short block. Here's a picture of it, before I took the CB pump out and replaced it with a Melling, a Berg cover and drilled and tapped the case with the lower end together, using rags and lots of high pressure air. I got as far as getting the short block together, never considering that with a 74mm crank, I'd have issues with pistons nosing out of top of cylinders. So, between having around +0.100" of piston proud of cylinders, and still waiting on Jerry to do a valve job and bore my 044's, I was once again at a standstill.
While at the shop, working the counter one day, a regular was at the other end of the counter, talking to Big Mark about Weber jets. This guy drove a stock height, white '67 with full US bumpers and chrome 5.5" wheels. Inside it had Scat Procar seats and some gauges. Rear tire width and the merged collector told me something was up with this guy's car. I was getting some wholesale order parts together to deliver down the street, when Mark asked "Hey Jimmy, wanna go for a ride in Roger's '67?" (Roger was the '67's owner, a huge guy, probably 6'5 and built like Mt Everest, who worked as an elevator repairman). "Why don't you have him take you down the street to run those parts?"
Something was up.
"Yeah OK." I said.
We walked out to his car, me with a To#¤ta 22R valve cover gasket and thermostat, Roger with a small paper bag with jets in it. As I walked to his car, I caught a glance under the rear of the car, at the valve covers. They looked like meat loaf pans and said -UPER FL- from what I could see.
We got in the car, and I strapped in, as did Roger. He flipped a toggle switch and a fuel pump began to growl down by my toes somewhere. Then he turned the key.
The engine cranked a few times, and then caught. It was unlike the 1641 that was in my car a few months ago. When this motor caught it was like a big hand grabbed the entire car and gave it a shake. Where my car sounded raspy and tinny, this car sounded like the engine was trying to escape from the car, very deep, and angry. He blipped the throttle a few times and the induction noise was very obvious. He engaged first, brought the revs way way up and broke it loose, as he made a hybrid U-turn/burnout all the way across Mission Blvd, in a big cloud of tire smoke and intake roar. He was holding the stock steering wheel at 6 o clock with his finger tips, correcting the car, as we slid sideways, left then right, through second gear. Once the car straightened out, the power really came on and I was thrown back and the nose of the car went high and light. Tach flashed 7500, and into 3rd now, nose still high, probably now 75mph down Mission Blvd, accelerating like a psychopath. I was laughing so hard and couldn't believe the rush this car was, as it accelerated without limits. In a few blocks, we came upon an intersection at Grove Way and a red light. Roger slowed and stopped I was literally out of breath. I had been in one fast VW before, a few years prior, but this was a whole different deal. This car was dangerous and violent.
We dropped the order off and Roger took it easy going back to the shop to drop me off. I thanked him a few times for the ride, which really, was so much more than a ride. I walked into the shop and Mark was standing there, with his signature grin and asked me "Well? How was that?"
To be honest, that ride ruined me.
I asked about what engine was in his car and here's what I was told:

German fuel injection, filled-back case from very late model convertible
SPG 82mm crank done by Jim Wellington at Rennsport Werke in Santa Clara
94mm pistons
ARPM Super Flow heads, ported by Jimmy Hannan
Engle 125 with 1.25 rockers
48IDF Webers

The story was, Buggy House's engine guy, Rob, had the motor for himself, made out of parts he had collected, needed cash and sold it to Roger. In the context of my 1641, this engine seemed a million times bigger, faster etc. To me it was a big deal when I went from 1500cc to 1641cc in 1987. And my new motor was going to be 2054, but this guy Roger went clear to an 82mm crank, with 94mm pistons. I didn't even know what engine cc that equated to, I had to look it up in the Bugpack catalog, where you'd cross Bore Size with Stroke Size. Well Roger's motor was way at the lower right hand extreme corner of the chart: 2276.
In 2016, it's very common for every hot rodded car you hear about to have at least a 2276, but in 1990, in the Bay Area, this was unheard of. The way the car pawed the air as this guy stomped the throttle was unheard of. The sound it made, even just at idle, made goose bumps on my arms.

Between the line up of cars at The Jamboree and this 10 minute ride in the roller-crank car, I was completely condemned. My on-again, off-again junior college career was over. My interest in patching up things with the girl from before, done. If I was awake, I'd be doing something involving VW's. That was it.

This has been a good read, thank you.  It may have even inspired me to get off my ass and start working on my own 67.  Again, thanks and keep them coming.

Demian

Jim,

Always enjoy reading your stories of the good ole days at BH and the Mission Blvd test track!

Popper

Summer 1990 Drags On, Machine Guns at the Dragstrip in Famoso, CA

Next stop on the 1990 VW-memory train takes us to farmlands just north of Bakersfield, CA for the Goodguys show and drags held at Famoso in the very late summer of that year. This year my buddy Frank rode with me, from Bay Area down I-5 in my X/19. We left sometime Saturday early evening, and made the long drive down to Highway 46 Lost Hills, and got a few hours shut-eye. The next morning we emerged from the luxuries of Motel 6 into a blindingly bright starkness that made up the southwestern plains of the Central Valley. Those of you from far-away places that have never visited California, should understand what a lot of our state looks like. Yes we have the picturesque beaches with waves crashing and the palm trees and sunsets, but I'd guess greater acreage here is made up of flat, dust, hot and field-rats. Which is exactly what awaited us, not much more, other than the smells of insecticide, fertilizer and cows.
The Famoso track was about 45 min due east from Lost Hills, a straight shot on Highway 46. Again, I don't have many pictures still around from this day either, in 26 years since then most of them are lost. I had a very cool picture of Bill Schwimmer's 1776 with 42 Webers on it from this day, but can't find it now. This was Frank's first time seeing Bill's car, and a car running BRM's. I seem to remember Bill's as the only "DKP" car present at the Bakersfield show. Frank was pretty hip on Bill's car, we probably spent at least an hour circling it like turkey vultures, pointing out to each other all the trick details that made it stand out to us. Obviously the wheels, but also the Thing fan housing, the V-8 looking turbo muffler attached to the merged header (way before this was de rigueur on modified VW's around the world), the white Fram HP1 filter bolted to the big bar running under the motor with aircraft looking hoses, the Berg linkage, the bumper spring bars. What was so cool is how subtle it all was, but at the same time, making such a statement. I remember Bill kind of eyeing us, maybe worried we were going to unscrew parts from his car  ;D, but Frank introduced himself and asked a few questions about the car, hopefully proving we were perfectly innocent idiot kids that just really dug the car. We did see a very sharp set of Skat Trak IDA manifolds on the floor behind the driver's seat. A sign of things to come, for sure- as I'd see in about a year.
We also ended up talking to a guy that was running his car at the drags, a '68 I seem to remember, I think it ran 8-spokes of some kind. What I do remember was his fan shroud, another Thing (181) version but was painted red and had hot-rod flames on it. A conversation starter. We asked about the engine, it was under 1700 cc can't remember if it was 1641 or 1679 but I remember the guy telling us it was built most with Gene Berg stuff (we questioned the 87's pistons I think), I know he said it had a Berg 69 crank, Engle 110, the rest is foggy now. But I remember also it was running respectable ET's like high 14's.
We strolled the swap spots next. I was on the lookout for US-style bumpers for my '67 (my car was currently wearing European blades while up on jackstands at home. Part of the transformation to go with the new motor and trans was to put stock bumpers back on it). I ended up finding a very nice reproduction bumper, with uprights and over-riders for $30, but then remembered we came down in an X/19 Fiat. Real smart. Maybe 10-15 min later we were walking by a swap spot with the usual blue tarp in the dirt, and the seller had some expensive looking stuff on it. We had no money left and again, didn't know what most of it was. What happened next will haunt me for years to come.
Some guy walked up, picked up a few things and then picked up a magneto. He then darted and ran. The seller immediately pulled an Uzi machine gun out and went after the guy. Frank looked at me, and even though he had sunglasses on, I could she his eyes said "Let's get the hell out of here"- which we did. We hustled to the Fiat, pulled the targa top off, dropped it in the front trunk, and propped the bumper up in the passenger floorwell and overhanging the targa bar and left in a cloud of Bakersfield dust.
Once we reached the intersection of Hwy 46 and I-5 I mentioned to Frank I was sick of the heat and dirt and wondered if he minded if we continued west on 46 to US-101, which was probably 65 miles west, closer to the CA coast (and all those images of swaying palm trees, ocean waves, silhouettes of girls in the sunset... right?). He didn't care. Right on, westward we head.
The landscape didn't change as we headed west. It got worse and weird. All signs of life were now gone, and it got flatter, dustier and hotter. In place of cattle, the landscape became dominated with bobbing oil-pumping derricks, literally thousands of them. No people of signs of human life. No tractors, fences, animals, nothing. Just these giant alien looking machines, all going up and down in almost perfect rhythm. The sun was getting low in the sky so the shadows of the machinery were long and made the scene even more bizarre. in the distance we could see a single building with signage that looked like a truck stop. Wonder if oil derricks run the place?
We stopped for orange sodas and fuel. Outside the store a big sign displayed a rendition of James Dean's face and declared this spot to be "The Last Place James Dean Was Seen Alive." Another smaller sign pointed west and said "Site of James Dean's death 28 miles". As if the megatropolis of oil derricks in this desert wasn't freaky enough. Of course we had to check this out.
This was before either of us knew about the ill-fated ride Dean took from Hollywood, en route to Salinas, CA and the accident. We had no idea this all happened in a Porsche 550 Spyder. We knew this guy had been in old movies way before our time. That was it.

Thanks again! I'm so enjoying this!  :)

Autumn 1990, A Star is Born

All through September, efforts were made to get the engine together and in the car. The guy that built the engines at Buggy House, Rob, helped me a bunch. He sent my 044 Magnums next door to Hannan's Machine for Jimmy over there to port the exhausts and do a valve job. When they came back, the exhaust ports were opened way up and now 'D' shaped. Rob showed me how to use valve lapping compound to check the seat margin on the back side of the valves, and how to grind the valve keepers so they wouldn't meet in the middle. He had Jerry's friend, Tom Palmer, make me a set of spacers to go between 94 cylinders and the case, to make up for using A pistons with the 74 crank. He helped me set end-play. Once the heads were on, he took over setting up valvetrain geometry, which I was completely lost with. He also made a suggestion to ditch the Claude's "In n Out" oil pump (as seen in earlier picture), as he said the passageways in that cover were too small, especially by the time I had screwed Earl's adapter fittings into it to use AN-8 hose. I was horrified to think the engine was now going to have to come all the way apart so it could be drilled and tapped for full flow return fitting. But Rob said nope, we can do it with engine like it is. He rigged up compressed air into oil pressure switch hole and rags in oil pump cavity and drilled the galley and tapped it. The rear bypass was out too. He made a plug for a new Melling pump and I was in business. We used to stock these trick 90 deg AN-8 elbows to use with parker push-lok hose, but since I was running Earl's aircraft hose, we modified it for the AN fitting.
I also painted some good used OEM cylinder cover semi gloss black, and my 1641's 36hp style shroud was done in tool cabinet grey. Instead of running the 36DRLA's, Big Mark convinced me to buy a new set of Weber 44IDF's ($375 cost back then, new). I'd plan on selling the Dellortos later to make up the outlay on the Webers.
By mid October, a very hot Sunday, the engine was in the car. Around noon I had finished wiring it, plumbing it, and burping the oil system. It had new W6DC Bosch plugs in it, Kendall non detergent 30W poured in it and carbs were spraying fuel. By all accounts, it was ready to fire up. It did, with just a few cranks. I knew to bring the idle up to 2500 and wait. It never gets any easier, even 26 years later, to fire up a brand new motor and sit there while it roars away at 2500, all the while watching for oil leaks, watching oil pressure gauge/light, listening for loose parts, and praying it all goes well. On this day I was dumb, and thought it would be cool to break the cam in with an open stinger on the car. It did sound good though, very sharp, very angry. After the 20 minutes of cam break in, I shut it off and assessed things. No leaks. No smoke. I let it cool completely and while doing so, removed the stinger, bolted on the new quiet packs, and changed the oil. Then adjusted the valves. The oil came out looking new and nothing looked wrong in the rockers. Man I was ecstatic. By now it was late in the day. I still hadn't driven it!

Here are pics from that day. The black and white one is my neighbor (and also owner of BH's son) Chris, he had stopped by when he heard all the noise from up the street. The dog was my basset hound that always hung out with me. The pink shoes are my sister's.

These are out of sequence, I'm sorry. I found a few more pics from the day I drove to VW Jamboree.

Some pictures from this era at Buggy House. The guy in the shades is Frank. You can see all the stuff that time-stamps this picture in the background. Other guy on the phone was a kid our age that worked there part-time, Javier, a great guy that we had tons of fun with.

Thanks for the memories Jim, 26 years ago, thats a long time. I had forgot where I bought the manifolds, but I now remember. They were nos, you could still buy the good stuff if you looked around. They are still on the car. Keep it coming, thanks again, Bill

Having been that guy in the 80's at BH, i truly relate to you story. My time line was a little more in the 70's but down the same road.
Thank's for sharing and i'm glad to be still part of it.

Yeah, a few years before I ended up there, you were the "go-to" guy for all the VW kids at Amador HS. I had heard about you even before I had my car. The guys in my sophomore drafting class that sat across from me had Bugs, they were seniors I think. One guy had a maroon '69 with gold 8-spokes and a 1776 with S/E heads and 45mm Dellortos, the other guy worked for Randy where you are now! He had the yellow '77 standard Bug with yellow 8-spokes and Fuldas, Dan Jackson, and he had the hot rodded 1776, with fuel injection, I think he said he ran injectors from Datsun and some other throttle body, the motor had CB Eagle cam, I remember him always talking about advancing the cam timing with the gear. It was supposedly like a VZ25. I never rode in that car but I saw him cook the tires off in it. Pretty cool for a kid in high school.

I bought my chrome adjustable beam from you in 1987, Tony.  ::)

This was more significant than you think, Jim.  That was the first car to ever have a big V8 muffler on it.

Really enjoying both words and pictures !

there were a few others before me, Mark V. , Steve Wilkerson & a few others from DKK, but it was still pretty uncommon.

Fun reading! Realise that our paths must have crossed at shows back in the late 1980s/1990-ish as I was in the USA three times a year back then, going to a variety of events along the way including Jamboree, the Goodguys VWevents and a whole bunch of PRA and other non-PRA drag races. Buying my Wilwood brakes from SCS, served by this tall skinny guy in glasses who I later came to know and love as Mark H. Seeing the rats running around the back warehouse area at Johnny's Speed & Chrome on Beach... Seeing Bill's car at a cruise night at the burger place on the corner of Beach and Orangethorpe way before I ever met Bill. Happy days - when Pomona swap meet was really good, too.

Hi Bruce, I remember Greg Brinton's car, when it had the 1914 in it, had same style. Greg was my contact at Rimco way back then, and when calling down there, must have been 1991 (?) I asked him about it, he told me some guy named "Tiger at A1" made them.

Of all the cool "one off" mufflers I've seen over the years, it was Dave Mason's side exit that I liked the best. It looked all-business, and sounded like Mt Vesuvius going off. I'm surprised his muffler style didn't take off like the V8-turbo/magna-mega flow style did.

Thanks Keith. We probably did cross tracks somewhere. Back then I tried to make it down to every Southern CA VW event I could. The following summer, 1991, I was out with a girl, having dinner and a movie, the night before Jamboree. When the movie was over and I was taking her home, she asked what I was doing after. "Driving to L A" was my answer. She ended up just coming with me. Fiat again.

We used to have a bunch o fun at Pomona, I am thinking I taught Keith the concept of buying & selling stuff out there. It was pre internet so there were plenty of deals out there. I remember Mark H. had upset one of the vendors out there and I had to do the deal for him. It was for a set of gasburners, I am pretty sure it was $180 for the 4. Great times.

Pre-internet is the key. I would have never got the Fourtuned header discussed above as cheap as I did after the internet.
Sort of off topic, but in mid-nineties, when internet was barely used by car-hobby people, two similar situations happened over the counter at Buggy House:

1. Guy comes in one day and ask if anybody knows about Weber carbs. I was asked to talk to the guy. He said he was cleaning out his garage and found some Bug Webers and wanted to know if we'd buy them. I told him Webers were dated now, nobody really ran them anymore, but bring them by and we'd look at them to cannibalize for parts. Guy comes back in an hour with a pair of 48's, and asks me If I'd give him $100.00 for the pair. I tried to talk him down to $75 but paid him the $100.
2. few weeks later another guy comes in with a "VW distributor" and wants to know if somebody will trade him some H4 conversion 7" lights. The "distributor" was a Vertex mag. I traded him, but turns out the mag didn't fire. I forget what I ever did with it.

That stuff still happens!
When I was still doing upholstery a guy came in with a 69-70 convertible. All stock but with an original EMPI Eliminator shifter on it. I traded him straight up for a stock shifter :)
My buddy has a bunch of those stories. People just drop valuable stuff off at his shop every now and then. Or sell it for pennies on the dollar. It's the only perk that makes me wish I owned a VW shop :D

Jim that first foto...
I am ashamed to say it but I always kinda liked those colorfull upholstery doorpanels that where also in ads in hot vws/vw trends...  :-[ ;D
 :D :D

Great stories Jim, keep them coming, yep working in a shop was great for walk ins with stuff for sale. I had a German guy who used to pop in every3 or 4 months with only NOS Bosch 1950's head lamp lenses for sale, he only ever came in with 10 or so of them and they were approx $3.00ea. ;D I ended up getting 50 or so of them off him in the end.

Going to Pomona with you and Mark was a blast. Remember the four IDAs on a V8 manifold we bought together? We both had 'customers' after a pair of IDAs, so that more than covered the cost – then you sold the manifold, too. To Oggy, I think? I bought a perfect EMPI GT wheel for $180, got accosted by a guy a few minutes after who offered me $250. Sold it to him for $300. When I hummed and ha'd about selling it, Bill said 'How else you going to make that money in such a short space of time?' He was right. Bill getting bored while Mark and I walked all round the cars for sale area, drooling over Vista Cruisers and the like. Bill getting bored, looking at the sky and saying 'We should go - it's going to rain soon.' I look up and all I can see is a faint smudge of white, no bigger than a handkerchief, in the midst of a perfect California blue sky. There used to be such great pickings there – some dubious ones, too. Seeing a group of young guys selling high-dollar race parts for next to nothing made you suspicious as to their origins. But, damn, I miss it. EBay has a lot to answer for...

Jim, remember the 44 idf's with type 4 manifolds i bought for I think $200 at the Parstheaven show and swap meet around 1993-4?  Ended up finding a 914 owner on one of the early message boards shortly after who had a set of 48 IDA's and said they were too big for his motor.  He traded them straight across for the IDF's, I just had to pay the shipping.  ;D

That happened to me this summer too. I traded some obnoxious guy an EMPI Hurst knock off shifter for a mint Eliminator. He was acting like he ripped me off. Ha ha.

Autumn 1990, The Neighbor From Hell

By sundown that Sunday, when the 2054cc first barked to life, I had let the engine run to break in cam, changed oil, re-adjust valves, and bolted the new dual quiet packs on. Once the garage was somewhat picked up I lowered the car down, and did my best to set the ignition total advance to 10' BTDC with a test light, and the idle on the new Weber 44 IDF's. Getting them synchronized was really nothing, just unscrewing the drop link rods from the crossbar and making both match on the Syn tool. But setting mixtures (like the DRLA that preceded these) was tedious, since the mixture screws were about 3/8 of an inch from the side firewalls, and then there were the idle air bleeds. When I had the DRLA, somebody showed me what matching the airflow between barrels would do to the idle quality. It seemed worth the trouble. I spent an hour, bent over, arm jammed down in between decklid and body, hand getting imprint of a Weber 44IDF jammed into my skin, almost permanently. I remember how nice it was to have brand new carbs again, but this time on a brand new motor too. When I finally got to each mixture screw, the idle quality was easy to hone in on. The air bleeds, again, took some work, but after the effort the engine rewarded me with a very smooth, hard and hollow sounding, consistent idle. I was amazed, that in spite of the (what I thought was) wildish high spec cam (Engle 125), this engine idled nicer than my 1641 with the dual 36DRLA and Engle VZ25. The night air brought a chill into the garage, which now had that warm and ecstatic smell of new engine and curing high temp paint. And carbs which seemed to be running well. I connected the drop links and adjusted them for same throw and equal timing.
Once buttoned up, I cracked the crossbar a few times. The way the engine responded to the throttle was pretty telling. There was no delay. Jabbing on the center arm of the cross bar sent my 914 tach swinging wildly and the engine belted out a deep shriek, a combination of growling, open, unfiltered Weber throats, the chatter of the valvetrain and the unmistakable muted scream of a good set of dual quiet mufflers on a bigger cc engine. And it would snap right back to a rock solid 1000rpm idle. I felt the soles of my feet tingle and my hands get damp with anticipation... if it sounded this fiery just revving it in the garage, how would it sound opened up on a long stretch, on a desolate road?
You're all probably thinking I jumped in and took off and stood on it, right?
Wrong, my first drive was me limping the thing around the block where my parents lived, at hardly any throttle. Probably never got up on the main circuit. But it was promising. It didn't spit, leak, knock, smoke or die. I rolled the car back into the garage and stared at my accomplishment. I realized I wasn't alone. Our next door neighbor was now standing behind me in our driveway, glaring, and then said-
"You managed to make it louder?"
I was enraged. Here I was, for how many months, eating $0.99 cheapie burgers in Jack in the Box drive thrus, collecting parts, carefully assembling this thing, AND bolting the mufflers on just today? And now this guy complains? This would be the beginning of many, many problems with this neighbor. I reassured him I was done for the day and closed the garage up. Sat down for dinner with my family, but not really present. All I could think about was how crisply that engine sounded when the throttles were cracked. I was sitting there, snapping my right foot, up and down on an imaginary gas pedal under the dinner table. Thankfully my dad asked "How'd it run?", so I gushed out "Oh man, better than I thought it was going to. It is very smooth and revs right up. I didn't really open it up when I took it around the block though."
"Sounded good," he said "Want to take me for a ride in it after dinner?"

More later

I always wanted to see if those color inserts were squishy. They hung up there for years. When we finally took them down they were sun-bleached and brittle. You can see all the Vitaloni mirrors on the shelf underneath the door panel. On the right wall hung every diameter, color and spoke style Formuling France wheel. Think they were $49.95 at the time. Hanging above the windows were all the different exhausts. We sold Supertrapps too for all the Baja guys. I actually tried to put a big 4" black Supertrapp on my '67 once it had the Super Flow motor and 1-3/4" exhaust on it.
I think the door panel was something we got from TMI. We sold their stock panels too, and all the Scat ProCar panels too.

Ooooo don't leave hanging, waiting for your dads ride.
This is gonna be good.

Your dad sounds cool. My dad is my "enabler" too - if I have a daft idea, he's the one that tries to figure out a way to get it to work! Now, about that first ride....

Paging Mr. Ratto.  Please don't leave us hanging for the next installment.

This was a rare instance. To be brutally honest, he had little faith in my involvement with working on my VW. When I first got the nerve to begin working on the car in early 1987, which meant when I got home from high school (still on my BMX bike), I'd do things like tighten exhaust clamps, re-gap points, adjust fan belt. He'd come home and see the tools out and come down hard, "don't start taking that car apart, you'll never get it back together running right, " etc... and in some cases he was correct, and thankfully his lack of confidence mixed perfectly with my rebellion and stubbornness and I did exactly what I was told NOT to do.

Now, 30 years later he's complimentary of the nature of the same car and what I've done to it. I think the addition of the Recaro seats masks all the rough edges for the old man... hahahaha

My dad was also the enabler :)

Your experiences remind me so much of my own, only about 10 years later and one state eastward. It's like revisiting that time in my life through the words of someone else, thanks for the memories Jim.

My dad would come out and help me and the nieghbor boys with our cars with the provision that mine was stock. Didn't stop me from doing big and little tires or redoing the wood for my pickup bed  but when I opened the hood he watch that I only used stock parts. '55 Ford F100 pickup in Whittier, Calif. in 1969, had a lot of fun in that truck. Thanks Dad.

Where in Whittier? I was there until '75 when we moved to Orange.

Autumn 1990, Dad Goes for First Scare Ride


We just went for maybe 5-6 mile run. It wasn't going full kill or anything. That happened later that night.

We jumped in, strapped seat belts on and I fired it up. It was so crisp and on, I don't know what worked so well, but it just cranked and immediately fired and had this silky solid idle and prompt throttle response. Now, 26 years later, after trying big ports and pretty big cams, I think it was the small cross-section intakes and ports, combined with the Engle 125 and IDF's on somewhat short manifolds. In any case, in the context of not really having driven it with any gusto yet, at the time, this was the first thing that impressed me. I ran a blue roller pedal at the time (because all the cool VW kids did then) and the leverage of the pedal or the way the Redline linkage worked, seemed to quicken the way the engine snapped back. I also had a Scat Drag-Fast shifter at the time (the GB one was a few months away still). This shifter was a real guessing game. The throws were so short and 1-2 plane was so inline with 3-4 it was easy to engage 3rd when you meant 1st, etc. But again, in the Bay Area, if you wanted to be taken seriously, the Scat shifter was a must have  ::).
We headed north on Sylvaner Dr, and headed for Vineyard Rd, which traveled east through wine country, to Livermore. This, 26 years ago, was sort of no-man's land (not today). I had watched a few street races out here a few years earlier, but technically it was more of a "handling course" kind of road, with several slow 2nd gear acute corners and as many fast, 3rd gear sweepers. And never any traffic. Urban legends ran wild in these parts of where I lived about fatal car crashes and ghosts and all kinds of stuff.
We turned right onto Vineyard and I was gentle with the new motor, just letting idle circuit take me up to 3500, then shifting. The new trans made the shifter feel like a stiff rifle bolt-lock, you had to be very deliberate in selecting gears. The green Kenney 2300lb pressure plate gave a new sensation too (the 1641 I had previously had a Sachs bus clutch).
Despite me driving it very-lightheartedly, I could tell it was a whole different world than the 1641. Even the way it pulled away, as you engaged the clutch, it had this strong confidence and felt like it could get two cars rolling from a dead stop. The intake sound was much more pronounced than with the smaller engine, especially as the revs came up. The best part of all of it was how the engine would come into its own, just around 32-3500, and its sense of urgency increased. My old 1641 did this too, as it had a pretty vigorous cam in it (VZ25 Engle), but the big engine wasn't waiting for anyone. If you kept the throttles fairly wide open and let the rpm's get to 3500, you were going for a ride. The sound changed too, from the low bassy growl coming mostly from the Webers, to a more raw scream. And I was shifting it at 4000. Second gear was very useful, as I was short shifting from first, then slowly giving it more throttle in second, and the car bolted forward with real purpose. In third gear I was outdriving the lights. I looked over at my Dad. He had one hand on the dash handle and the other clutching the vent wing post. He was staring at the 914 tach, I asked him "Well?? What?" All he really said was "Jesus,  Jim...."
We went about 3/4 of the way to Livermore and turned around. As we U-turned, I could smell the warm new motor in the chill of October nighttime. As we straightened out, I gave it a dose of throttle and the rear tires lost grip and the car went a little loose. Into second, with a little throttle again, right up to 4000, with that hard shove in the back getting harder around 3500. Now third. Up to 75 mph, with the RH sweeper maybe 200-300 yards ahead, ease off the throttle and the engine made this lusty, deep note as it came down in rpm in overrun. Once past the apex I got back on the throttle a little and savored that cam-induced pull. The engine was obviously wanting more rpm, more throttle, more cold evening air.
In a few minutes were we pulling the car back into the garage, my Dad not really saying much. We got out, I opened the engine lid to make sure it wasn't puking oil or anything. I couldn't find anything wrong. I couldn't believe it was running and it felt much more serious than I had expected. The way the engine expressed its authority, once the revs come up, it actually scared me some.
By now it was around 9pm. I wanted to drive the car to work the next day. It had been off the road for probably 4-5 months by now. Plus I wanted the acknowledgement from the guys I worked with and worked for. I spent some time cleaning the car, really just spit-shining it.

By 10:30 I was planning to get to sleep.

Who was I kidding? Grabbed the VW's keys, clicked the garage door opened and fired it back up. I knew how the 1641 "felt" on specific roads  I drove often. Now it was time to see what this engine would do. And I thought maybe Frank would like to go for a bit of a ride.

Jesus JIM! ;D

 ;D

I went to Whittier High class of '70. Lived just by Beverly and Norwalk Blvds. Worked the Texaco and Mobil stations now both gone.

jim this is the best read ever, the suspense is killing me. you should write a book or get a monthly column in a magazine, your attention to detail is great it really makes you feel like your there.
I like many others have lived through some good times in vws and a lot of that came from my father and his performance vw involvement in Australia and witnessing first hand as a child being his right
hand man. lots of street racing in the late 80s and early 90s in his turbo charged vw bug blowing doors of many a v8, mee looking over at the speedo and seeing the needle back at zero before him changing
to 4th gear. still now I think how fast were we actually going.

Cool , I lived where Colima & La Mirada Blvd joined together, right before Lambert. My brothers went to Cal High, I went to HS in Orange.  It was a fun town, lots of cool cars in that time period.

I suppose we're the last to take a trip down Whittier Blvd. before they shut down the cruising. Good time to grow up in SoCal.

Great stuff Jim.  :)
I was having similar dreams in the same era...just a little further removed. Thanks for sharing.

You guys still owe me a beer for that!  I think it was $1000 for the whole set-up?   I had virtually empty pockets and my wife standing nearby... ::)

hey Dave, long time no hear.....

Same here.  ...just a bit further south from Dave. 

I can't tell you how great it is to read your story Jim.    I have spent my whole life Northern KY.  The magazines were all we had so reading your story really helps add detail that you didn't get in the mags. 

Hi guys, sorry for the absence. Between a business trip and busy Cub Scout season, I've been unable to recount much in last week or so.

This weekend I'll get into that first real long drive in the car, that late Sunday night/early Monday morning, stretching the new motor's legs all over backroads around SF Bay Area.

Then the big fun trip... just a few weeks later, in Nov 1990 from SF Bay Area to Los Angeles, Orange County and then out to Phoenix AZ and back to Northern CA. The motor was just a few weeks old. All kinds of unexpected fun, scares, and learning new stuff all the while. Like what it's like to be held at police gunpoint in Norwalk CA at midnight. Or what it's like to drive through an army of tarantulas crossing I-10 at night in AZ.

Lots more to come.

Hey Dave!! ,how are things?  Yes, we had great times back then. Thanks to Keith for bringing it to the masses it was the 2nd coming of the California Look back then. Seems to be in a bit of a lull right now, but I am sure it will take an upswing. History always seems to repeat itself.

Oh goody, can't wait!

Typical response – it's all about the beer as far as you're concerned.  :D

My dad and I saw a similar set up at Santa Pod years ago, Webers and manifold all painted red. The guy wanted about £800 for all four and we passed! I couldnt afford to go halves and Dad wasn't sure we could sell the other pair! About 2 years later I paid a grand for a pair...

Autumn 1990, Night Miles

Sorry for the delay people. The weekend was eaten up by fixing an intake leak on the Bug Saturday morning, then whirlwind of house stuff and kids. Good news is the VW is running as it's supposed to, got some painting done in the house, and my younger son has graduated from training wheels and has picked out a pretty cool Fit BMX bike.

So back to the age when alternative rock and grunge were becoming household words, and we began to become familiar with a guy named Saddam.

I had figured I'd give up on trying to get to bed and fall asleep. By 11pm I was out in the car again, quietly (?) growling and muttering around my suburban neighborhood. The streets were laced upon the eastern hills of the city I lived in then, and it all probably looked like one of those time-space-gravity grids, from the sky. So trying to keep the car quiet, as I geared down for corners and ascended grades was a little tough to do. Not only that but I distinctly remember that Engle 125 just begged for throttle. Not that it lacked anything down low, but as I mentioned a few posts back, it preferred some revs. Soft-shoeing around on the idle circuit wasn't really it's choice thing to do.
After 20 minutes of just circling my immediate neighborhood, and making sure nothing catastrophic was going to happen, I got the nerve up to drive out to the small ranch where Frank lived at the time, and would for the next 10 years or so. Adjacent to Pleasanton, just to the east is the city of Livermore. In the 1980's and 1990's the few miles of "space" between the two, was just that: space. Most of it used to be open grassland (to the north) or hillsides inhabited by old black oak trees (to the south). In the middle was a large series of gravel quarries and a few small man-made bodies of water. Frank lived on an old, old dairy ranch, smack up against the backside of a small municipal airport and one of the gravel quarries. Other than these two landmarks, you'd never find much of anything else around the ranch, other than some goats and geese. The road to reach the ranch was accessed by exiting Interstate 580 in no man's land, and then following an arrow straight private line of two lane for maybe 3/4th of a mile. Back then nobody really knew the road existed, unless you knew of the ranch. Later, in a few months, this lonely, dusty road would become an important piece of proving one's car's worth on a Friday night.
That night, as I merged onto I-580 east, I was still a bit unsure of how long all the big motor paradise was going to last... a few more hours? Minutes? Oil pressure was certainly good. Oil temp was barely doing anything. Everything was sounding and feeling consistent, and actually pretty damn good. The onramp going east was a long, sort of downhill lane, giving you a good run to build speed to merge (In 1990 the housewife next door to you wasn't driving a 450hp Audi wagon to take kids to soccer like today, it was probably an 80hp Accord then). The freeway was fairly open and empty and no sign of Pleasanton PD anywhere, so what the hell... let's see what difference all this work made. In second gear I slowly squeezed on a big slice of throttle and kept my foot planted.

The difference from 1641cc to 2054cc? I doubt I can used written words to describe just how blindingly different the big engine was.

Just 6-8 months prior, I was daily driving the 1641 around, a melting-pot of parts that were destined for a 1914cc that never was: 044 Magnum CB heads (40 x 35.5 and polished ports with no guide bosses), dual Dellorto 36DRLA CB carb kit, an Engle VZ-25 mini-stocker cam, 9.0:1 and various exhaust systems that normally lived in my dad's garden shed (at the end of it's life the 1641 alternated beween an S&S Rallye 4-tip and a 4-into-1 with either a stinger or one of those hide a way things that rode next to the 1/2 valve cover). I wasn't very judicial in my use of the throttle with the 1641, it was almost always "go for broke" and what usually happened was a lot of intake "confusion" until 3500 rpm, when that (obviously too wild of a-) cam got everything going in one direction, and then the little motor would howl its way up to 6500-7000, and aside from the noise, nobody probably was in any danger. It was a great first performance motor and made sounds like it thought it was part Porsche.
But the big engine made everything seem much more intense. Opening the throttle wide and keeping it there meant you better be paying attention. Things just happened, and fast. The carburetors, the cam, the heads (same heads that were on the 1641, just milled open for the 94's and exhaust port opened up) and the real merged header all seemed to work like they were made to go together. There was no burbling back up through carbs for half a second. You step down, they crack open and the motor just went "Wwwwrrrraaaaaawwwww" and away I went. Six thousand, sixty-five-hundred, sixty-eight, shit I better shift! Third gear, again, just a very strong push in the back and an unbelievable, deep wail from behind me, as the motor jerked the tach needle up to 5000. Into fourth and I was well over any speed of nearby traffic, so clack the Scat shifter into gear and let the motor sit at a nice quiet (ish) 3800 rpm, but it doesn't want to cruise, I could feel the powerband trying to come in, trying to throw the car up to 100mph, the nose of the car going light, and the steering going a bit scary.
Frank's exit was another half a mile, at "El Charro" and as I pulled off the throttle, I listened to the motor and peeked at oil gauges. I imagined all those parts in the motor had just kind of gone into a state of shock or something after me opening it up, and felt like I better acknowledge what they just went through, with a little break, so I coasted off the freeway, to the stopsign and lone streetlamp at the end of the offramp. I pulled into the gravel along the lane and parked the car. Idle- still rock solid at 1000rpm, exactly where I had set it that afternoon. Oil pressure still showing near 30 psi and temperature now just beginning to creep up, but way under 180F. I got out and walked around to back of the car. Using the limited illumination from the streetlight, I scanned under the car, looking for glistening drops of oil. Everything looked dry. I reached under and ran my fingers along the side of the case, and along the lower edge of each (pretty warm) valve cover.... still dry. I lifted the decklid and let it rest on my head (lost the spring months prior) and looked for signs of trouble in the engine room. Belt was ok, no M6 screws were laying lost on the tin, no spray of oil, nothing looked to be wrong. But I still was deathly afraid. No way was I signing off and claiming all was good. I had just, basically, given birth to this motor, with no real doctor present. The last few months, all the income earned, all the angst and anxiety, all the worry, all the driving around for parts, etc, and now all those parts were whirling around in a frothy bath of green Kendal oil, but for who knows how much longer. I could be seconds away from a rod making a window in that brand new case. The coming week could be filled with the nightmare of an exhaust valve getting freaky and putting holes in a piston. Or worse, I could get cocky and stuff the car into a guard rail.

I know, I look back now, and it try to understand why I couldn't just accept that the engine was running, and running well, and had accepted it and been happy for myself. Reflecting back to this time, I do remember an awful lot of fun, but also a bunch of suspicion of allowing goals to be reached. The year before, 1989, had been a real yo-yo, permeated with all kinds of nasty surprises and cooked nerves. We all go through these murky periods. As 1990 came around, and getting the VW-speed shop job, I realized the car, and getting to know others with same interests and wacky goals, was going to be my way to fix '89, and sort of define myself as a 20 year old.

Standing there, with the car, parked on that gravel shoulder, with the dual quiet packs pounding away at idle, the red glow of the tail lights penetrating the night, I started thinking about "I wonder how it would have run had I put a 130 Engle in it. A 140?"

I hopped back in and went and picked up a very surprised Frank.

I'm loving the flashbacks.  We had many, many interesting Friday nights on Franks frontage road "drag strip".  I've still got some 8mm video of some of our grudge matches out there.

I remember going from the 1776cc to the 2016cc in my '55. The small motor ran 14:80's all day long on 165's. It was quick in a cheerful sort of way. The 2L had an FK89, FF heads ect. Same car 2 completely different worlds. Things just happened really fast, and if you did the wrong thing it could get away from you & it was gonna hurt. Keep it coming Jim, great read.

Thanks Bill. I can imagine your oval became a whole new thrillride with the 11:1+ 2-liter. It's funny, when I was building this motor, the 2054 in 1990, I was very aware of your '59 with the 1776 in it, and I think in 1992, when I was buttoning up my money-pit 2276 48IDA, Super Flow head motor, I remember seeing your car at the Expo in Pomona with 48's and all the new stuff and raised an eyebrow.
Then seeing your car go high 12's a few months later at Sears Pt, I knew something was up.  ::)
So that must have been a pretty contrasting drive too, going from the 42DCNF 1776 to the big motor in the '59?

Everyone can relate to the money pit motor. I wonder what motor holds the title as the biggest money pit motor ever. The 2000's were awesome until the big crash when I was laid off my job. Luckily I spent a ton of money during those years and have something to show for it. It was almost worth losing a job to get to enjoy a new car/motor and lots of time to drive around  ;)
It's hard to believe I spent a couple grand on a little box that looked like a cheap car stereo amp for my motor back then  ::)

When I was younger, most of the time I would open the Bugpack or JSC or whatever book up and scan down to the "biggest" and almost without exception order "that."

As we will see in a few posts....

As far as hp/dollar goes, the 88x69 EMPI engine I (re)built for my GTV was pretty fucking stupid. I have no idea what the final number was, I didn't want to know how much 75hp cost me :D It was everything I hoped it would be though, and more.

Those hipo 36hp engines are ridiculous as well.

Autumn 1990, Weber Sounds After Midnight

Yeah Zach, about 15 years ago I put a lot of effort into a 1776 that in my head, should have been all it never actually turned out to be. And then there was all those cobbled together 1914's built in haste that never missed a beat, leaked and they ran like wildfire. Never fails.

Back to Sunday night, turning into early Monday morning. While normal smart people were sleeping, I was out scaring myself with the new-found pleasures of displacement and torque. I quietly idled down the narrow lane that led to Frank's dairy ranch, and turned the headlights off. Frank lived with his dad, who had no appreciation whatsoever for a high-strung valvetrain or the bassy beats of merged dual quiet packs. We'd had words before, regarding my smaller engine and its "damn 4 pipes!", and that was during daylight.
As I shut the car off and clicked the driver's door shut, the porch light announced somebody was up as it clicked on. The front window drape pulled aside and I saw Frank peek out. He opened the door and said "Hoooolllly shit.... you got it running....  but dude, it's midnight!!" We both laughed and I went over Sunday's trials, and gave him a quick rundown of how it all went, and how the car ran. In site of the late hour, Frank willingly hopped in and we set off. Again, I was careful with the noise, and tiptoed on almost no throttle out to the long frontage road. Once on the long road, I stopped the car and said "Ok, check this out..."
And from there, I engaged the clutch, the car rolled away, and I let it run up to 3500 in first, then shifted to second, and then let it have it. I remember the rear suspension squatting and the 914-tach needle wig-wagged up to 6000 rpm like nothing, the last 2500 rpm giving the real thrill. Frank was laughing hysterically, as I shifted into third. We were now going much faster than the west-bound freeway traffic next to us and accelerating very hard. At 85mph I shifted to fourth gear and let it cruise. I looked at Frank and he had this look of manic confusion, looking at the instruments. I think he said something about being able to see almost 90mph in 3rd gear that quickly. I was amazed myself.
We reached the entrance to I-580, heading east this time, into Livermore. I had no idea where we were going, but knew there were long stretches of roads nobody used in east Livermore. But for whatever reason, we headed towards downtown, then further south, out of town and into winery-country, on CA-84 which would connect us with Sunol in a matter of minutes, over a few hilly second and third gear corners. Here again, coming out of a second gear corner, going into an uphill straight, I found where the real difference was, when compared to the 1641. We came into the corner, gearing down into second, then I came down hard on the throttle, a little too hard and a little too early. The tach quickly told me "Jim the rear tires are hopeless right now" as the back of the car stepped out and gave me a good scare, but all the while it was pure teenage heaven, now having a car that looked slow, but had enough power to cook the 205-60 Yokohamas off in a corner. I thought to myself "I'll have to remember that corner for the future..."
From Sunol we coursed through Niles Canyon, the only people stupid enough to be out after midnight, coming into turns, gearing down, and then letting it fly free coming out. We ended up in Fremont and again, I had no idea where we were going but the acceleration and the effortless way this car found speed was too fun to call it quits. We crossed the Dumbarton bridge and took US 101 north to Redwood City, exiting at CA-84 headed west, towards Woodside and San Gregorio, at the cliffs overhanging the Pacific Ocean.
CA-84 just west of Redwood City had a real draw for me, ever since I got my driver's license. Looking at it on a road map, a few years earlier, it looked like someone dropped a spaghetti noodle haphazardly between Urban Bay Area and the beach, and by the looks of the map, there wasn't much out there. I had driven it before, in fact the last time I had been out here, was on a day trip to the beach with former girlfriend. It was something we had planned together, pack lunches and stuff in her Baja convertible Bug and enjoy a drive through the woods to the state beach. It was a day I wished I could have back, up until that night. Now it was about finding more places to practice power-on oversteer.

More later this week or weekend. Thanks for reading,

I love reading your stories Jim. It reminds me of the same time driving around with a new car or build with friends with no real plan on where we were going. Many times just hopping onto hwy 17 and just going to Santa Cruz or Capitola and grabbing a coffee late at night. That drive is great to break in a new engine and a little scary to say the least. Great to hear we were not the only one doing this stuff in the bay back then. Fun times!

Hey Jim, every time I look on the Lounge I hope this treat has a new posting from you. 
I really enjoy your stories and the way you can describe al details. It´s like riding on the passenger seat.  :D
This year I was on vacation in California and it is awesome to read this and think about the spots you´ve described.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this down!

Autumn 1990, First Drive to Work (and it makes it)

I don't know what time we finally went home. It had to be after 2am. Ended up running CA-84 all the way to its end where it intersects with Highway 1, at San Gregorio beach. Ran Highway 1 up into Pacifica, then through SF, etc. A very indirect route and a tank of fuel used. And no real technical issues.
The next morning was a work day, at Buggy House. Of course I was going to drive the '67 in. Even after the lengthy drive earlier that morning, I guess you can call that "seat time", the urgency of the new motor hadn't really set in yet. A few new freeway junctions to test out were between my parents' house and Buggy House. It was too hard to resist the call of that new rush of power in 2nd and 3rd gear, so obviously I was looking for opportunities to use it. The long, steep grade just west of Pleasanton, heading into Castro Valley and Hayward wasn't much to worry about now. Just keep the revs somewhere north of 32-3500 and there was a wall of power just a throttle-feathering away.
Once I got to the shop, I could see Big Mark and Jerry were already at work. I actually used some restraint and uncharacteristic maturity as I pulled into the back lot, resisting the urge to make a landing like a fighter plane, or to write my name in rear tire as I growled down the driveway. They'd hear the unmistakable resonance of a big cc motor rolling in and wonder whose car it was. I parked the car, peeked underneath searching for drips, flames, loose oil lines, cam bolts... still nothing and walked into the service bay of the shop. A white K Ghia was up on jack stands, and Jerry's black jeans and black shoes were sticking out from under the rear of the car.
"Got that goddamn car running huh?", his voice said from under the car.
"Yep", I answered, already glad he noticed.
"Sounds like you didn't forget any parts."
I took that as a compliment, from a man that didn't hand them out often.

I punched in, and walked into the parts room. Mark was digging in bin boxes and said "What's up Jimmy?"
"Monday. Work. Same shit", I said.
"That your car I heard pull in?"
"Yeah I got the motor in and done and hopefully broken in, yesterday, drove it all over the place last night and it's still running, for now"
Mark was cool. He began to loosen the reins some, as a manager. He started to ask me questions when customers had questions about Webers, or big engines, etc. He had been into VW's for at least 12 years or so before I got the job, so it was a big deal to me that this guy trusted my answers. And sometimes when customers would come in to quote out a big cc motor Mark would say "Let me get Jim to talk to you, he's building a healthy big motor right now...", and this morning, Mark took a genuine, sincere interest in what I had put in the car and asked me all kinds of questions about what bore and stroke it was, what camshaft I used, where compression was, and my answers were followed with "Good!", or "Cool deal dude", or some other form of affirmation. None of the "Is that all?" crap. So it felt good to know these guys, that I looked up to, were already approving.
The shop's engine builder, Rob, was always late to work. He shared custody of his very young son, and I think he had to pick him up or drop him off, often. So he rolled in a good 30 min late most days, including this Monday. I heard his arrival marked by Jerry's tone of voice about cases that were waiting to be hot tanked or something. In a few minutes Rob walked to front counter and said "Jimmy! Got the car running!", cool.... somebody else was excited too. It was like I had had a baby or something, like we should all light cigars up and talk about how fast they grow up. He asked if we could go for a spin at lunch. Well, yeah, of course, you buy, and I'll drive!

Autumn 1990, 55 Idle Jets

Rob and I ended up heading over to west Hayward at lunch, where all the wrecking yards were, as well as some interesting automotive businesses. Within a few blocks you could hit a Porsche new-parts and dismantler place, same thing, but with BMW and a wrecking yard that at the time was packed wall to wall with air cooled VW stuff. We grabbed some good grease-pit burgers (the kind that are wrapped in plain white paper and drool grease through it) and then headed back to the shop. On the way back, I got to learn about Weber idle jets, and how they do more than make the car idle.

Rob, being very in tune with being able to discern if you were running too much advance, or had the wrong plugs in the car, (seemingly by just be in same zip code while you were driving it), kept looking at tach and listening to something. "Feel that?", he asked.
"Feel what?" I said, removing my foot from the throttle in a cold wave of paranoia.
"That little hesitation, like when you pulled away from that light. Feel that?"

?

All I felt was it was pretty cool blasting around with an irresponsible amount of power now. Hesitation? No way did I pick up on any hesitation.
So Rob told me, as we got on 880 freeway, to NOT wind it up in between gears, just short shift it, and so I did. He listened, like a doctor, and with his index finger raised, waiting, I did as he said and he said "That!"
I had to admit, yes there was something there, though it seemed very minimal. Rob asked me what carbs I had, and I told them they were brand new 44 IDF's, from the shop. "Yeah, that's what it is, I thought so..." he said. I didn't get it? I bought brand new carbs, and bolted them on just like the booklet of pink, photo-copied papers told me to. If I didn't screw them up, then why should they hesitate? If I don't understand them, and more importantly, don't take the time to understand what I don't know, then they were fine. Right?
Wrong.  Rob told me to buy a set of "55's" and try them. 55-whats? We got back to the shop and visited the pretty extensive Weber set of drawers the shop had. I didn't understand how jetting worked, or floats or air-fuel mixtures. I felt like if I even tried to comprehend any of this, I'd get the carbs so screwed up, and out of whack, I'd never get them right. So I had always avoided anything to do with jetting, reading about jetting, etc. But Rob picked out four little brass idle jets that, if viewed with a magnifying glass, said "55" on them.
"What do I do with these?"
"You gotta take the 50's out and put these in and then re-tune the car"

So that night when I got home from work all focus was on exchanging the 50's for 55's. I had no idea where to begin, so naturally, I just kept unscrewing things, until I had pretty much field stripped the tops of the carbs down to the float bowls, and still hadn't found anything that looked like these idle jets. It was now late, dark and I was frustrated, even defeated. I swept the pile of velocity stacks, metric hardware and air filters into a box and gave up. I'd have to drive the Fiat to work the next day and everybody would ask "Where's the Bug? Did you drive it into a wall? Or did the motor fall out?"

Autumn 1990, Cops Pay a Visit

The next day at work I bought the Pat Braden "Weber Carburetors" and the Haynes Weber books, and remembered to ask Rob where the idle jets lived in the IDF. We pulled another 44IDF kit from the shelf and unboxed one carb, and he showed me, just under and behind the fuel inlet, were two brass screws, "Those are the little mother**ckers, right there. And they get crap in them, too, all the time. You'll know 'cause it will not run on that cylinder until it gets into the main." I visualized in my head where these brass screws were with carbs in the engine compartment, so they're right next to fuel pipes into carbs and those are......   right up against the engine compartment wall. Wonderful. I pacified myself by convincing myself a stubby screwdriver would do the trick.
That night I found that even with air cleaner base plates unscrewed from carbs, there was no way to get into the idle jet holders with carbs on. And back then, I had a real slipshod mess of tools, most of them "borrowed" from my dad's carry-around tool box. Mostly cheapie metric combination open end wrenches that were never designed to get IDF manifolds off a Bug motor. If I could actually get the 12mm wrench on the 8mm manifold nuts, I could then only get about 3 degrees of movement going, to loosen them. It was awful, and I could sense the neighbor's presence... as he stood and glared at me from the sidewalk. How stupid could this guy be? Obviously, with my Webers all ripped apart, and now, coming off the car, there was going to be no noise problems tonight. I ignored him.
I managed to get one carb-manifold assembly off and on the workbench, and proceeded to unscrew the idle screw holders. I remember it was weird, but I heard a car pull up and park at foot of our driveway. Then I heard the fuzzy and muffled sound of a two way radio. It was the Pleasanton cops, parked in front of our place. A tubby officer meandered up the driveway and looked at the mess of parts and the small pool of fuel on the garage floor, and asked me "What do we have going on here?"
So I did my best to explain the plight of running the car a few days prior, with too small of idle jets. All the while, the cop's eyes are jumping from the car, to the workbench, to the parts all over the floor, and then me again. As I was explaining, with all honesty "what was going on", he interrupted me and said "Neighbor next door says you're terrorizing him and his wife and kids with all the noise tonight."
All the noise? What noise? The goddamn car is pulled APART. One carburetor is on the workbench. The other is missing 60% of its parts. I was dumbfounded.
"How can I be making any noise? The car isn't running..", I asked, with an attitude.
"We got a call that you're over here raising hell with this car tonight. That's why I'm here"
I showed the cop the bench. I showed him the open intake ports of cylinder 3/4. I suggested he feel the motor. It's room temp. He then seemed to change his tune. "So you haven't been driving this thing?"
"Nope. Not in two days."
The cop looked at the neighbor's house and said "I'll go talk to this guy. I better not have to come back tonight. Is that clear?"

While much of the 4 years spent building various engines, and taking them racing, and going to events, was an incredible amount of fun, this ongoing ordeal with the neighbor was not. It went from awkward, not making eye contact and not saying hello to one another, to a pretty ugly war between he and I. And then it got worse.

But in a few weeks, I was leaving work early, on a Friday, with 55 idle jets installed. Rob was right, they made all the difference he promised they would. The car idled better and was silky smooth all the way up the rev range.
I was now heading east on 580, at 3pm, with a trunk full of tools, a few spare parts and a case of Kendall 40W GT1. I'd be picking Frank up at the ranch in 15 minutes, and from there we'd be on our way to Phoenix, Arizona for Bug a Rama.
.

Great read as always Jim! I was almost late to work this morning (I'm never late).
Good times!

tw

Reminds me of the neighbor next to the shop where my car was thru the engine building process. A clapboard 2-storey house right beside an automotive shop on a busy service road, why? I dunno. The lady would come out shaking her fist at us, with Steve nodding, trying to pacify her, knowing she could call the cops and had done so in the past. He said it was always my car. The engine that sounded more like a cross between a V8 and a fast streetbike. What do you expect for a long-rod 2332 with an open turbo header? And it was always late at night when the excitement happened at his shop. 'Let's go for a ride with the laptop and do some tuning. You drive and I'll tune.' Steve said as we slipped into the darkness... good times!

The problem with the neighbor was a real black mark on my early 20's. He ended up getting the other neighbors to band together and the met with Alameda County district attorney. Some kind of petition was circulated to make my life miserable. I'm not kidding. I had to appear at county courthouse. They had VHS and pictures of me, caught in the act, red handed. Some of the pictures showed me laying on my back under the car, with AN8 hose in hand. Another showed me rolling a floor jack under the car. VHS tape showed footage of me coming up the street and pulling the car into the driveway. Obviously, all very malicious and it was clear my intention was to drive the neighborhood to its knees. I will admit, I did take a large piece of white posterboard and in red poster paint, wrote "F __K  Y O U" and had stuck it to the side of my parents' house, in clear sight of the neighbor's kitchen window. I think that kind of sealed the deal with the DA.

Same situation when the dinks buy a house next to the fairgrounds or near an airport and try to get closed down because of the noise. Many race tracks in California have closed for that same reason.

Neighbors would turn in my car trailer for being parked on the street when I drove Tickled Pink around the block.
Best to avoid the pissing matches...
https://youtu.be/VtzYtud4JaI

The dirt track in Ventura is experiencing this now. They have raced at the fairgrounds for decades. We were there shortly before Labor Day, heard them having fun from a couple of miles away. My curmugionly liberal outlaw made the comment he'd been with a group trying to out law the racing group at a county facility. I asked how often they raced?  Every other weekend as they shared it with the horse races. He wanted them out because of the noice and air pollution. I said horses bring black flies and stink as well, not to mention the noise from the crowd. He even whined about concerts held there in the summer. Can't please every one I guess.

Laguna Seca (all Nor Cal Tracks) have sound limited public track days.
Also a few special sound free weekends too for the big events.
You can pass the 92db limit if you lift by the sound shack.
But that kills your momentum and you will get overtaken.
Frustrating and dangereous to lift for sound, like driving through a school zone on the way to the corkscrew.
https://youtu.be/lkZYVj89fA0?t=13s

Awesome reading these memories Jim. Sound like great times!

Paging Mr. Ratto,  paging Mr. Ratto! We are (I am) impatiently waiting on the next installment!

November 1990, Leaving for Phoenix in the '67

Ok let's get past the neighbor issues, I'd rather not remember, elaborate, or frankly discuss it any further.

Back to the road...

By 3:45pm I was crunching through gravel, on the path to Frank's ranch. I look back at this now, from 2016 perspective, here were two kids with hardly any money, no cell phones, no GPS, sat-nav, Instagram, or a 10yr/100,000 mi warranty. We had a few hundred bucks between us, that same wrinkled, dirty gas-station fold up map, tools, some spare parts, a case of Kendall GT1 and a 24 year old car that had just underwent heart surgery in a suburban garage, next to a washing machine and some cans of old house paint. All performed by a kid who really had no clue. Two kids, going away for 4 days, across the SW desert, going somewhere they've never been. What, really, could go wrong? Actually only a few things, and one was going to hit us right between the eyes in about 6-7 hours.

We hit I-580 east, to meet the intersection with I-5 out west of Modesto. By then it was now dusk, and getting cold. The long, endless conveyor belt of Interstate 5 south rolled under the '67, and for a good 60-70 miles, we just hummed along at around 3200rpm. It was no effort, the car wasn't even breathing hard. We glided along at around 65mph (by gear ratio, not by indicated speed on instrument, it was very optimistic), with that 2.0 liter, just calmly doing its work behind us. Oil pressure was over 70psi, and to my surprise, oil temp was barely showing. In those days I had a VDO cylinder head temp gauge, and it was giving about 250F. Fuel consumption seemed decent (though I never did formally calculate anything back then). The car had no problem maintain a cruising speed which kept us rolling with the majority of what little traffic there was on 5 back then. The big rigs owned the slow lane, doing 55, and until probably the Merced-Fresno county line, we just puttered at 65 mph. But there was a problem.
They showed us all in high school, in those horrific traffic safety movies, what can happen on a long trip, at one speed. You begin to zone out. It's like that constant drone of tire noise, engine noise, wind noise, combined with the rhythmic dashing of the lane markers and fatigue, it all begins to work to hypnotize you. Which it was. Our plan was to make it to somewhere in Los Angeles and spend the night, then get up the next morning and head east to Phoenix. We were still 4-5 hours from northern LA county and I was blinking and cranking the vent wing open to blast myself with cold air. That and my shin and ankle were getting cramped keeping the throttle angle where it was. So I adjust my ankle, and here comes the scream of approval from behind. Again, the engine was purring along, just under where the combination of the 44mm Webers, the heads, the 125 Engle and that merged header made things happen. It was just begging to jump from 3200 to 4000, which it did. Here we were, in the ink black no-man's land, just a pair of yellow headlight streaks and a lot of Weber induction noise, now zeroing in fast on traffic ahead of us. I'd let off, and the slower car in front of me would politely change to RH lane (Remember when people used to do that? Way back 26 years ago? ::)), and then I'd just squeeze on some throttle and with no complaint, that stroker motor would cooperate with that addicting howl through the carburetors and we'd blast back up to 4200-4400 rpm, the engine still wanting more. We did this for another 2.5 hours, the same pattern, find an open stretch and give the car some throttle, and maintain an honest 85mph, then having to back off for a slower car, only to get on the move again. It was sensational, the car would just pull with no protest, and no ominous warnings from the temperature gauges. Even with wide throttle and enthusiastic speed, the oil temp was far below 180F and the head temp was stuck at 250F. It was a lot of fun, even to back off, only so I could lean on the Webers again and have the rush and that shove in the back, all the while I am remembering how weak-kneed the 1641 was, it never had this urgency to it. I envisioned this sort of sonic wave thing going on, this chain reaction of the merged header and the dual quiets becoming like a pipe organ, and creating this unstoppable vacuum, pulling through the header pipes, through the exhaust ports, and when the time was right, that 125 cam was allowing this vacuum chain reaction thing to reach into the cylinders and scour every bit of waste gases, and even being to ask the Webers and the intakes for an extra dose of that cold November night air mixed with 92 octane. There was a certain throttle angle and rpm where it all "happened" and when it did, it was if the engine grew 4 more cylinders. Whereas the old 1641 certainly was "cammy" thanks to the 256 degree (0.050") circle track cam, it didn't have the ball busting shove that the stroker had. The big motor was not only cammy, but it actually did something worthwhile once you got it up on pipe. And it still wasn't working hard.
By 9:30pm, we had reached the exit for CA 46 at lovely Lost Hills. We were both dying for Jack in the Box and I figured it would be ok to give the car a break for 30 minutes and refuel it. An icy wind blew through, smelling of animal and soil. A digital thermometer flashed "42F" at the gas station. Well no wonder we're not seeing any oil temp. I had set the car up with a Mesa 72-plate cooler, plumbed in the full flow circuit, along with an HP1 Fram and Earl's AN8 hoses and fittings. The cooler was mounted in where I thought was a good place for air flow, just behind the LH rear torsion tube, angled down slightly at the rear, to hopefully get a blast of air. By all accounts, it seemed to be working, maybe too well. I had yet to see the oil temp get near 180F.
We scarfed some 99-cent cheeseburgers and slugged bad coffee and got back on the road. The worries I had in the Fiat just a few months before, during the infernal drive to OC down 5 were gone. The VW welcomed the cold night, lunging at the freeway onramp like a rabid dog. I blew through 2nd gear, past where the markings stopped on my 914 tach, and into third, headlights blaring and foot down, up to 6000 still in third, rocketing away from slower trucks and minivans, and now into fourth and just let it relax. We still had Grapevine to wrestle in an hour or so....

More later. Including the guns drawn.

Paging Mr Ratto, please don't leave us in suspense like this.....

Give him some time. Takes awhile doing it with only your index finger.  ::)

I understand he has an actual job and can't leave customers on hold forever........... :)d

Please good Sir, Could you feed us a crumb of this story? Maybe tide us over till the New Year?
Thank You and Merry Christmas.

November 1990, Fast Lane on 5 Freeway

I look back at this night, 26 years+ now ago, and after all the times I've driven "I-5" since between Southern and Northern CA during late autumn, I'm surprised we didn't have tule fog to contend with on this night. If you've never driven either I-5 or Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley in the fog season (especially at night), then you don't know true panic. Think of smearing wheel bearing grease all over your windshield and headlights and then driving in pitch black, in an almost perfectly straight line. For 6 plus hours, looking for lane markers and dodging 18-wheel semi trailer trucks that can't see either. It's good for losing weight due to stress.

But on this night, we had the weather on our side. It was cool and slightly damp and just a little wind, but not enough to skate us around up above 85mph. If you're just catching up and don't care to read the previous 5 pages of how I got into hot rodding VW's, my friend Frank and I were on a somewhat aimless roadtrip in my 1967 VW Bug, which I had, just weeks before, built a 2054cc engine (my first stab at a big cc stroker engine) for. It's November 1990. We're heading south, averaging 80mph on Interstate 5, somewhere northwest of Bakersfield. We had just stopped for coffee, 99-cent Jack in the Box cheeseburgers and to fill up with 92 octane. By tomorrow night this time, we plan on being in Phoenix AZ for the Bug A Rama.
As we continued south, now deep into Kern County's cotton/oil filed country, I began to gain the respect and confidence in this new engine and my own work, that I was previously apprehensive of. If we had made it as far as Lost Hills CA, from Pleasanton, in this car, with this engine, with absolutely no sign of an any troubles, then I could let my guard down. Just a few months prior, I was traveling south on the same road, at a slower speed, in a bone-stock Fiat X19 and was much closer to mayhem and end-days with its tendency to run (very) warm. I had to keep engine temp at bay with judicious use of the throttle in the (stock, fuel-injected, weak-kneed) X19. The homegrown VW was almost asking to be used hard, and didn't seem to care at all. After hours of 3000-4500 rpm down 5, the car was running just as it had when I first started earlier that morning. In fact it was running just as well as when I had swapped out the 50 idle jets for 55's a few weeks prior. It felt good to know things had turned out OK, that we were going much faster than the car was designed to go, with no ill effects, and it was all down to what I had done with basic tools, in my parents' garage. And the advice I had been given along the way.
Within an hour, thanks to the clear night sky, the faint yellow glow of northbound chain of headlights came into view, as they descended down the Grapevine from Lebec, into the wide valley floor. We'd be climbing this grade, which in those days, used to be notorious for causing all kinds of cars and trucks to boil over, gasping for their last few breaths, as they seized up and croaked on the side of the road. I was fairly sure we'd not have any heating issues, as all night the oil temperature had maybe seen at most, 150F. The uphill climb begins much before you actually get to the grade, as was very evident in the X19. But not in the VW. It just continued to eat miles, and hover between 42-4500 rpm, gobbling cold air and asking for more. Soon we could see the uphill climb, and so many cars and trucks laboring up. We kept our lane, far left and began to climb. While the engine note did change, the car still proceeded, with little effort. We came up on a mid 80's Corvette in the left lane, quite quickly. I expected our fast approach to elicit the "Corvette Response" out of the driver (which means jump on it and rocket away), but much to our surprise, the 'Vette politely moved over a lane and let us get by. We were ascending, just north of Fort Tejon, at about 75-78mph, in fourth. The oil temperature was still indicating under 180F. By the time we reached the summit, south of Gorman, CA, our speed had increased, and temperature remained. In a half hour, the previously ink black sky began to take on an orange cast, illuminated by Los Angeles, just 20-30 miles south of us. We rolled past Magic Mountain on our right. The exit for Pasadena. The 405 interchange and points south. Through Burbank and now into East LA, hugging the left lanes, as to not miss the exit to stay on 5 south. I had no idea where we were going, or how we'd get from there to Arizona, but figured we'd end up somewhere, drink some more awful coffee and consult my old map.
Well that somewhere ended up being Norwalk CA. Specifically the Motel 6 just off the 5 freeway. Near the Jack in the Box.

I promise, next segment, guns out.

I still want your stories and words published along with pictures. I'd buy that! Thanks for sharing Jim!

As we wait for another thrilling installment of 4 Years.....,

[attachment=1]

Please Jim don't leave us hanging. We need the rest of the story.

November 1990, Held At Gunpoint in Norwalk

It must have been a bit after midnight now, as I remember it, as we pulled off I-5 in Norwalk. I think that Motel 6 just off the freeway is at Carmenita? Anyway, it was the first chain motel that I saw somewhere in L.A., after hours on the highway, coming down from Bay Area. Why on earth we didn't look at a map, and figure out we should have just headed east once we got to 210 freeway, I don't know. Probably too busy owning being 19 (aka knowing more than we thought we did).
We rolled into the Motel 6 lot and got out. I figured out, despite not knowing where we were, this probably wasn't a smart place to stay, just based on noise of big rigs mere yards from the motel. We ambled into the silent office and waited. Paid for a room, and then we agreed it was time for another junk food run. When we pulled off I noticed there was a Jack in the Box just across the intersection. In all seriousness, we could have walked.

And we should have.

We hopped back in my Bug to drive the 150 ft and as we entered the parking lot, a blindingly bright light illuminated us from behind. I glanced in the mirror and only saw white. Then red and blue. Another squad car rushed us from ahead. We were clamped into position by two cop cars, with all lights on us. A loudspeaker ordered us to show our hands outside the car.

I almost pissed myself. In the time it took me to look at Frank and stick both hands out of the driver's side window, an officer was now at my LR wheel, sidearm drawn. I was shaking and though I knew we had done nothing wrong, was still scared to pieces. Another officer had his sights drawn on Frank from the opposite side.

Here we were. Two dumb suburban oddball misfit kids, in a hot rodded dorky VW, on our innocuous way to a VW show. We wouldn't even know how to cause the trouble we seemed to be in.

The officers separated us and checked ID and questioned us and soon realized we were as clean as they come. Our stories matched so we were set free.
The back story is a blue VW was seen in the proximity of a burglary nearby.

We returned to our cheeseburgers and cokes, understandably shaken.

Once back at the motel, things went only marginally better. All night, just outside the window, there was more law enforcement activity. Not sure of what nature, but the Bug was parked right there, backed in and adjacent to the in-wall a/c unit, and all night, at that very spot outside, all kinds of seedy sorts were getting busted. It all made for a stomach churning, sleepless Friday night.

Next leg: From East LA, through the desert to Palm Springs, Blythe all the points between to Phoenix. We avoid worm-fearing transients, pick up a hitch hiking old VW drag racer and mow down an army of tarantulas crossing I-10 at night.

Jim

I worked the window of Carl's Jr. at Carmenita and the 5 in Norwalk in high school.  2 litre, IDA '65 parked out front.  Jeff Denham dropped my head's off there once.  All gone now with the highway widening project.

Thank you for another episode of:
" Four Years "

November 1990, No Sleep and Eastbound

The next morning, after about 38 minutes of sleep, was slow going. We loaded our bags into the back seat of the Bug and eyed the Jack in the Box again, for coffee. We sat at a small table in there, with my same old wrinkly CA map sprawled all across it. We could see the Arizona/CA state border, at the RH edge of the map. But there were multiple highways to get you across, with the main ones looking like I-40, I-10 and I-8. We were far south, by many hours, of the intersection with I-40 east, which connected with CA 58 somewhere that looked pretty bleak on the map (these areas were always easy to pick out on a map [even before Google maps], as the "city names" are always just one word, and often not more than two syllables, and denoted by this little open "dot", with the name in the city in the smallest print anywhere on the map. Also, there were hardly any roads of any kind. And the geographical features always were referred with the words "Dead", "Death", "Sheep" or "Hole." Like "Dead Man's Hole Mountain" or "Sheep Death Gulch", or a less appropriate combination of said words....). Interstate 8 was too far south, just bordering Mexico, and also looked to run through some pretty bleak, and maybe too exotic lands.

We hoped I-10 east  would eventually get us near Phoenix.
Before we set off due east, Frank asked if we could try to find Gene Berg Enterprises. Sounded like a good idea, since we were so close. I had never been to the shop, but I knew it was somewhere near Disneyland, based on the invite in the first few pages of their latest catalog I had at home. I knew it was off Bill Road, or was it Bell road? If we got to Disneyland, we could drive around a bit and find it. It was on some fruit street by Disney... easy. Wrong. We drove south on I-5 and exited at Harbor or Katella. Lots of signs for which way to Disneyland. But Caltrans failed to make exit signs or directions to GBE. Shame on them. No respect for these VW nerd kids trying to make a pilgrimage to go ask dumb questions and buy nothing. After a half hour of circling tourism hell-traffic, we got back on the freeway, headed north. Frank kept the map open on his lap, with his finger on the intersection of I-5 and I-10. I asked him "You think we'll miss it or something? Pretty sure I can remember the number "10"..." He ignored me and just stared out the window.
In an hour's time, we were now headed east on Interstate 10, now just reaching the heart of the inland area, east of Los Angeles. We maintained a good speed, owning the left lanes, and powering through Covina, Pomona, Ontario, San Bernardino. The landscape changed once again, as we gradually descended into the desert. The gritty industrial feel gave way to a more serene, yet pretty powerful and foreboding landscape. It was mid November, and just a night ago, sweatshirts were zipped up tight and fingers were sore with the cold in the car. Today it was windows rolled down, and vent windows cranked and shirt sleeves. Despite the warm temperature, the oil temp was barely nudging 180F. The golden overcast cocktail of marine layer and smog in Los Angeles gave way to sapphire skies and desert sunlight. Everything took on a vivid intensity. We were now just NW of Palm Springs and due for a break. At CA 111, Frank requested we check out Palm Springs.

more later.

Great story, Jim. Thanks for sharing.

The story just keeps getting better, can't wait for the followup!

November 1990, Strangers in the CA Desert

The stop in Palm Springs amounted to a milkshake at a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors and a fuel stop, then back on the highway, further into the eastern badlands of California. Often, California is cursed with this imagery of sun-kissed palm trees, friendly and wide-open beaches and nothing but fun and endless summers. Well most of California isn't like that at all. And where we were, was the exact inverse. Cinder cones and desert scrub in place of crystal ocean waves and swaying palm trees. No tanned girls scampering in bikinis- instead, ravens picking at roadkill carcasses. The sun began to fall behind our backs, and with it, the warm temperature of the day. In an hour or so, it was time to pull off for fuel again (not knowing where we were or when gasoline would be available, I figured stopping often was a good idea. Before those ravens would be eyeing our carcasses.)

We ended up pulling off in Blythe CA. And I mean right off. The little town didn't give off that friendly, hometown, we've got homemade chicken pot pie and iced tea waiting for you. It just seemed off. Still today I can't put my finger on it, but the tone was all wrong. We pulled into an Exxon, and I went in to pay the cashier. Returning to the Bug, I found Frank had made a new acquaintance. A man made of leather-skin, dressed in an open flannel shirt and cutoff jeans was begging Frank to let him in my Bug. No shoes either. The guy was frantic and meant business. Screaming something about the worms would be here soon and find him and he's not going through that again. Frank looked at me through the windshield and rolled his eyes. I just ignored Mr Leather and raised the hood and began to fill the tank. Now the guy sees me and begins pleading with me to get him out of town before the worms find him here. I just looked at him, his eyes frenzied on some kind of synthetic party powder, and said "I'm sorry we're staying in town. We're of no help to you. Try the next guy"

Of course I was lying. As I strapped in and lit the 2 liter off, Frank asked me "How'd you get rid of him?"
I said "Told him we were staying here tonight."
"Smart thinkin' Lincoln"

We hit the onramp, eastbound. The weather was still cooling off, and it had been a few hours of doldrums, so I was going to run it up the tach some. And then we found the next guy....

But this time, all looked normal. All looked OK, the guy had a gas can and didn't seem to be on 5 hallucinogens at once. Would I want to be on foot, as dusk approached out here? We pulled over and asked him what was up. The guy asked if we were going towards Quartzsite, Arizona. We don't know, is that on the way to Phoenix? Are we on the right road to get to Phoenix? The guy laughed and seemed alright. He'd run out of fuel somewhere just around stateline and needed a ride. What the hell.
We let the guy climb into the back seat with his red gas can and set off. As we upshifted at 6000 into third gear, our passenger said "Goes good. What's in it?" So I, not thinking this guy would know a Weber from a weedeater, said "It's got a bigger motor than stock with two carbs."
And to my surprise the guy asked "Like a 2110?" Now most guys that don't know much about fast VW's always ask if the car has a "Porsh motor" in it (not knowing the catastrophe installing one of those into a Bug is, for little return in oomph). And most guys that used to know something at one time, a long time ago, or had a buddy, always ask "Is it a 2180?" as it seems every neighborhood street in the 1970's had at least 3-4 guys that ran a 2180 in something. So it was very interesting that this guy asked if my then motor was a 2110. So I explained no, it was a 94 bore and 74 stroker, to which he replied "Oh you're not one of those Berg guys that says 94's don't work huh?"
Obviously the guy was OK in our book.
We told him where we were going, and asked him what involvement he had with VW's. Apparently he campaigned a KG at some point, a few years back with some other guy. Don't remember now all the who's and how's and which car. It made a small world out of the big ugly unknown. He even asked if we ran into the worm guy back in town.
Soon we approached his To#¤ta 4-runner, hazards still blinking away in the increasing darkness. We let him out and said good bye, good luck. And off we went.

At the state border I took this award winning picture

Wow Jim, this latest installment might just be the best one yet! One of these days I'd like to digitize some of the 35mm film pictures I've gotten of my bug over the past few years (because I'm a hipster weirdo with an old car and bad taste in cameras), but I doubt they're anywhere near as good as that one! This thread has definitely helped keep me inspired with my car throughout this long, dark Colorado winter. Keep up the storytelling!

Awaiting the next installment.
Thank you! :D ;D 8)

November 1990, As Night Falls and Nature Crawls

And so the journey continues-

As darkness pushed out the light, we rolled on, eastward, on I-10, now quite bored. And cold again. We were now in western extremes of the Arizona desert- somewhere neither Frank or I had been. This was the farthest I had officially driven my '67. Like the night before, the car was thriving on the cold November night air, eating mile after mile. This part of the trip is not the sharpest in my bad memory now, almost 27 years later, maybe because of the monotony of this part of the drive. For the next few hours the only action was this...
As we were about an hour into Arizona, I'm guessing 50 miles or a little more east of stateline, we began to smell a real weird smoky smell. I can best remember it being like burnt cheese and hair. At the same time, we seemed to be dodging really odd small tumbleweeds in highway. Frank caught a better glimpse, looking at the illuminated shoulder of the highway. They weren't tumbleweeds. There were seemingly thousands of grey tarantulas wandering in the highway lanes and we were driving through and over them. Now I knew where the smell came from. It was nauseating. We pulled off at next exit and I looked at dual quiet mufflers. It wasn't as bad as I had pictured in my mind, but the top of the cans had a few legs cooked on.

Next few hours got us into city limits of Phoenix. No problems with police or street zombies this night. Just a night of much needed sleep.

If you've been following along, I'll say this about the next day... we saw first hand what real California Look VW's have been and always will be, all about. The next day, at the event, had a pretty profound effect on the two of us, watching some pretty now-famous cars run in anger. Burned into my psyche still, now 26+ years later.

Thanks for reading, more later on.

I've really enjoyed reading this story so far. I find myself checking in a couple times a day for more updates. I've been yearning to take a road trip in a bug for many years now and your inspiring me to make some plans. Thank you. 

Jim...I've been following along and really love the stories. You're doing a great job writing your experiences, thoughts and memories about what you've done with your car over the years. I agree that This IS really what Cal-Look VW's should be about in my opinion. I've not been driving my car for three years as my life had gotten in the way (remarried, birth of a daughter, home remodeling work bah blah) but this forum and your posting your stories / experiences with your car have inspired me to get my a$$. I'm going to do some upgrades to the car and get on with driving my car. I live in Florida and I want to drive my car in to some really cool and even less travelled places with it....Florida has really nice coastline / beaches, old historic towns, scary undeveloped places, swamps, etc..also  has great race tracks that I want to race on with the car (Bradenton Florida). Have to get going on the car now and make more memories with it!!

Anyway, thanks for writing your stories! Cheers

You guys are too cool. I am glad my goofy earlier life driving all over the world in a cobbled together car from high school is inspiring guys to turn the key and go have fun. I've been really busy with work and stuff going on with my kids myself, and haven't been out in the car as much as I'd like to be lately.

The really cool thing about this era to me was that I was pretty free to go experience as much as I wanted. I decided how I spent my free time and the little bit of money I made. I had more time than I did money, which was kind of the best situation, as it gave me the opportunity to listen and learn and try stuff, mostly on the cheap. Most of my big stroker motor was made up of hand me downs or new stuff that I was able to get fairly cheaply. This was a time all about discovering and "firsts" when it came to hot rodding VW's and going to events and stuff like that. After you've done this stuff for years and years and years, the shock factor kind dies off and it isn't the vivid experience it was the first time around. The first time I rode in a seriously fast Bug, the first time I saw a street car go up on its stinger, the first V8 I street-raced and beat, even the crappy firsts, first flat cam, first broken valve adjuster, my first trip down the strip was a real embarrassment.

But back to Phoenix. I'll share this picture from the day. We did finally make it to the show, that Sunday in November 1990. After we went to the wrong track....    ::) more later.

dave rhoads 's car??

Wow can't wait for the next installment.   ::)

Ah please Jim it's Sunday almost 3 weeks and waiting ::)

This seems to be a monthly thing. At this rate it'll be 4 years before the whole story is out. Nuts

Worth the wait!
Love the stories and adventures the old cal look guys have had

well the thread title says it..... ;D

Old?  ::)

Sorry, this is a backburner exercise. I'm not a professional journalist. When I have time, I will continue. Thanks,

Thanks Jim. I'm just the impatient type. You can ask Dean Kirsten about me being a pain about the engine books.
Thanks again.

November 1990, We Make It To Phoenix (But Where the Hell is the Race?)

The night we rolled into Phoenix, we had passed an exit for racetrack west of town, "PIR" which we saw and confirmed with one another, that's where we're going tomorrow for the show and drags. So the next morning, after using the Motel 6's nice white terry-cloth towels to clean the road grime off my car, we caught Interstate 10 west, I'm guessing for 30 minutes or so. The freeway was eerily empty. We expected to be hemmed in by trucks towing racecar trailers and other VW's, as we got off the freeway. But strangely- we were all alone. Not only were there no VW's to be seen anywhere, there were no cars period. Here we were, in a different state, having travelled for two days to get here, been held at gunpoint even.... all for nothing? I shut the car off and we sat there completely perplexed, and beginning to feel a little pissed. Obviously somebody made a mistake somewhere. I was pretty sure I had the date correct. We knew it was really Sunday. But we had no idea why we were sitting there, the only living breathing souls for a few miles.
We thought, maybe we were early? I wasn't sure, but I thought AZ was on a different time than CA. Neither of us wore a watch and my car didn't have a clock. All we knew was that the sun was up. Gut feeling was, none of these assumptions were correct, there was something really dumb going on. But since Frank nor I had a better answer, we sat there for another half hour or so. After which a state trooper rolled up. Oh no, not more misunderstandings with the cops.
The officer informed us, we were at the wrong track (there was another one? See how things went when you were a dense 19 year old before the internet, Google and GPS?). Where we wanted to be was Firebird Raceway, southeast of where we were sitting like dim wits. We thanked him and got back on I-10, now headed east.
For some reason (again, we didn't know what time it was, but it felt like the day was burning down fast), I felt like we were going to be late. Late for what? Not sure but I wooded the go pedal. The VDO speedometer was indicating about 110 mph (optimistic, I ran 195/60 radials up front). Because of the early hour, traffic was really light, almost non existent, and we cooked off the miles. The officer told us we had some ground to cover, at least an hour's drive, after all.
In less than that, we arrived. Among us were the familiar signs of a VW event. Open trailers heaped with raggedy swap meet parts. Drag Manxes on open trailers, and lots of street cars waiting in line. No mistake this time.
I hadn't any intention of doing so, but Frank talked me into paying to bring my car into the show. We parked sort of in the center of the goings on, and got to work doing a spit shine on the car. I had bought a spray bottle of some Wax Shop magic spray at work, and had a few left over Motel 6 hand towels stashed in the trunk. After about 20 minutes, the Adriatic Blue gleamed nicely in the morning light. Parked a few rows over, I recognized Bill Schwimmer's coral ragtop.
Frank and I walked the show, sizing up the other cars in the show, and then headed to the staging lanes.
And there we found two cars that would change the hobby and even the industry over the next 20 years; Dave Rhoads' green '64 and Dave Mason's out-of-control black '62.
You have to realize- in 1990, the lanes weren't packed full of traditional, clean California Look street cars. You saw the Pro Turbo cars and lots of full-blooded drag sedans and lots of drag buggies. But street legal cars that were true to what the Cal Look used to be, complete with genuine BRM's like you saw in old yellowed magazines? It was an event. And here were two of them- sitting just so. Rhoads' car looked subtle, and menacing at the same time. It was a real misfit at the time. Unlike the graphics and weird paint trends that were the rage, his car was one tasteful shade of green. And it was smooth and tidy and all business. I saw the car a few months prior in Costa Mesa, parked at Jamboree. But here it was sporting an open stinger and Firestone slicks. This was a serious effort, obviously. But what sticks in my brain, was the attractiveness of that smooth green paint, the lack of tinsel and the mags. We had read about cars like these, from the 1970's, but here was the real deal in the flesh.
And then Mason's car. You want to talk about a misfit? Frank hadn't seen either car yet. I didn't say much at first, I just let him take Mason's car in for himself and let him process what he was looking at. From some angles, you could easily be fooled, and think it was a clean, stockish black early car. But the more you looked, the more shocking the car was. Frank picked up on the car's intentions quickly. The rollbar, the Berg shifter, the huge, rude pipe jutting out from under the running board and the grooved slicks kind of gave that away. Not to mention that blue bottle riding where normally grandma would have her grandkids ride.

We were about to watch these svelte VW sedans absolutely blow our minds wide open.

Thanks for sharing the stories Jim, We have all been waiting patiently...........

Jim, you made my day...again! ;D
Thanks for continuing the Story.
(still would be an awesome book to read)

reminds me of sitting in a rentacar at the entrance of palmdale raceway with nobody there (i was way too early)

I remember reading HotVws and looking at the cars in the mag back in the mid /late eighties and early nineties....I remember all of the feature cars with the graphicked paint jobs with mild chrome engines in them. At the time I really wasn't aware or think of the term Cal-Look much. I just knew that the cars I preferred were the simpler / understated looking ones that occasionally showed up in the magazine. I would look at these cars the most, and even though they were not as popular I thought they were the coolest - bad ass cars....I wanted to build one!

Thank You Jim. I'll be more patient for the next installment.

Since Hot VWs mag is under new management... these are the stories I'd like to see published.

You know, what a great idea, Nico!

+1 from me, keep it coming Jim.

You're welcome. I didn't mean to sound fiery. Been busy with everything under the sun. More to come. A lot more!
Thanks everybody for reading,

Jim

November 1990, Green is the Color, 88mm bore and 12 sec ET

Back to sunshine in AZ November 1990-

Frank and I stood there in the blaring morning sun, and watched this guy attend to the now famous green 1964 sedan. Like the car, the gentleman was unassuming and kept to himself. We were careful about approaching him, as he seemed busy. The closer we looked at the car, the more fascinated we both were. Like I've said over in over, in writing this, it's all about context and what was hot at the time. All around us were show cars with pounding 12" speakers and who knows how many watts of power. Tinsel and off-the-shelves chrome glitz, and ride-heights that were never intended for any kind of performance. It was a vastly different scene than what you think of these days. And here was Dave Rhoads and his car. All the elements that are now appreciated as "Cal Look Musts" were present.... the BRM's, the lack of brightwork, the one-piece door glass, the rake... and beyond that were numerous small details that just kept popping up. The VDO oil stick temp sender. The layout of the dash and the instruments. The tidiness of the engine's wiring. Obviously somebody's heart and soul went into making this car... it sure showed. And more than anything, in all its subtleness, it stood out and made a statement. At least to me. We began to talk to Dave and he was as friendly as the day is long, and seemed to not be bothered by us two rag tag kids staring gape mouthed and wide eyed at his pride and joy. He excused himself as he had to climb aboard and make a pass, after he finished removing the fan belt.

We watched him stage, and then let it fly... front wheels up and off he went. The engine sounded like it was in pure tune, screaming from a bellow to a high pitched wail in every gear. And it clicked off a 12.57 like it was nothing.

Frank and I immediately began to debate as to what the engine was. I said "Gotta be 94 x 86 with FK-eighty something and full drag heads, to run a time like that" (Like I knew anything). Frank just agreed and added "Let's ask him what it is."

Well, we all know now, Dave's car ran a very simple 88 x 82 motor with "only" 40 x 35.5 heads and "just" an Engle 130! We were b l o w n away!!! It didn't add up! But, again, in the context of the times, back when GEX motors made the big ad splashes in Hot VW's and murals painted on underside of pans were all the rage, here was how things were supposed to be.
And that's exactly how I felt, watching Dave undo his belt, make the pass, and get ready to do it all over again. This is how it was all supposed to be....

I'm really enjoying your musings -- It is filling in the blanks I have in my VW life -- I had been active with VW's upon my return to civilian status in 77 and played with them until about '85 when the lure of blown jet and twin turbo v-drive boats down at the Colorado river drew me away (Oh and women in Bikinis)..... And I really didn't get back into them until I built the Fiat in 2005... So there's a big gap in there I need told about, and I'm enjoying your style   

November 1990, Seeing is Believing


Thanks man.

later that afternoon, we watched Mr. Dave Mason send his black '62 down the track too. What Rhoads' car lacked in "drama", this car made up for. Mason's car had (and still has, last time I heard it in 2015...) this explosive sound and immediate throttle response. As I posted about first seeing his car in Costa Mesa summer '90, he ran this "muffler" that probably didn't do much, as far as muffling went. If anything, it made the engine's note maybe more piercing and intimidating. It resided under the RH cylinder head, amounting to not much more than the size of a shoe-box, and terminated in a no-nonsense big diameter pipe in front of the passenger rear wheel. We watched him stage and wait for the tree to drop, and the it was this attack-lion scream from the car and it loaded hard on the rear wheels and was gone. I don't think he operated the nitrous that pass because the car went 13.00. No matter, it was all about the horror of that car and the sound it made. With the advent of the internet, and forums, and the resurgence and obsession with cars like Mason's in the last 15-20 years, guys talk about stuff like stance and presence, and all these qualities that make or break a California Look VW.... in 1990, no car I knew of had this down better than Mason's. Now seeing it terrorize in person, that afternoon- it was clear this car wasn't just hype. Far from it- it meant it.

Frank and I were truly ruined. I thought seeing the cars lined up nicely at Jamboree had got my gears turning. Seeing these two cars (run faster than some of the gutted drag cars were!) in action really set the course, for me anyway. Listening to Dave Rhoads tell us about his engine, and watching it fly.... in my head I was doing the math already.

Later that day, strolling the pits we came across no other than Dean Lowry himself working away at a chop-top Super Beetle, with what he described as a 3.0L injected engine. I wish I would have known to pay more attention, and had taken pictures (and I may have- so many of these treasured pictures were lost a few years ago!). But what an honor...

The sky began to change hues, and, foolishly, our intention was to drive clear back to the SF Bay Area that afternoon and evening. By sundown we were climbing back into my '67 and going up through the gears, onto I-10, westward. We were both pretty quiet. Every 20 minutes one of us would say something like "Man.... that green car, holy crap" or "Mason's car! dude...."
In an hour or so we pulled off the highway at a truckers stop for dinner. And more conversation about "Well if he's going that fast with a 130, then...."

Hey everybody- just note about the subject line changing. Nothing much of interest happened after about spring 1993, as I moved away and kind of got out of doing VW stuff for a year or two. The real heart of my growing up doing this stuff, at least in the early 1990's was from 1990 to 1992-ish. Then it all got interesting again late in 1994 when I moved back.
Anyway- that's the explanation for the change.

thanks

I love reading through this whole thing, partially because it's just awesome to read about, and partially because this was all happening concurrently with my dad learning to rebuild the little single-port in the '67 bug that is now mine, and how to take care of the car as a whole. It's a pretty stark difference between growing up around these cars vs being exposed to them as an adult after moving halfway across the country.

Always love reading your memories Jim. One of the things that makes The Lounge a great place to hang out!

I think the first year I went to the Phoenix BOR was probably '97. I would have been just turning 16. My dad drove us down from Prescott and we spent the day together. I distinctly remember sitting in the grandstands when the Super Beetle made a pass (I believe Dean Lowry had just passed away, and they honored him with a pass?) and hearing it go through the gears, 1st...... 2nd...... 3rd...... 4th....... 5th! My dad and I looked at each other and both exclaimed, "FIVE?!?!"  :)

My first VW show outside of my hometown was also the 1997 Phoenix Bug 0 Rama and this thread brings back a lot of memories. A friend of mine wanted to take his bug down there and race it so he borrowed a crappy single axle trailer and we towed it down from Denver with four of us piled into his parents S-10 Blazer. That trip definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things. I was blown away by so many of the cars there both in the show and racing as well as the size of thew swap meet. I think the the car I was most impressed with was Rick Mortenson's turquoise '67. Good times.

Thank You Mr Ratto. I lived in SoCal in the infancy of Cal Look. My high school pal Bill Beaver built a nice clean '66. His sister had a '67 vert. I'd hung out and helped them in the builds. I moved to Utah to get away from a few bad influences and have a family. Never got to see a Bug In or Buggarama. For cheap transport we had bought a '67 that served for a few years but never got the justice it deserved. All of my kids were brought home from the hospital in it. And the noise and vibration from the stock engine was a lullaby to put babies to sleep in it. To this day if either of my older daughters aren't driving they fall asleep because of that '67.
And now with kids gone a second marriage and a '67 basket case 'vert, things are slowly moving to the point I hope to drive it to a few cruise nights this season before I blow it apart for body work.
Thanks again!

I hope down the road, when you feel the inspiration and have the time, to see the tales of '94 and on documented in similar fashion to refresh my pitifully weak memory.  ;D

So before this trip to AZ happened, my friend Frank, discussed here- he was driving to Lake County CA from Pleasanton and was going through Napa. He told me he passed a used car dealer and outside on the lot was a metal-flake purple 58-64 sedan with some kind of aftermarket wheels and decklid standoffs. He stopped based on the wild color, to take a closer look. This was almost 30 years ago that this happened. All I remember now was when he got back to town, he told me this car had 48 IDA Webers and valve covers that looked like meatloaf pans that said "DYNOSOAR" on them. I wish I knew where this car went, or what it was about. Next time he drove by it was gone. I know he told me it was a full street car, with interior and all.

I have a million pictures from that era, newsletters, maps, flyers, all kinds of stuff. Wish I still had a yellow sheep template.

I'd like to join the JR fan club too please!

Great effort here Jim with both your memory and the obvious time taken to get it all down for the rest of us to enjoy.

Like many others have said I've really enjoyed reading your story and have found many similarities in what you have been describing with my youth too. Fun times to recall when life was much more straightforward!

I've followed your tails from the beginning but have not piped up before now because of where you were going (November 1990 Bugorama) as this is where our storylines really come together. Like you and Frank, Jon (my frank like VW pal) and I were flying across the Atlantic as you were flying down the interstates with the same things in our minds. Our journey was far less eventful than yours, but the levels of excitement were just the same!

You set me up perfectly with your lack of pictures from the event as I have a few which will probably mean more to you than most. Actually the ones of those now oh so famous green and black cars were in the car park at the hotel not actually at the event.

[attachment=1]

[attachment=2]

Jon and I woke up on the morning of the show to find the hotel car park full of various VW's which got us off to a great start for what proved to be an amazing day. The day was not without drama for two very white excited English kids though, as the Arizona heat was off the scale to us and no amount of sun cream and shade was going to save us from various parts of our bodies turning some thing not dissimilar to guards red! Not that any of that was going to get in the way of us maxing out the day.

We saw more cars in one day than we would see in a whole year back home and it was a major sensory overload and a logistical challenge to grovel around all the cars we wanted to look at which was almost all the race cars and of course the Cal look cars.

Suffice to say like you and Frank two white and red striped English kids left the show that night with heads full of ideas!

Keep the stories coming!

Peter

The two others you mentioned too.

[attachment=1]

[attachment=2]

Peter

Thank you for those photos Peter, hard to believe that was 27 yrs ago. The best of times.

Well there's the initiation... then the dues ;)

Here`s a few crappy pictures of what's in my photo albums...

(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1627722.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1568340.jpg)

Thanks guys for sharing your old pictures!! Glad to know I wasn't the only guy leaving these events with my head spinning! Very cool Peter!!

Hey Bryan, do you remember where those were taken? Looks familar, just cannot seem to place it. Thanks for posting them.

That's a view of the Lowery chop I'd never seen. Wishing I had time, money, and space to build a tribute/replica. The car was destroyed here a few years back if I recall.m

Yes I do. The first one was at Famosa and the second at a park in Long Beach. I think Ed Economy put the shows on there. Famosa was the first time I saw your car in person. I was still driving my 2 tone 80's style oval ragtop. But I was over that look by then.

Great story, here are some pics I have of my old drag car from Phoenix around that time.
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628052.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628051.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628054.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628057.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628056.jpg)
(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1628058.jpg)

I was going to guess Bakersfield (Bill's car). That was the show Frank said "There's that car... that guy Bill Fishwagen owns, with those wheels."

No problem Bill, we really loved your car. Just sat there in front of the hotel reception under a clear blue sky just blew us away. It really did look perfect.

As you say its scary how long ago all this was happening, really don't know where the time has gone.

Great that you still have the car and I hope you still find time to enjoy it.

Peter

                 

Hey Jim, please sign me up for the "Cal Look Adventures" book you should be writing.

I am sure you will also have plenty, willing storyline and photographic contributors.

Thanks Bryan, I remember now, the LB event was kinda funny, Dave & I showed up to a vintage meet. We felt like hockey players in a figure skating event. We were driving in & you had to drive through a stream, I said no way, but there was a little wooden footbridge. I jumped on it a few times, moved a couple of rocks & away we went over the bridge.
Thanks for the kind words Peter, I still hop in that old car & it feels like a worn shoe, just perfect.
 Bill Fishwagen, my new alter ego

November 1990, The Long Journey In Front Of Us


That would be cool but I don't know the first thing about getting stuff in print. Outside of some of the people here, I'm not sure if anybody else would even care about how I got sucked into this hobby 27 years ago. Though I'm sure how this all went down, is common throughout the automotive world.

Back to I-10 west, on a darkening Sunday afternoon, turning to night. We ended up stopping at a big truck stop outfit, just off the highway. I have no idea where this was, other than it was at least an hour's west of Phoenix. We pulled in and went into this sprawling place, and found a table. We were real misfits in this place, everybody else was wearing netted baseball caps and flannel vests and had giant thermoses. We were sunburnt, in shorts and had VW hot-rod T-shirts on. Over dinner we finally admitted to one another how exhausted we were. The last few days and nights were lots of driving, the run in with the cops in Norwalk and little in the way of decent food- or water. The plan was still to drive back to Pleasanton that night. We were nuts.
After a dinner of chicken fried steak and a few Cokes, I got back behind the wheel, trying to not zone out. Frank's conversation was now punctured with long stretches of silence. We discussed the "what if's", meaning what if we built better motors? Back then I remember you could mail order a forged Berg 82 crank for $695 plus shipping. That was decided, one of us would get home and call that in. That 130 Engle cam in Rhoads' car, that was decided too. In a half hour, we were now discussing what to do with my Dad's 1959 Sedan, a second owner, all mechanically original car, with less than 88,000 miles on it. While the stock 1200 had its charm, we decided we'd talk my old man into making the car a hot rod. He could afford to. We decided on a Berg 82 crank, 912 rods, 90.5mm, V6 heads from Performance Tech, Engle 130, and 48 IDA's. For my own car, all would be left as is, except for replacing the 44IDF's with 48IDA's. And Frank? He had figured out he wanted a "1700", 88 x 69, with Fumio heads, Engle 125, and 48 IDA's. (I thought he was out of his mind). Big plans all thought up in about 50 miles of trying to stay awake on the highway. Still, it was better than where my brain was just a few months ago.
After sometime, we settled on our plans, we found ourselves across the California border. Soon we were at the confluence of US 95 and Interstate 10. For the life of me, I cannot remember why, but with no reason, and no plan, I turned north onto 95, into the void of the jet black desert night. Don't ask me why....

Jim - you really have a knack for writing and painting a picture! Love it. Keep it coming.

You were needing a Needles fix -- that's all LOL

Sorry I meant to share this stunning, high quality photography a few posts back. This was right after we dropped off the guy that ran out of gas, on our way to Phoenix. That's Frank in a Ramones T shirt, and my car, at the state line

one of the great reads i have... hmm well ... read :P

i can almost feel like im in the background lurking as i read the timeline of how you tell the story/history Jim!

and i believe in any platform *my shop builds hondas/toytas  lol   the "first" engine build will always have a space in our hearts....

reading this though. has inspired me.. to do a semi-long term (maybe 5-6 months) engine project, 

ofcourse inspired/patterned to your story and first engine (ok maybe not patterned exactly but  you will get the idea)

so prepare for length PM's  again


p.s.  high five lucas for me!



Ralf

Just refreshing this so Mr Ratto doesn't forget about it.

yeah man we need  darn updates on the first kill of his mighty 2054....  and maybe first track event back then :P

We did end up in Needles that night.

Going north on 95 that night proved to be a challenge. I was sinking fast, after a stimulating, hot day watching the cars race and then the long monotonous drive on I-10. We never thought about stuff like enough sleep, enough water, or knowing where we were going, pretty much ever back then. By Vidal I was so tired I was seeing stuff cross the road, and was nodding off. It was obvious we were not making it back to Northern CA that night.

Now, 27 years later, I grab that old paper CA road map and unfold it, and look at some of the places my '67's been. I have to say, I was a bit reckless in my youth. Not too smart.

Thanks Jim, I needed that.

November 1990, The Drive Home Sucks Now

Back to the empty parking lot somewhere in Barstow....

That generator pulley was looking worse and worse. The belt was still tight and I gave a good tug on the M12 nut. It had to make it home. We hit 58/I-40 west with Tehachapi off in the distance. Still, nothing but starkness, but with the mid-day sun, and shorter shadows, the emptiness was even more apparent, as the imagery of land contours took on a duller tone. Past Tehachapi, and down into the outer fringes of Bakersfield. It was only another four hours or so and the car could take its well deserved break. As we reached I-5, at the Stockdale Road onramp, the weather had changed yet again. The blue skies in the desert had given way to low, charcoal-colored thunderheads. Of course it started to rain. All those dreary freeway exits to nothing rolled by. I had stopped caring about cam timing and exhaust reversion and mail ordering a Berg 82 crank. The driver's wiper arm found a different place to stop on the up and down stroke, with every swipe. There was a misty, cold blast hitting my legs through the fuse box carrier. I could tell Frank was sick of being in the car. I certainly was. Little was said. We stopped for fuel somewhere in west Fresno county, maybe it was the exit for Firebaugh? I opened the trunk to fill the tank and looked at the rag tag mess jammed in there. A duffle bag with worn clothes, oily Motel 6 towels, a near empty spray bottle of Wax Shop detail spray, my tool box and a few bottles of Kendal GT1. The hood weatherstrip was kind of chewed up below the spare tire well and around the cowl and the cardboard wiring cover was now damp and beginning to prune up. I didn't even bother looking at the pulley.
I dropped Frank off about 2 hours later and headed to my parents' place. The car was still strong and sounded good and as I pulled into their garage, it hit me, we had spent 4 long days in this car, traveling out of state, and across some bleak country- and sometimes at a pretty high rate of speed. And this was my second engine build, and my first serious one. We had poured some oil into it along the way, we had chased a Corvette up Grapevine, we had been held at gunpoint, picked up a stranger in the desert. We got to see two sincere, blue-blooded California Look street cars do what they were made to do- right before our young, naïve eyes. We had had our minds blown to bits, and made it there and back in this car I had owned for around 4 years then. Just a few months prior, I was walking around OC Fairgrounds, convincing myself that I was embarking on a new path, and a new way of making money, meeting new people and becoming immersed. This trip kind of proved to me that all this was really happening, and it was going to continue. I looked at the car, completely filthy and rain streaked. I opened engine lid and disassembled the pulley and sure enough the square cutout of the outer half was now figure 8 shaped. The shims were dust.
I made a mental list of what needed to be dealt with, a pulley, cone, shims, new M12 nut too. Figure out what to do about air filters.
And seek out more go fast stuff- like 48IDA's

And what were those ported heads on the back engine shelf at the shop?

Wow!
More?
Thanks Jim, I needed that.

This thread could go all the way to include teaching my kid how to use a dial indicator and help me with cam timing. But you'd all die from boredom.

There's LOTS more.

I won't say it is enough. But this story reflects my own youth and ignorance of the things I did in SoCal, before any serious schooling, dating, marriage, kids. I moved to Utah to get away from my Mom who was nagging me about schooling (lack of), drugging and being a pain to my parents. This story tells of big engines and people in the biz. Road trips in cars are always an adventure, hot rods even more so. It's part of the American Dream.
Now please go cruise PCH for some more inspiration for the next build and lessons learned.
I for one will wait patiently.
Thanks

As soon as you started describing the dust on the pulley I knew exactly what it looked like. Been there done that! Jim, it's an absolute pleasure reading your story, please keep it up!

awesome writing as always Jim!

Motel towels are always handy  ;D

Good to hear. This hobby, in my opinion, bridges between people and creates a hopefully universal, kind of "been there done that" storyline for anybody that's been doing this for a while. For me it's about somebody bringing up a completely non-VW-related incident from a time period, like maybe referencing the first Gulf War or something, and I can pinpoint that timeline and remember "oh yeah, that's when I was building the FK87 motor", or "That was the summer we ran out of gas on 101 near Gaviota State Beach on 101."
All the fuss about dyno numbers and ET's become just bragging rights that soon die on the vine, because someone will always be more concerned with being the alpha dog and usurp mere numbers. I don't think anybody's going to come along and say "I can top that... we were actually shot by the Norwalk cops!" Or at least I hope nobody will.

Well, we didn't get shot at, but my brother and I got home last week from a two week trip in our grandma's '70 Westy to eastern New Mexico, then to the Blackstar campout/El Prado show. I will admit, it was partially inspired by this thread, although much less in the spirit of VW hotrodding. I'm definitely thinking about typing up a summary of the adventure and putting it up somewhere on the Lounge, if for no other reason, to keep the spirit of harebrained aircooled adventuring alive! Definitely keep the stories coming, Mr. Ratto!

Always a good read, Jim
Thanks for taking the time to type it out.

Yes, many thanks for your wonderful stories.

Andrew

Wish I could remember enough from those years to put together a cohesive story

Great story -- --- just one problem, ended to soon -- need MORE

It's not over yet. I left off in November 1990. We still have all kinds of ground to cover.
Glad you're enjoying it.

Next we enter the era of parts breaking and aiming too high.

Thanks

Sweet story Jim! I think you need to quit your day job and just concentrate on the year-by-year storybook, everyday memorializing a new event.  I see a #1 bestseller in the future for you!  Hit me up when you get a chance, I have a couple of questions about your '67

Popper

Loving it.

November 1990, T Bone My Door

Thanks again to everybody that is following along, and coping with this story. I appreciate the kind words.

Back to November 1990.
Outside my life as a VW-Bug parts guy and driving all over hell and back with my friends, doing VW stuff, yes there were other things going on as well. In late summer of 1989, I made my first go at taking junior college seriously. My mind was seriously elsewhere though. So it fizzled off, then back on, then off- once I started the job at the VW shop. Part of the problem was the girl that had ground me into dust went to the same campus. Last thing I wanted was to run into her. Or even see her. At least for a while... (this would change).

But by the fall and approaching Winter of 1990, I still wasn't into making any kind of scholastic efforts. I look back now and see so much of these years as a lot of fun and screwing off, but also in some ways, very insulating. My window of interests had really narrowed since scoring the job at the VW parts place. At 19 years old, at the time, that was probably best anyway.

A few weeks after returning from Phoenix, AZ, I was at work, and took my lunch break. Most days, at the time, I'd commute to work in the Bug, as the new Bus motor was still in boxes and while the X19 was fun, it didn't have the same fear factor as the VW. The VW was pretty reliable, as far as making the rear wheels turn, and it just seemed fitting, I had a job selling VW parts, I should live what I sell. Well, on this particular Wednesday, I drove the car just down the street, to hit the Carl's Jr. As I prowled along, right at that Engle 125 Transition, through the lot in first gear, I became aware of a peripheral wash of maroon, quickly, way too quickly approaching on my left side---- WHAM. A woman in a then brand new Honda Prelude had T-boned me in the driver's door. It was hard enough to shove the door panel into me and me partially into the passenger's seat. The T-handle of the Scat shifter Charlie-horsed my right leg. I was instantly aware of the pain, but more so I was instantly out of the car, through the passenger door. I was smoking mad and ready to lose it. She backed the Honda away from my center-punched driver's door and begins her rant with me-
"What in the hell were YOU doing?" she's screaming from her driver's seat.
I pulled my pen from my pocket and wrote her plate number on my hand, and replied "YOU HIT ME."
And so it starts.... she's irrational, I hit her, I swerved into her, I wasn't watching where I was going... she listed off every ridiculous excuse she could muster. I continued "Look, I was already in the lot, in first gear, you just came up that driveway way too fast, into the lot. You're at fault. "
In the end, my insurance determined, it was indeed her fault. They cut me a check for a door and everything to make a door new again, every seal, gasket, channel, weatherstrip, etc. The parts were no big deal, considering my employment and also since I was in charge of the West Coast Metric parts. But a '67 door. They weren't exactly piled up for the taking.

Been there, done that! Spent 2 years restoring my car and within a month a stolen van took the side out of it.

Winter 1990, A New Girl? And Putting a Door Back Together Sucks

I'm leaving for a while for a vacation in the Utah desert, and then up in the high Sierra, so I thought I'd contribute a little more and see if we can get to the end of the year 1990.

So my door was punched in, hard, breaking the glass inside, and deforming the door panel. Luckily the hinge mount location and striker mount at pillar were ok. I ended up finding a decent used '67 driver's door at Bud's Bugs up off Highway 4 (where I had before found a '67 sedan decklid to replace the one I destroyed in 1987). I dropped it off with Reggie DeCoite, the man that had painted my car Porsche Adriatic Blue in December of 1989, less than a year prior. In the meantime, I bought every new weatherstrip and seal for the door that we carried at Buggy House. And a copy of the big dark blue Bentley Type 113/141/151 workshop book that had just gone into print at the time.

In the meantime, I was still, on a very limited basis, driving the car around, with the damaged door. One night, I had run the car out to meet a girl I had started talking to (through VW's off all things) and kind of hit it off with her Dad. Her Dad had apparently heard about "some metallic blue Bug from Pleasanton, that was out terrorizing the streets." So I drove the car out to Livermore, to pick up the girl (plans were to see the then new movie "Misery") and let her Dad check out my car, with the crushed door. I ended up taking her Dad for a ride up and down the street. The young lady drove a beautiful '79 Convertible Bug, with the stock injected motor. Her car looked showroom new. But the Dad couldn't believe what could be done with a Bug engine, if a guy worked outside the letter of the smog laws, etc. And looking back, the engine in my '67 at the time, really in the big picture, considered in the context of 1990, and especially today was quite tame:

94 x 74
Mexican new universal case
Engle W125 with VW stock rockers, bolt-together shafts, swivel feet and HD single springs and HD retainers.
044 Magnum 'as ported' by CB heads, with 40 x 35.5 valves and reworked (aka hogged out D-shaped exhaust ports by Hannan's)
7.8:1
Dual Weber 44IDF with 55 idles, but out-of-the-box main jet stacks and untouched Redline manifolds
Bosch 094 distributor with Bosch coil
And that treasured 4-Tuned 1-1/2" header with dual quiet mufflers.

In the end, the girl and I attended one movie showing and things ended there. Not sure why. She was moving away for college anyway.

In a few weeks time, the door was painted and ready for me to fill with all new scrapers and felts and seals. Like the summer before, with the engine-drama, I assumed I'd just cut the new parts out of their WCM skin packaging and start snapping it in place on the replacement door. I even had the workshop book, which showed guys with calm faces and clean hands gently assembling the vent wing and happily inserting the inner window scraper. Piece of cake!

And like the engine build, I was wrong again. First of all, I dragged the entire mess into my parents' kitchen, and propped the door up against their kitchen table, so I could work under sufficient light (their garage had one 4' fluorescent deal, and hung in the wrong place... it was ok for bench racing or sneaking beers out there, but for this work, I needed more illumination). Second of all, and this still applies (maybe even more so in my middle age) today, I don't have the knack, nor the patience for putting shiny new things together without scratching the crap out of everything. I could wrap everything in terry cloth towels and lay blankets down and wear a suit made of bubble pack, and in the end, whatever it is I am trying to preserve and protect looks like a wild, pissed off eagle tried to carry it away. I worked for hours, fighting every step installing basically everything. I was trying my best to keep things in order, and to keep the adhesive only where it belonged, but within 15 minutes my hands were striped with a combination of black glue and red blood. The upper ledge on the inside edge of the door sill had a series of nasty scratches down to the primer. Then the outher scraper. It was like trying to tame a cobra, trying to keep it from kinking and getting it in place. The felt channel- same story. The inner scraper, absolute fury trying to get it in straight and get it to snap in place. The vent wing wouldn't align correctly, meaning the channel at the bottom kept interfering with a relief that's pressed into the shape of the door, and then the screw hole wouldn't line up on top. My brow was pouring hot sweat, my hands hurt, and I was running out of illicit language to assault this mess with. I began to hit the vent wing rear edge with the palm of my hand, in an effort to get it to just "snap" into place. How come in the workshop book, all these guys in their factory lab coats looked so serene and weren't baring their teeth and throwing tools? Well I finally got the vent wing deal to line up but then realized I forgot the new weatherstrip that goes in before it.
Around 2am, I finished. The replacement door looked only slightly better than the bashed in one. There were bloody fingerprints all over it. The felt channels seemed to be protruding farther out than I remember in the old door. The inner scraper had this wavy look to it (I secretly knew not all the dumb snap clips bit into their holes in the door). Worst of all was the vent wing I had beat on. Somehow I distorted the shape of the frame and now the glass wouldn't close square- meaning it would be impossible to latch it closed. Immediately I thought of the night in the parking lot in Norwalk. No more leaving the car overnight in questionable areas. What had I done?

The next day I screwed the door to the car and did my best to align it. It sagged. I had had enough. I knew me trying to dial in any more that had to do with this door was going to result in bigger problem. That list of things that I was bummed out about, having to do with my car... well it had some fresh new entries. I was now more pissed off at the lady that hit my car. If it weren't for her lead foot and crap vision, I'd still have my old door, and a working vent wing and my hands wouldn't look like a slaughterhouse. But, from afar, the car was presentable again. And it still ran good.

The winter of 1990 was cold in the Pleasanton area. Our pool actually froze somewhat over. This was the first real period of time I had gone without any kind of heating in this car. The bite of the cold (down to 24F some nights that year) wasn't so much the issue, but the lack of defrost was. Say what you will about the weak effectiveness of stock VW defrosting, it's still better than none at all. But in spite of the cold and the murky visibility, the car was still out and "terrorizing."

And next time I add to this, we'll revisit the night going south on Hesperian Blvd, in Hayward, on the way to Rasputin's Records, when a little street throw-down action took place...

I love it!

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Thank you Jim!
Please have a nice vacation. Drive safe as the Utards are some of the worst drivers in the nation.

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

(https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1666846.jpg)

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

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

Winter 1990, Cold Weather Blues and Streetlight Shootout


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.

Welcome back........

great episode, as always!

Thank you I needed that!

GREAT, now that made my day!
Thanks

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.....

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

 ;)

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☺

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.

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

Love reading that stuff!
Thanks Jim

... 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.

I was there!

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.

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

Winter 1991, Cold Drive Until Sunup in the Sierra Nevada


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

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...

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.

Jack Kerouac with an oil change kit.  Thanks Jim.

1991 Spring is Grey and Foreboding


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.

Always great readings here :)

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

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

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,

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.

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.  :-\

Bump

Spring 1991, Rain and Death Valley Bound (In the Fiat X19)

Sorry it's been awhile since I've been here. We've moved, and really aside from working and sleeping, there hasn't been time for much else.

My last post had me with a change of clothes under my arm and a wad of cash in my shorts pocket. I was bored, at home (parents' house still) on a miserable, cold, dark and wet Sunday with nothing to do, and had been looking at that same old California map. My VW was awaiting the install of the new heads I found in the back room at work, and for Jimmy at the head shop next door, to match port my IDF manifolds. On days like this it was easy to self-punish and find all that I saw wrong with my 20 year old life. I had completely screwed myself in a matter of months, when it came to community college. Cold thoughts of the ex-girlfriend still bit and snarled at me, all the time (running into mutual friends will do that). Work had given me a 5 day vacation and, honestly, all I wanted to do was work. The excitement of the 2-liter, during those first few weeks of it running, and the trip to Phoenix, was wearing off. And this "getting used to" curse was going to be an ongoing fight within me, that still beats me on the head, still today.

So there was the map, unfolded, on my bedroom floor. In the extreme east corner of CA, was a shaded area, with very little geographical references in it or around it, except a few, like "Funeral Mountains" or "Saline Valley" or "Zabriskie Point"... which really rang a bell. That shared the title with the weirdo, obscure, hard to find Pink Floyd CD I had purchased the night we were raising hell on Hesperian Blvd in Hayward. The lure of it all was too much. I had nothing to do. So into the little Fiat, and out onto the wet highway.

The route was not based on any sort of efficiency, as far as time or fuel went. Some of the route was determined by a new limitation the Fiat had gifted me with- the windshield wipers' lack of performance (They would swipe very slowly and labored, and sometimes just stop). The winter of 1990-91 in Northern (and Central) California was pretty bad, as far as rain. I remember weeks went by with very little letup, and the volume was remarkable. The new issue with the wipers meant not only trying to dodge cloudburst, but also to try to stay away from cars in front of me, spraying my windshield with grimy water. Interstate 5 was out of the question, though it probably would have been the quickest way, to get south. Instead- I took a chain of little known roads, some just one lane, that linked together in the Diablo Range, and delivered me in the far western badlands of Fresno County. This was a very strange area, coming down out of Hollister, along highway 25, which is sort of defined by the infamous San Andreas Fault, and then heading east, into some pretty unknown and uncharted area. The road was unmarked, no line to designate lanes, or shoulders. Free cattle just wandered as if the road was theirs, unbounded by any fence. Signs only mentioned forest roads, not with names, but with code like references of random and letters. And not another person for hours. Stopping to look at the map, I saw there was nothing for probably a radius of 2-3" on the map, except a few places, one that looked really hidden away high in the hills near my location "New Idria". Never heard of it? Neither had I. On the map one trail went to it, and that was it. End of the line. Pretty weird. I didn't dare go there (though in a few years, I would).
I continued eastward, on this unnamed, unmarked, un-laned antique road. Still the wipers struggled with the incessant rain, but for the most part, I was able to see. After a few switchbacks around these weird grey-green rock outcrops, the car and I were shot into this very bleak, sepia-colored landscape, as flat as can be off in the distance, with absolutely no signs of life anywhere. And no I had not made it to Death Valley yet! It was still a good 400+ miles away!

More next time.
'

Spring 1991, Sunlight Turns to Snow (in a Fiat X19), No More Money

The trip into, and around and back out of Death Valley- now looking back almost 26 years ago, was a couple of days that were simply there to again, figure out, where in the hell I was headed at twenty years old. I had been graced with a 6 day span of time off from work and my car was waiting on a set of match-ported IDF manifolds to bolt to my new Pauter 40 x 35 heads. Months earlier I had wasted away the last few efforts I was going to throw at junior college. And as far as anything to do with a chick to spend time with, at that point, I wanted none of it. So I was left meandering around in a creaky Fiat X19 in the northern end of what was then Death Valley National Monument. All the features here had these grim names, like Funeral Mountains and Bad Water and Last Chance Range. It was really unnerving and irresistible to see these on a map and NOT go see them for myself. And after a few weaving days along slough roads, and along cotton fields, and under the shadows of almond trees and amidst the scents of industry, trash burning and rain-soak asphalt, I got there and found my "other" calling in life and also found that these places were really just names. In March, there was nothing sinister going on in the desert. The alluvial fans that spread out at the base of the various mountain ranges took away the abrupt contrast between the desert floor and the upright peaks. The sand dunes were soft and silent and aside from sidewinder tracks I came across, were not scary in the least. It was a comfortable 70F or so out, with an occasional gust. I drove from mappoint to mappoint, checking them off, in a sort of "I've been here now" kind of way. All brand new stuff to see that day, with the targa top stowed away, T-shirt, and a few cassettes of whatever I was listening to at the time:

The Doors; their first album and also Waiting for the Sun album. (Favorites were The End and Not to Touch the Earth)
Sonic Youth; The Goo, Sister and Daydream Nation albums
Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking
Pink Floyd; Soundtrack from the film More and Animals album.

I had hiked deep into the sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells and the sun began to sink in the west. It was time to go. I had figured with a more direct effort, I could make it back to Bay Area in one drive. The wind from the west was now blowing harder and had a real chill, but I was so ignorant. In my dumb brain, all of California had the same weather. I didn't even bother putting the targa top back on. In my mind it would be a balmy drive back home, as all that rain from days earlier was gone. It was going to be like that Eagle's song Hotel California.

It was going to have to be, as I was down to just a few dollars, and when is a twenty year old ever correctly prepared for anything?

The trip south from junction of 190 and 395, past Pearsonville and the turn off for China Lake and all was just a bumpy drive, fighting some crosswinds in the little Fiat. I threw on a flannel but was still just in shorts and a Buggy House T shirt. But in an hour or so, as I reached CA 58 west, near Mojave, things had changed. It had become fiercely cold. And it began to snow. And then it began to snow harder. And the winds really let loose. It was now dark and it was hell to see through a fogged up Fiat windshield that had snow dragging the (already weak) wipers to an almost complete stop. Since the targa top was still in the front trunk, and I now had snow on my lap and entering my sleeves and on my head, it was time to pull off and clip it back on. Big rigs were sliding in between lanes and struggling up the grade. I pulled back onto 58 and, for the first time ever in the X19, lost traction under power.
Ahead a sign announced there was a town ahead, Tehachapi. Now big rigs were leaving the highway. This was a problem now, as I  had been using their lights as guides in the poor visibility and had been using their tracks in the slush to gain better traction.

For those reading this, bored by the lack of any VW-talk, my apologies. We'll get back to the shop and the parts and the cars soon. This dumb little trip does somehow fit into all this trying to figure things out theme of this era.

More next time. Merry Christmas to everybody.

Jim

Merry Christmas to you too, Jim. VW-content or not, still an entertaining read! A bit different to my "bought a bug at 17, crashed it, fixed it, went to loads of shows and got really drunk" formative years!

Thanks Jim! Needed this return to our youth stories. Snow is always fun for California noobs. My 1st snow day expierience was in a ‘67 Chevy Van. 6 Banger 3 on the tree and L60/15” BFGs on the rear. Not a snow tire. You can all imagine the fun with all the weight on the front axel. Miss that old van

Merry Christmas Jim and to all of you guys!

Spring 1991, Cheap Motel Stay and 12mm Spark Plugs

I ended up wheelspinning my way through downtown Tehachapi in the X19, now after dark and with windshield wipers firmly lodged under accumulated snow and mud. I found a small motel that looked to be open, and the lot was mostly empty.
I had $17 in my pocket, and walked into lobby. An older lady came to the desk to greet me. Predicament explained, she not only let me stay in a room for $17 but also gave me a bag of chips and a paper plate with some green grapes on it. Also told me to move my "sport car" out from under the eave, unless I wanted it buried by snow from roof in the morning.
The next day I gingerly made my way back to the Bay Area on the fuel I had topped off with in Mojave (the fuel gauge in the Fiat did nothing after 1/2-tank), and using wipers selectively in the hard rain going up Interstate 5. Now, when using wipers, the coolant temperature gauge would quickly go into the hot zone and beyond. Not only that, but the engine actually lost a discernible amount of power after turning them on. Only a Fiat could provide its driver with the convenience of ineffective wipers and an overheating motor during a late winter storm.

Once back in town, and with 3 vacation days left to burn up, I decided to call up Hannan's Machine and check on my Weber manifolds. I had walked my IDF manifolds and a (rough approximation of) template of the Pauter oval intake port layout over about a month ago. This time Jimmy said they were ready, and the bill was $40. I ran out to Hayward, paid my bill and took them home. Jimmy had even run a bead around the base and about an inch up the lower neck of each runner. Now it was time to get to work.

Prior to vacation, I had Rob in the back shop @ Buggy House "cc" my new heads with the shop graduated cylinder. After finishing he scrawled on each head "48cc" in blue felt marker. My old heads were 53cc. I knew that meant something was going to change. Rob and I found the old Berg book and did the math on the office adding machine. My compression ratio had now jumped to 8.8:1.
By cc-ing the heads we also discovered I was going to need to find "Kawasaki" plugs, as these new heads had different threads than my old 044's. Rob had an old plug stashed he used for cc-ing, but BH didn't stock this thread size.
Off to the Kawasaki dealer...

Merry Christmas to you and family, and thanks for the always entertaining read  ;)

Spring 1991, Learning as I Go

We'll get back in the fast lane of the hard core segments of VW-hot-rod learning via the school of hard knocks now. It was during these spring months of 1991 that I really began to develop a sense of, I don't know if it was intuition or some kind of sixth or seventh sense of voodoo or what, but I know I started noticing stuff, and a lot of that stuff wasn't in any books that I had read (and in some case, still haven't). A new sensitivity to how minute changes to a "system" would affect how the car reacted began to slowly develop at this time. In all seriousness, almost all of my spare time was going into screwing things on to my car and then driving the wheels off of it to determine what, if any discernible effect any of it had.
I had started collecting technically minded books, not really specific to the Volkswagen, though some touched on using the VW air-cooled engine in competition. One really good book, though now outdated (but still a great reference) is by Philip H Smith, from Bentley Publishers, titled The Design and Tuning of Competition Engines. A medium sized hardcover book, that to the everyday guy, was probably less interesting than watching white paint dry on a wall. But this was, at the time, the best thing, by far, that I had found to read and try to understand and (better yet) apply to what I was trying to do.

Here's the problem:  I had no real disciplined single idea of what it was I was trying to do.

I had been to the VW drags @ Baylands Raceway in Fremont CA a few years earlier and had my mind blown, as I mentioned in one of the first entries about 10 pages back in this thread. Seeing cars like Dragonslayer and Dave Perkins' turbo car and then the R&R Machine sedan do what they did, yes it was all pretty amazing, but it was all over in 9-11 seconds and to me all this work I had been through in the previous months making this street motor live, it didn't seem to me that running a car for a few seconds every couple of months was worth it.
I had also, in the year or two prior, so 1988-89 or so, became aware of the Porsche Carrera 4 cam engine, and its use in the various 356 street cars. The idea of a wolf motor hidden in the sheep's clothing of the 356 really appealed to me. The fact that the engine was basically a race-tune Spyder motor that had been tucked into the 356 was super cool to me. I had a VHS tape when I was 17-18 that featured some in-car footage of a 904GTS and a 356 GT Speedster Carrera. Of the two, the 356 made the angrier noise and sounded more in tune. That engine coming on cam, made this unique, nasal snarl-howl sound that actually burned itself its own little corner in my brain. I know because I haven't had that VHS tape in 20+ years but can still remember that sound.
So it seemed, what I wanted was the thrill and exotica of the Carrera motor, but for the cost of VW parts. The 2054 that I had put in the car in fall of 1990, with its 125 Engle and ported 40 x 35 heads and 44 IDF's seemed to me that it came pretty close to what I imagined a Carrera to run like. And had I not started to read stuff, and read more and start assuming I could do better and better and get sharper response from the motor, and more top end, and more torque and more crispness from the Webers, and had just left it damn well alone, the last 26-27 years may have been much easier. Or had I said "I want my car to be street legal, 100% and run 12.40's all day" things would have been easier too. But I was trying to navigate this blurred line.

The Pauter machine heads represent the first effort in reaching this VW-nirvana, I guess.

About a week after my trip to Death Valley was over, I brought our shop engine man, Rob, home with me one night. My motor was on the stand, with original heads off. There it hung, with the AN8 oil lines bleeding cold green Kendal oil on the garage floor. I assumed, we'd bolt the heads on, button up rockers, dress it with cylinder covers and fan shroud and shove it back in the car-  that night. This was a big part of my problem- the ignorance is bliss syndrome. To me, a VW head was a VW head, was a VW head. Sure the new heads had these bigger, shiny ports and different valve springs but otherwise nothing else seemed different enough to cause more uproar in my 20 year old life.
Like I mentioned earlier, the heads were about 6-7 CC less than the heads coming off. Yep, guess what- it was due to a deeper flycut. We had the heads bolted on, slid the 8 chromoly pushrods into place and went to bolt rockers on. Not only was there no lash, but many of the vales were being held open by a good amount. Here again, young and not having been through this before, it was easy to just get pissed off.
Good thing Rob was there. He told me this always happened. He prevented me from taking the dumb, easy way out and "just shimming the rockers out." Instead he said he's come back the next night with a dial indicator, and a test pushrod and we'd redo rocker geometry. Ok whatever that means.

Spring 1991 The New Kid At Work

While my motor was getting use, but was awaiting the new heads, another new employee was building a 94 x 69 for his '64 Bug. This was a really cool kid from Alameda, Javier. He had started at the shop a few months after me. I think we were roughly same age. He was way more disciplined when it came to life overall. He was attending classes regularly at Chabot College near the shop. He seemed to be a little more grounded when it came to spending his earnings too. At this point, I think he was driving a stock dual port in his '64, which was dark grey primer, lowered up front and had 5-1/2" chrome wheels with Wolfsburg hubcaps.
He was having Rob, our engine guy, build his engine. I doubt that it wasn't that Javier could build it, I just think he was really tied up for time, between working, college and his family life. The engine was very typical for a Buggy House "off the shelf" engine at that time:

good, used dual relief case, I think his was Brazilian AS41
welded 69mm counterweight we were buying through IAP and then sending to Ashland Grinding to be balanced
Rimco Super Rods
Engle W110 with Scat lifters (yes you could use them back then, without question)
Melling iron oil pump with Bugpack full flow cover, Parker PushLok lines and fittings, HP1 filter
12lb flywheel, 1700lb Kennedy, and brass weave disc
041 out of the box heads, but Jerry would go through and install single HD springs, and grind the keepers
VW 1.1:1 rockers on Bugpack solid shafts and Bugpack Courier feet adjusters
Bosch 094 new distributor, W8AP plugs, Taylor wires and Blue coil
Brand new set, identical to mine, of Weber 44IDF from Redline
And a merged Phoenix 1-1/2" header with dual quiets

At about the time I was getting my manifolds back from Jimmy next door, Javier was getting used to his 1914, and realized he wanted more out of it. So it was decided he would pull his motor out and he and Rob were going to have my 044 CB heads gone through by Jimmy and replace the 110 cam with a 125.

Back to my garage. Rob had me bring one of my Pauter heads to work the next day so we could install a light "hardware store" spring in place of one of the real valve springs. He told me this was going to make it easier to check geometry and setup a new set of pushrods to make. I was still really lost, though I wanted to understand, somewhat. But not enough to pay attention and see that what Rob was doing, really wasn't that complicated. It just was a few levels above just "bolting the right parts on", which in many ways, I wasn't even very good at.
That night he followed me in the Fiat, in his primer gray '69, out to my folks. We mocked up the head with the little spring on it, onto the motor and he then bolted a flat oil pump cover to one of the exhaust studs. I was already confused, but still tried to figure out what was going on here. The dial indicator was attached to a series of adjustable arms and this attached to this massive cube of metal with a dial on it. The dial looked to activate some kind of magnet? He stuck this contraption to the oil pump cover and engaged the magnet. He then swung the dial indicator part of this over to the one valve sprung by the test spring, and zeroed the gauge.
From there it was him turning the crank pulley around and around and stopping at checking the dial gauge and looking at the rockers and then would turn the crank more. I watched and couldn't make out what was going on. I knew that 2 year earlier, on my first ever engine, my 1641 with the Engle VZ25, I destroyed a valve adjuster because I "didn't know the first goddamn thing about setting rocker geometry" (Jerry's words at the time, when I had to admit defeat, as his customer, and bring my wounded engine to him). Best to keep my mouth shut and let the expert do his thing now.
After another half hour, Rob had checked geometry and established the new pushrod length, with the two-piece pushrod he brought with him. He told me the next day at the shop he'd cut me a new set on the lathe, and I should be good to go.

Just wanted to say that I love reading these posts. Really interesting to see how that unique knowledge gets built up over time. Can't wait for the next installment.

Have a great New Years!

Thank you Jim!
Happy New Year!

Spring 1991 Old vs New

Over the next few nights, after getting home from work, I screwed the cylinder covers, exhaust system and fan housing assembly onto the engine, and got it ready to go back into the car. While the engine was out, I had located another decent original 1971- VW doghouse shroud, to take the place of the aftermarket 36-hp style that was on the motor. A quick run through the parts washer at work and a simple coat of satin black rattle can and it was ready for business. I covered up a dent in the face of it, with a Bosch Spark Plug decal (though the motor now had NGK D7EA's in the new heads).
I also replaced the tinny, flimsy air filter housings that came with the Redline dual IDF kit, with some really nice K&N assemblies, that weren't cheap, but felt like they weighed twice as much as the Redline ones.

Here's an overview of the old vs the new in Spring 1991

Bore:     94mm
Stroke:  74mm
Case:    Mexico universal
Cam:     Engle W125
Heads:   Old- CB Performance 40 x 35.5 044 Magnum (1989 version) New- Pauter Machine 40 x 35.5 with oval ported intake, larger exhaust port, and 12mm plugs
Carbs:    Dual Weber 44IDF now with welded and ported intakes and K&N filters
Exhaust: 4-Tuned 1-1/2" merged with dual QP
Ignition: Bosch 094

I also added a GB 1-1/2 quart deep sump.

Though only the heads and a few details changed, the difference in the engine's personality was evident as soon as it first fired to life.  Both the mufflers and the carburetors had a much more pronounced sound to them, even just at a dead cold idle. The exhaust had taken on this tone of anger, the pipes like two chrome cannons, doing their best to silence the engines new "problem child" attitude. The pair of carburetors, like the exhaust, were now making the world know, that this engine was put on the planet to raise hell. Whereas before, the carbs emitted a rhythmically even purr, they now had a nervous growl, even just at idle. After going through the drama of setting the mixture, air bleeds and synchronization, I connected the linkage up and zapped the throttle a few times. With no delay, the engine answered back with a immediate WHOOOOP and would settle right back down to its 1150 rpm idle. Much like the night back in fall of 1990, when this motor first came to life (with the old heads), I was hell bent on getting the car out in the night air and getting some initial impressions.

And, in the 27 years or whatever it's been since this all started, still today- nothing can really top that obsessive feeling of wanting to go out and find out if all that work, and waiting and cost.... was it all worth it? What will that first impression be, once the oil is up to temp and the road in front of you has cleared and you dig deep into the throttle. To me, that first impression kind of tells you all, right away, if you've done it right or if it all was for not.


Here's the motor on the stand in my parents' garage, before the header was back on.

actually, that picture has to be from a later date, as the exhaust ports show the motor had been run. I know when this picture is from, a few weeks into the future. I will get caught up to it soon.

Jim

Any updates ready for us, Jim? I'm sure you've been busy with all of the other parts of your life and I certainly don't want to hurry you, but I'm certainly excited to hear how those old Pauter heads ran in the car! And you're definitely right, the anticipation of taking a new engine out for a ride is second to few other things.

Spring 1991 Heads Make All The Difference

I'll have to start off by saying, this was one of the engines I should have been smart enough to just leave alone. The combination of the short stroke, increased compression and the 125 Engle, thorugh the new ported heads, was a recipe that was for all intents and purposes "Just Right." But more about my mistakes of NOT leaving well enough alone, later.
I did end up taking the car out that night, like always, gently around my parents neighborhood, just letting the rpm tiptoe into where things started to happen. Right away, it was obvious the motor wasn't playing kids' games, and it meant business. Off the bottom it was the increased compression, giving every nuance of the motor a more grizzled edge to it. Now possible to lay down some tire marks by goosing the throttle in 2nd, and then, once the cam got on board, it was hell bent on going for broke. The old warbly tone of the Webers with the old heads and lower compression was now replaced by this rabid bark, that as the revs climbed, took on an almost feral scream. The Porsche 914 tach was hopeless. In first and second the engine would outrun the bouncing needle, so I was shifting now when the power fell off, at an unknown RPM. My route this time, late at night took me out to Stanley Blvd, a reasonably long 4 lane straight arrow between Pleasanton and Livemore, adjacent to a regional park and some gravel quarries. (About two years earlier, on this very stretch of road, I rode helpless in a 1964 primered Bug, seated on a plank of plywood where the rear seat should be. No seat belts, door panels or carpeting. Behind me hammered away a 92 x 82 with 44IDFs and 041 heads at full song. The car was almost airborne, 4 aboard, well above 100mph, when all of the sudden the driver needed the brakes, badly, but there was nothing beyond the limp pedal. We rolled at 70+ mph, and all walked away from it. Me climbing out where the quarter window once was). I turned right, heading east on Stanley, and now with oil up to temp, belt buckled, and the road to myself, I stomped the throttle. Protest from the tires, countersteering to keep the car straight, now with traction.. then up to second, again audible loss of traction, as the streetlamps blurred past me. Up into third, now on better side of 80mph and no let up.
Was the waiting, the work and the metal effort all worth it? I was now into fourth gear, firmly in the speed range that would have sent me to jail, and yes, it was all definitely worth it. At this new level, this new version, I doubted I was going to "get used" to the new found power and frenzy. Everytime I squeezed on the throttle, I found I'd actually feel worked over, like this was now work. It took on a new aspect of fear. I had read and heard many times "the heads make all the difference when it comes to power", and now I had to admit, it was true.

I had a 914 tach in my '67 for a few weeks. That bouncy needle drove me insane.

if the needle bounces the dampener inside doesnt work. common problem with old tachs

Man Jim, that sounds quite a bit like how I felt the first time I took my car out with the second version of my 1914, in that the car took on an attitude that I didn't think was possible in a car that drinks pump gas. Still thoroughly enjoying your stories, and waiting patiently for the next installment!

A guy we knew had a bunch of free VW and 914 junk he was throwing away, this tach was in the pile. Up until that point I had a Suntune tach down on tunnel, in front of shifter, in a small  box I made and was upholstered in blue vinyl by my Mom. Wish I still had that actually.
The 914 tach went in speedometer hole. One night, before any of this 1990 story started, Frank and I got nailed for speeding in San Ramon. When the cop approached my window, it was the first thing he asked me about ,"What in the hell kind of speedometer is THAT?"
Didn't go over too well.

914  & 911 tachometers had a lot of bounce in them, that was stock,
I sent mine out and had it redampened and it took the bounce out.

I have kind of an odd question for you, that I think relates to this same time period. When did your car get the PGSNZEN license plate, and what, exactly, does it mean?

1989. It's a Jane's Addiction song from '86 or so, I think first released on their XXX live album. Used to follow them pretty heavily at the time. Still enjoy their old stuff from back then.

That's pretty rad! I gave it a few listens, definitely a good song from a really unique band. I feel like they're one of the better examples of the style of music that bridged the gap, so to speak, between the earlier '80s hardcore, and the heavier, slower grunge movement, sort of a heavier, trippier R.K.L.

For me and the few VW hard core weirdoes that made our little group of misfits at the time, Jane's Addiction even usurped the Ramones as the "go to" band that just was anti-everything. Or, not really "anti-" but apart from everything. In the 1980's, at least up north, the cool kids would never waste their time poking around under a VW trying to make it fast. We were the bottom rung of the social ladder, trust me. A familiar environment for me back then. As an elementary school aged kid, I couldn't do anything that involved a ball. I was resigned to sitting off in the corner reading my old man's hand me down Road and Track magazines and listening to AC/DC. Junior high, while the masses flocked to the arcades and to navigate the malls, I was building Tamiya car models and drafting engine designs and hiking on day long excursions up into unknown, private properties east of our neighborhoods. Old Ozzy Black Sabbath seemed to be the choice at that time. And once I got behind the wheel of the most looked down upon car in our high school parking lot, I was already comfortable as the outcast. Actually preferred it. I think it was senior year I had first seen the insides of my own VW engine, and began to really think about how to really piss off the Chevy crowd. No talking, all action.
Jane's Addiction was only sort of talked about amongst the music people at high school, I'm thinking 1988 or so. I remember a SPIN magazine with Perry Farrell on the cover, he looked pretty way out there. I read some of the article and the band just seemed unlike anything else that was going on, at least that we were aware of. It really was a mish mash kind of mess of different music genres that had been thrown together to make something new and actually genuinely unique. And it had exponentially more "gusto" than anything else anybody else was playing. And man, was it loud.
That first studio album, "Nothing's Shocking", it just bristled with power and originality. To me it was the rock and roll equivalent to what a no bullshit hot-rod VW was, at the time.

Again, that sounds about right for what that era looks like in my mind. I decided to give N.S. a listen the other morning, it's really good music to zone out to a bit, and you're right, really LOUD! Thanks for putting up with stupid questions from someone who hadn't even been born when this was going on! You got any story updates ready for us? This new motor's sounding pretty exciting so far!

I'll try and find some pics from our epic road trip (with my 68 in tow) from Van city down to LA around that time and see what year it was exactly.
And of course we tried seeing some bands while there. Black Flag was a no-show, which was a bummer. (we listened to some Minutemen on the trip) A guy outside asked us if we were ready to do some 'slammin' at that show whatever that was :) Then tried to get in to a Pandoras show but our driver-dude was 'too scared' to go in with some gangstas at the door. Pussy!
There was another show we did get into (can't remember the names) which was hella fun!
Here at home, more recently, I went to see the Angry Samoans in 2012, and woah! I was not ready for that onslaught as my iPhone flew out of my hands after getting nailed from the side. Great band with lots of energy still !!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Samoans

Spring 1991, Weather Warms Up and We Find a Private Dragstrip


Frank lived on a cattle ranch in no-man's land between Pleasanton and Livermore (in the 1980's-90's this area resembled parts of the Midwest). The long, straight, 2-lane road leading to the ranch was private. It became our "killing field" once we realized what was at our disposal....

If you get my drift.

More later.

Jim

Sounds pretty damn exciting :o just waiting on an update when you have the time!

Spring 1991 The Pontiac Tempest Comes to Play

Roughly April 1991...

One of my bosses' kid was a year or two younger than I, and was into VW's too (not hard to figure out when his Dad owned THE VW shop best known in Bay Area). His pride and joy was a really nice Squareback, I think a 1967, painted a color that always reminded my of the almond milk or something. It was like a burnt off white, with San Bernardino Glass one-piece windows and panel type rear glass, match painted fake Empi 8 spokes and a heavy lowering job at all four corners. The motor was a mild 1776, 041 heads, Engle 110, 36DRLA's and full flow. This was the proven, "safe" engine recipe that BH made at the time. Safe, but not fast. And it seemed this kid had no intentions of making his Squareback fast, so he started working on a Pontiac Tempest. It was white, and I know he and my boss built some engine for it. I don't know Pontiacs, or how people make them fast, so I can't say what was done to it, but I know it was:
a. larger than its original displacement
b. loud
c. tuned to sound fast and maybe go fast

He'd been working on this car over the winter and early spring months. I had no interest in it, whatsoever, I just would see it at BH, moved from one place in the yard out back to another. And I'd hear him and Jerry arguing and getting frustrated. One day they dropped the motor in and a few days later, it fired to life, with the sound I had hated so much in high school... that "rumputta rumputta" idle that populated the school parking lot. All the kids that had taken Easy Street and had V8 confidence under their right foot, unlike me and the other dorks with VW's and the like.

As the spring weather made its transition from cold to balmy, it became very apparent to Frank and I, that on most any night of the week, we had his private "driveway" at our disposal, as a test track. Pleasanton police were notoriously extreme when it came to street racing, exhibition of speed, non-original exhausts, etc. Trust me, I had been marked, and had ran out of rope. Learning to jet Weber 44 IDF's and read spark plugs didn't fly as an excuse with them. Even in the most remote, deserted industrial parks, the cops were looming in wait. So Frank's road was a real gift. I had a pile of Ziploc sandwich bags with all kinds of Weber main and air jets, and this was how most nights would unfold. I'd get off work, and head to community college. Within 10-15 minutes, I had glazed over and tuned out... completely losing any comprehension of what was going on in class. So I'd leave. Frank's ranch was just an exit down the freeway. I kept my jet bags in the glovebox and in the driver's door panel map-pocket. I'd roll up to his place around 8pm, just as the sun had set and he'd grab his Casio digital watch (for stopwatch purposes) and we'd head out to the road. At some point, we had odometer-guessed off a 1/4 mile mark and spray painted marks at either end. The system was to change jets and I'd go lay into it, while Frank timed me off. If the time decreased, I'd write down what worked. And so on.
Soon my boss' son heard about the nightly speed-carnival out at Frank's and wanted to get his Tempest out there and try out whatever he was doing to his Holley or Carter or whatever he had. We were perfectly fine with it, really, since we were dumb, and young and never considered that the more cars that showed up and the more black tire marks left, would obviously lead to some kind of problem.
And hey since you're going to be there with your car, and I'm going to be there with my car..... well, here it was.... two dumb young kids, each at the wheel of some crudely hot-rodded mess on four wheels.

Can you guess what the outcome was next time we all met out there?

 8) hahahaah  looking forward to the next night!

The best description of a late high school/early 20s car I've ever read. Hope you're about ready for another update!

Spring 1991 And The Pontiac Loses
I'd been thinking about this segment of time, these 3-4 years or whatever it was, recently. Funny how so much of what goes on today links back, and maybe is sort of determined by directions we went a long time ago. If you've read this novel up to this point, I hope you've read, that if anything, I poured every ounce of effort into immersing myself into not just the hot-rodding aspect, but learning everything I could about part numbers, and which ones fit which application, and which ones superseded, and where one part could be substituted for, maybe an obsolete piece, etc. To learn which brands were trustworthy and which were substandard. The job at BH was supposed to be a stopgap deal, to make some money maybe through winter of 1990, and then I'd find something else to do.
Two problems though:
1. I had no idea what else to do.
2. I was having an enormous amount of rewarding fun, pretty much every day, and getting paid at the same time.

Now nearly 30 years later, I can still, find all kinds of direct connection back to these days, and not just because I still own the same car. I still sell parts, though in a wholesale arena, and rarely for air cooled VW's any longer. But I still slide out that old Bosch ignition book for reference. Or that old WAWD or H&H catalog. I have hundreds of old photographs of this era, though I've lost probably twice as many.

Anyway, back to that late April Friday night, about an hour after sunset.... out on Frank's private road. Our very own dragstrip. As I mentioned last entry, BH's owner- Rich, his son, Chris, was a year younger than we were. He had a super clean Squareback that was more show than go (smart when you're 18-19, really if you ask me). He was also screwing parts to a white Pontiac Tempest, and had his uncle Jerry (my boss), build some big inch Pontiac motor, which I can't remember the bore and stroke (I never cared enough to ask), but it was probably around 400 cu in. Maybe more. Doesn't matter. It had all the stuff a kid would have wasted his money on, at the local Super Shops. A carb that was too big, and glass packs, and a Mallory Unilite and the big K&N filter. The car had some kind of steel stock wheels, probably widened at rear. It ran no hood.
Chris was a cool kid, just enough attitude to be fun to hang out with . He never really talked trash, car-wise, especially about the then 25+year old battle of V8 vs VW, as he was smart enough to know, if you had the balls and the money, you could have a VW, and answer to no one.
That Friday night, we obliged with Chris' request to bring his car out to Frank's road. It was around 9pm, Frank and I were doing not much of anything, at the far east end of the road, where you'd hang a sharp right, and follow a path to his ranch. About 25 yards west was the "start line." Soon we saw a pair of small sealed beams, way at the west terminus of the road, and soon after heard the tell-tale rap of a big motor barking through glass packs. As much as I was decidedly "Anti V8", I had to admit, the car sounded good. He came around the soft, righthand sweeper, onto the long straight and squeezed the trigger. Soon he pulled the Tempest along side my '67 and we razzed one another for a few minutes. I remember thinking, I still remember this.... thinking "This is better than anything else I could be doing right now, it's a Friday night, the weather's nice, I've got a job I love, and it's all tied to this metallic blue car I own." I knew Chris and I were going to go head to head that night, funny thing was, because we were friends. I wasn't anxious. I didn't feel like I had to prove anything. That was a new way of thinking, coming out of high school, just a few years before, as the dork with a VW.
And so we set the cars up. Me in the oncoming lane (I had done this and knew the sweeper at the end, in case anything came our way). I remember looking at I-580 going by, just on the other side of the chain link fence, that separated Frank's road from it. I thought "I wonder if those normal, grown up idiot people that have nothing to do tonight wonder what we're up to over here? Don't they wonder why a VW and this big hulking muscle car are both facing the same way, noses west, on this long, straight road.
Frank walked a few paces in front of us, with his chrome Everready flashlight. This was Bob Falfa and John Milner out on Paradise Road. Of course, we had to rev one another off, with the Pontiac easily drowning out my VW's dual quiet packs. Neither of us had any idea of what we were doing- which now adds to the candy-apple sparkle of nostalgia. Click went the flashlight, down went my right foot and up came my left. The entire car galloped in a fury of terrible wheel hop, and then a squawl from the tires, as the rear end wagged to the right. Chris was struggling as well, with lots of bravado and tire smoke, but not much motion. But he did find his footing first and shot ahead, while I found second gear.
And then it happened.
That marriage of the Pauter heads, the Engle 125, the merged header/mufflers and the time spent jetting the car, paid off. My 914 tach was of no use, so I had no idea what rpm things were now at, but I juggled watching the road, my mirror (looking for smoke), and seeing Chris's A pillar come close and then fall behind me, while my car still had more left in second. Into third and now his headlights were in my mirror (and no smoke). I could hear his car, and see he was just over my shoulder, but here it was. What I had watched at Baylands a few years earlier. What I had read about in Hot VW's. All the urban legends and wild rumors that cycled through the cold garages, the high school auto shops, about some guys with some Bug that tore up a Nova, or a Javelin or 302 Mustang... it had just happened. It could be done. And I was behind the wheel.
Just to "make sure" we repeated the effort a few more time. And neither of us suffered any broken parts, and the VW took him each time. It was now scientifically factual, we had proven, the VW could whip the V8's ass.

And then things went horribly wrong.

Speaking of life today linking to our pasts....
I took this picture of my 10 year old son, Lucas. His birthday was May 22, earlier this week. That engine, in my car? He assembled much of the lower end, last September. My distributor drive is a few teeth out of index, but no leaks, no pulled M8 studs, no mystery sounds. He also helped set up cam timing.

Don't be surprised if you find him sharing posts here sometime soon.

I'm lovin' the story! Remember the surgeon general never said anything about smokin' a V8...

Crikey Jim, Lucas has got tall! It doesn't seem like five minutes since you announced his birth! Great story about the Pontiac too...

Thanks Jim! Please don’t make us wait another month and a half. Tho I’m not looking forward to bad vibes, and can learn from others expearience.

Not like I'm all that surprised, but it sounds like he's growing up properly! The bottom end of my old 1641 was last bolted together by my dad and I way back when I was about 10-11, but it wound up sitting as a short block for a good 10 more years when my dad decided he'd rather take us fishing and snowboarding and so on, until I needed a car and had grown some sense of mechanical sympathy. Those couple of nights out in the garage were some of the coolest I can remember from that period. I only wish I'd stuck with it instead of waiting for so damn long to get my act together and start working on cars instead of just reading about them and beating on them.

Paging Mr. Ratto,
Paging Mr. Ratto,

Please sir, it’s time for our monthly installment. I and a few others here have a need to know what went wrong.

Spring 1991 What It All Meant

More talk about the "down time" of the period.

Not surprisingly, during quiet periods, in between work, ditching community college classes, working on the car, one could almost hear my head working away, processing the very vivid input of what were still very new cars in my awareness. The previous summer, 1990, it seemed I had finally sort of found a square hole to insert myself into, after colliding with so many round ones. The VW parts job was so much more than a job (looking back, the pay in the beginning was pretty awful). I would have worked for less. I had become, in a year's time there, sort of the "go to" guy for a lot of issues. I was in charge of the West Coast Metric and Weber carb inventory and parts management. I'd get handed the phone when somebody had an IDF tuning question. If a prospective big cc engine customer strolled through the door, I was asked to "go show them" with a ride in my car. When we'd bring in stock orders from various WD, I got to go through and weed out the lesser quality stuff to return, and buy more of what I found to be "the good stuff." The trips to Costa Mesa, Bakersfield, and Phoenix set my fate in stone, I was now at a point of no return (and now 28 years later, still holds true).

Gary Berg's blue '67- I now had a few copies of the December 1989 issue. By this time, I had almost memorized the article, word for word. I had pored over the photographs countless times, squinting to see every small, indistinct detail, the water spray kit, the way the heater-merged worked, the engine wiring harness. Seeing this car in Costa Mesa, under a blue sunshade anchored by 4 black, 12lb flywheels, had reworked how I saw most of the world.  Obviously this car had been assembled with one goal in mind, only the best parts had been selected and for me, it came into my awareness at the perfect moment.

Dave Mason's black nitrous car- While this car didn't have quite the jewel-like quality of Gary Berg's car, when it came to what this car seemed to mean, it didn't matter. The lack of perfection in its appearance made it all the better. If there was ever one Volkswagen that was making wise-cracks (with a straight face) to the V8 world, this is the car. In the 32 years I've been into VW's, no other car has said "fuck you" as well as this one. If you've never seen this car in person, I'm sorry. It's like meeting the Devil.

Dave Rhoads' green '64- The first of the green California Look cars that would start a sort of obsession with me. So much of this car was from another wavelength to me....  a) the combination of no chrome molding, the BRM's, the lack of bumpers and the green paintwork stood out, b) The cooling shrouds and fan housing smartly paint-detailed to match the car and how clever and neat the engine compartment appeared to be, the wiring, the routing of fuel and breather hose-work. The dipstick temp sender, c) The engine specification; Frank and I saw Dave's car in action @ Phoenix, running deep into mid-12 sec, and later hung around Dave and the car and learned it was 88mm bore. Wow! And "just" 40mm valves and "just" a 130 Engle, yet it had posted an ET faster than a lot of the actual race cars that day, d) NOTHING about Dave's car "fit in" to the VW scene of the late 1980's-early 1990's. It was obviously built, not caring to adapt to what I saw as a pretty silly phenomenon, with the mirrors and speaker boxes and laser show paint jobs. Again, this car fit into a need of my own, that I didn't even know existed.

Bill Schwimmer's ragtop- I saw this car for the first time, at Costa Mesa, same time I saw Gary Berg's. This was before it was featured on the cover of Hot VW's in fall of 1990 or so. When I first saw Bill's ragtop, I knew, somehow, that this car was going to get noticed. I couldn't put my finger on one aspect of this car, but everything about it was subtle, yet it still stood out. I think it stood out, again, because it was completely apart from the scene I was becoming more and more frustrated with. The interior of Bill's car just looked "right", there were no fluorescent stabs of color or cheapie carpet kit. It was extremely sensible, done in this classic grey tweed look. It fit well with the VW color. And you have to remember- at the time, "custom" VW's almost never wore a factory VW color. This was the period of pinks, lavenders, aqua-green, graphic, murals, etc. Yet here sat Bill's car in the original coral VW color, another car on BRM's, and with just enough odd hot rod stuff to make you keep looking under it, and in all the nooks and crannies. His engine at the time was the DCNF-carbed 1776. So much of how this engine was presented was new to me. The DCNF's were sure different from the DRLA and IDF's I knew a little about. The Berg carb linkage looked very complicated and it took me a few times of seeing Bill's car to understand how it worked. Underneath his engine had different AN- hoses than what I had seen before, instead of the typical blue and red thread-together hose-ends, it had fittings that appeared to be made as part of the hose. The traction bar looked a lot stouter than the bars I had seen on cars up north. And he had his oil filter muffler-clamped to the bar, not bolted somewhere on the car. The car ran a merged header and no heaters, and in turn ran a fan shroud without air ducts, but it looked like a factory VW shroud? (It was, at the time I didn't know what a Thing shroud was).  All these small tidy details were enough to make Bill's car the car that always seemed to flashback in my constant daydreaming about these cars.

I kept a mental notepad on all of the above. In addition, I started jotting down on same notepad, more and more extreme engine ideas. These times of quiet thought would begin to turn into things changing in my parent's garage, very soon.

I think we are of almost the same age Jim.  ;)
Started buying (collecting) Hot VW's and VW Trends and german VW scene at the begining of 1990. (ooooh also british Streetmachine magazine that featured a lot of beetles at that time)
And started looking for those nose down hot rodded beetles, than came the september 1990 issue of Hot VW's damn I was hooked.
That were the cars to have.... From that point on I was building my to have car in my head.
But it took me longer, after college and a first job, to own a nose down beetle.
But you brought up some good memories.

Cool Jim.

Thank you Mr Ratto. I’ve been Cal Look drooling since the very early ‘70s. Never enough cash or time to build or work on my own. Helped a few friends in Whittier, SoCal. But was involved in a round about way. When I’d moved to Utah I bought my 1st Bug a ‘67. Is just gotten married and started a family. The bug was just transportation, bringing home my 1st 2 babies and lulling them to sleep in the bug with a car ride. Sadly the ‘67 got sold. Then Feb ‘75 HotVWs came out, the dream continued but it’s just been that a dream until recently. And my healt got in the way. A ‘67 vert sits in my garage in a state of disrepair. It’ll happen soon. Be in SoCal in Sept.

Paging Mr Ratto,
It?s that time again!

Hey guys, I went through and added some kind of time stamp. The next period of time is fuzzy as to what exactly happened, when.

Over the next couple of months, spring 1991, going into summer, the following happened:
I changed the W125 cam out for the VZ35 (and ran it for one week)
I drove from SF Bay Area to Ventura, and back, for a VW show- running the VZ35 cam. Horrible trip.
I stripped the motor back out, and swapped the W125 back in place.
I break a valve spring.
I made plans to go drag race @ Sacramento Bug A Rama, Memorial Day Weekend, with the guy Roger (white '67 with Super Flow heads). First time ever on dragstrip for me.
Some exhaust swaps happen.
On a drive home from Irvine, on a Sunday night, an intake guide comes loose.

Plenty more to come....

Those cars and people light the fire of the passion for Cal Look for most of us! Reading this make me want to work on my stuff again. Thanks Jim.

Longer Days of Spring 1991 and The Learning Curve Gets Steeper

Sorry, this period of time, as I mentioned earlier, is a little foggy, as to when things happened or in which order. Up until this point, I had been running around in my '67 with the 94 x 74, Mexican new case, Engle 125, 44IDF's and at first, my old Magnum 044 CB heads, which had been ported next door @ Hannan's, and then the brand new Pauter 40 x 35.5 non-welded oval port jobs that I found in the bowels of the machine shop @ Buggy House. The new heads had smaller chambers (through deeper flycut) and resulted in an increase of compression ratio from 7.8:1 up to 8.8:1. Of course the valvetrain geometry had to be dealt with too, but only because I was being helped by someone that actually understood such things (had it been left up to me at this time, heads would simply go on and the parts would grind themselves into history, like in the past, and as we will see, the future as well). The increase in compression really lit this engine's fuse, and it still ran very cool, and with a very civil nature (civil when compared to issues I would soon encounter and continue to encounter through being ignorant and quite hard headed).

During the down time at work, I could be found digging through the towering piles of parts catalogs that were shoved in every crevice under the front counter. It looked like, for years, a new parts catalog would show up from a vendor, and get crammed in the closest open spot, with no thought to alphabetizing or organizing by type of vendor or part. Sometimes I'd be rifling through the books so they could be organized, or sometimes I'd be daydreaming about how to spend more money that I wasn't making. One of my favorites to scan was the Johnny's Speed and Chrome catalog, at least for trick engine stuff. This and the SCS book. Both seemed to have "everything." From cheese grater stainless firewall covers to Autometer monster tachs... from oil pressure booster springs to full on welded, "hand ported" race heads.

The Johnny's book had a great section on Engle cams.

Some of you may know, since the early-mid 1990's, I have been known to suffer from VW cam schizophrenia. In the last 27 years I have run in excess of 20 different cams in my car. With the amount of time, effort and money it takes to switch cams, I know it's a disorder. This is how it came to be.

I had been reading (but not comprehending) a few different books up until this point, on engine theory and tuning and stuff like that. And, the Hot VW's article on Gary Berg's 2110 build had just hit the stands. Gary's engine, in so many terms, was the ultimate, as far as I was concerned. The images of the cylinder heads alone, convinced me. I knew my Pauter heads were not quite to the same level, but I saw similarities. Granted, they had nowhere near the level of portwork (impossible, as they were not welded, with exception of plug holes had been and redrilled/tapped for 12mm), and were only 40mm x 35.5mm vs Gary's 42 x 37.5. But look at cam choice for Gary's rocket... the FK87.
JSC book listed the FK87 as "Drag racing competition only".
But Gary's car was a legitimate street car. I'd seen it. So obviously the JSC book was wrong.
(never mind things like stroke length, trans gearing, ring and pinion, carburetion, etc.... none of that was anything I understood, so why bother considering it).
The only hangup I saw with running an FK87 had to do with cost and complexity (two things I was well aware of- to AVOID), was the need for high-lift ratio rocker arms. These rocker arms just seemed incredibly complicated and exotic, and seemed best left to real race cars and the guys that could be involved with that sort of thing. To me, ratio rockers could be grouped in with stuff like Dzus fasteners and parachutes and Nomex driving underwear. Nothing I needed to get tangled up with.

And anyway, look right here.... here is a cam, in the JSC book that lists the same usage description as Gary's FK87- AND it shows it to be used with 1.1:1 ratio rockers ONLY:

The VZ35.

The numbers that I understood looked good, scary good, in fact. I had found the loophole. The VZ35 belonged to the same family as the good old VZ25 I had run (along with kids I knew well) in high school. It ran well, and this was 2 sizes up, so it was a no brainer. The numbers showed almost 0.500" lift at the valve (without the cost or complexity of those dumb racing rockers). That had to mean "fast". It also listed it @ 309 degrees of duration. Here I had my own way of understanding: My VZ25 from two years earlier was listed at 286 degrees, my W125 from 1990 was listed @ 301 degrees, and the VZ35 was 309. Gary Berg's FK87 was listed @ 320 degrees. So my choice to focus in on the VZ35 seemed more and more logical, it was a definite step up from where I had been, but not quite to the "GB Level" yet.

So one morning I called my sales guy Rick Sadler, at Johnny's and ordered the cam. I distinctly remember Rick double checking with me "You said the VZ35, right?"
"yeah, VZ35 you got it."
Rick: "Jerry building a sandrail or buggy or something?"
"No it's for my car."
"Off-road race car?"
"no my driver...."

Rick went on to ask me what I was running and why the VZ35 and I felt pretty intimidated and on the spot so I said "I'm just trying something," so I wouldn't be exposed. In the end, it was actually the truth.

The VZ35 became a very brief and unfortunate experiment.

What's funny to me about the whole ratio rocker thing is that the first thing I did to my old single port to really wake it up was put some cheap Empi 1.25s on it. Hardly an all-out race car, but then again, they're not what I'd use on a real hot-rod motor either. Glad you're still working on writing all of this down somewhere!

In the context of the late 1980's when I loosened my first 8mm nut on a VW engine, and later in the shadow of how things were done at the shop I worked at, high-lift ratio rockers were sort of an urban myth. You knew they were available, and there were unclear fables about local boys that ran them, but mostly, that was it. We all ran stock VW rockers with swivel-ball (Courier feet) adjusters on solid-bolted shafts. If you strayed from this you were asking for trouble. You have to realize, the guy that ran the shop had a very strong personality. You just didn't argue with him (until later when I learned how to go around him and prove my case first and then argue). So what he prescribed (at first) was taken as gospel.
Thing with our relationship, even when I was 16-17, before I worked there, is that he knew I wanted to push conventional thinking. Hence the 1641 I built with his help in high school. The typical East Bay Area street VW at the time, if slightly breathed on, was a 1641 with a mild regrind, 041 heads, and Dellorto FRD34 or Weber 34ICT. Kadrons were considered clunky. Weber progressives were still feared because of icing issues and flat spot issues. Dual 2bbl carbs were exotica, and complicated at the time.
Jerry and I figured out my 1641 at this time, and to contrast the "norm", it was a 69mm Rimco cw crank, Rimco super rods, 12lb flywheel, VZ-25 Engle, 044 Magnum 40 x 35 heads, 9.5:1, and dual 36 DRLA 2bbl Dellortos. He never told me I was crazy. One day he helped me adjust my carbs and told me "I wish other kids put in what you put into this thing." I took it as a compliment.

Within a few months, though, I had ordered a set of Scat 1.4's, midsummer of 1991 for my project at the time. I still run them on my car today.

My main thought here is that, in 2014, ratio rockers were/are 1 step up from a cheap "extractor" header as far as performance goes, especially when coupled with a pair of Kadrons. Just as cheap and simple as a hotrod vw can get. And yet, 25 years ago, they were seen as proper racecar stuff, on the same level as a true merged system or IDAs. What I really like about this whole story thread is that it shows not only the similarities, but the differences in the scene between when my dad was driving around in my '67, learning how to rebuild a stock single-port, and when I got into it, learning how increasing lift would affect an engine's character.

Another thing that really strikes home here is what it was like doing all of this before the Internet..

Unless you actually worked at a shop like Jim here,
You had a near nil chance of learning much.

Sometimes, you would get a job at a shop just to learn, if you could.

We always went to shops on Saturdays and tried to get the old timer behind the counter to start talking.
We'd ask all kinds of questions, and, sometimes, they would be willing to share.
(We hardly ever bought anything because we had no money!  :D)

I remember moving to the Bay Area in the late 90s,
My friend and I went to all the shops we could every weekend;
Donsco
Volks Authority
Bugformance SJ
Bugformance Sunnyvale
Peninsula Automotive
Ellsworth Brothers
Far Performance
Plus a bunch of others I can't even remember..

There was one guy who was really really generous with his knowledge,
An absolute gem of a guy, who I'll always be a fan; Bill Brister of Bugformance.
He would take all the time in the world to teach us whatever we were trying to learn..

I remember reading HotVWs All About Performance VW Engines (version 1) back in the late 80s,

Then, when All About II came out, I was taking CalTrain from Mountain View to SF for work every day.
I read that thing every single trip for an entire winter; memorized EVERY WORD.

How else would anyone learn things back then?

There was no STF, Cal-look, Samba, etc..


When i finally saved my money and 'splurged' on the Berg Blue books (it wasn't actual parts, you know..  ;))
It changed my way of thinking forever.
Mr. Bergs writings on how to make a powerful engine survive on the street long-term resonate to this day.

Sure, we mostly use our aircoolers as toys now,
And don't drive them every day to work,
but,
when some stroke on one of these forums tries to bash on the Berg Blue Bible,
I still take it as a deep personal insult..

Back in the old days,
When you couldn't associate with like-minded people online every day like we are doing here now,
Aircooled VW was like a secret society, or perhaps, a religion..

Billy @ Bugformance Sunnyvale was a wonderful guy. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He was a customer of mine for many years, always one of my favorites. If you still talk to him, please say Hi for me and wish him a Merry Christmas.
Ray Schubert @ Volks Authority is another one of my very favorite guys, we still talk on an almost daily basis.
Donsco was fun to visit.

Jim

I learned a lot in the 90's reading the specs of cars in HotVW s and Trends, plus the tech articles in those with a lot of pictures.
Used to read those and mark them so I could find them back.

Also as you, learned a lot from an old mechanic, who could repair everything on a car with a 'hammer and screwdriver' as we liked to say.
Not even a beetle mechanic, but learned the most form him... priceless tips..

Please continue!

In the beginning and for a long time afterwards, I was making $5.00 an hour working counter and phones @ BH in 1990-91. The previous job, working graveyard @ Colombo Sourdough I was making $18.00 an hour. I was 19 years old. I would have worked for free in the beginning @ Buggy House, simply because I was exposed daily, no, make that hourly, to all the stuff I had read about in Hot VW's... the parts, the brands, the engine stuff, the people. This wasn't a job. I look back now, and it really never was a job, in the traditional sense. Not sure what it was, but this wasn't work.

Misfire: 278 degrees @ .050" in an otherwise mild street engine. Spring 1991

In 3-4 days, UPS pulled alongside the freight door in the south-facing wall of Buggy House, right on time. Among the TMI interior boxes and Jerry's RC car parts from Great Planes, there was a shoe-box sized box from Johnny's. We didn't stock items regularly from Johnny's so I knew it was my Engle VZ35 cam. It was now time to make the list of other parts needed and schedule the transplant.
This would be the first time I'd gut the lower end of the 2054 since it went together, and in my mind, it was like starting over from scratch, so the list of parts went something like this:

KS STD/10 main bearings for the Demello welded 74mm
KS STD rod bearings
2 sets of Metal Leve stock cam bearings or 1 set of dual thrust, depending on what was on the shelf
1 set of Scat lifters
1 Sabo 1600 gasket set
1 fresh tube of high-temp RTV
2 cans of VHT black-oxide engine case paint
1 tube of moly engine assembly grease
1 case of Kendall 30wt non-detergent

Once I had my box of parts etc, the boxes went in the front trunk and passenger seat of the Fiat X19. That night I began the job of stripping the engine from the top, disconnecting the oil-lines, draining the cold green Kendall and lowering the long-block from the car. This was before I owned my own engine stand, so most of the engine disassembly was done on my parents' garage floor, in dim lighting. Imagine chasing an oily VW shortblock around on a cold garage floor, trying to extract a Melling oil pump, without the VW puller tool. And without first remembering to loosen the M8 nuts around the edge of the engine case. It was a hard fought, losing battle. The shortblock slid in ellipses, around my parents' garage, like a drunk iceskater that was bleeding green engine oil. Eventually I gave up and resigned. I was going to have to drag the mess to work and admit defeat, and ask for help. Which I hated doing.

This makes me feel extra proud of the huge old workbench in the garage at my mom's house, as though it's somehow better to have the motor sliding around at about chest level. Glad you're still up for writing a bit here and there! And happy new year!

Misfire: 278 degrees @ .050" in an otherwise mild street engine. Spring 1991 (Part II)

I look back and find it somewhat disturbing that nobody involved at the time, tried to stop me. Either nobody was paying attention, nobody knew any better or maybe nobody cared. Looking back now, had I witnessed what was about to happen, I would have strung a tripwire immediately. I think everybody at the shop had their own stuff to worry about at the time.
In a few days, I had transported my shortblock to Buggy House, and on my lunch break, enlisted our engine guy Rob's help. Within a few minutes, he made quick and easy work of (first undoing all the M8 nuts around case) using a claw-looking tool to remove oil pump and also an air gun to whizz the gland nut loose so I could pull flywheel off. Of course he asked me why I was taking the motor apart after only a few months of getting it running after the addition of the Pauter Machine ported heads. I told him I was swapping the Engle 125 out for a VZ35. His only comment was "that cam is only going to want to accelerate, good f-cking luck driving it." Best news I had heard yet.

Over the next few nights, I built up the engine, using as much care and patience as I could. But really knowing nothing other than to keep things ultra clean, and to follow torque specs in one of the manuals I had. I have no idea how I avoided cam-lobe to lifter interference, or if I even checked it. The VZ35 has something like 0.445"+ lift at the lobe, so I guess the head on the Scat lifter was designed for this. The engine went together pretty easily. Considering what most of us know about the VZ cams, and that the -35 was at the head of the class when it came to violence and chaos, how stupid was it of me to not go through and replace and shim up a good set of dual springs. Nope, I simply bolted the heads back on, using the same outer spring and flat damper inner that came with the heads when I bought them. Coil bind? Never heard of him.

To avoid the fury and fists with my parents' neighbor, I thought I'd grow up and extend a modicum of courtesy to the guy and walk next door and let him know I had a brand new Engle VZ35 cam in my VW and that it had to be broken in at 2500 rpm for 20-30 minutes,-  this coming Friday night. He just gave me a blank "OK" and that was it.

Friday night came and a few undone details had to be finished up, stuff like throttle cable and wiring up coil and alternator. After pouring Kendall non detergent 30 into the motor and the Fram HP1, it was time to light this off. Three, two, one, pump throttle and turn the key and instantly the night air was punctured with the strident sound of Webers>dual Phoenix quiet packs>lots of valvetrain. I walked quickly back to the carbs and screwed up the idle until my 914 tach was showing 2500 or so RPM. It wasn't just noise, it was a sensation you could feel in the hollow parts of your body. My bones could feel the engine thrumming and hammering away, a rough texture of staccato exhaust, carb gargle and the thrash of the rockers getting worked like never before. Soon the garage grew warm and began to smell like heated VHT paint and Weber idle fumes. No sign of the neighbor yet, only 18 more minutes of this, and I can shut it down. Oil pressure gauge is showing 60psi, oil temp is just beginning to wake up, no drips yet. No funny sounds. But man, this thing sounds DIFFERENT.
Different enough for me to feel doubtful. After the break in period was over, and with no interference from the neighbor or Pleasanton's finest, I felt safe in turning the idle down and adjusting mixtures. With my synco-meter snail I set the idle right @ 1100 rpm and realized this was a whole new motor now. The 125 had always given a serious engine note at idle, but in comparison, it was civilized to what was in front of me now. The motor with the VZ35 had an almost tribal-dance beat to it at idle. The mixture screws didn't react like they had with 125 either. With the 125 it was 1-1/4 turns or so and things were dead on. The new cam seemed to not allow the carbs to decide where they wanted to be, as 1-1/4 turn out sort of brought the idle into place, but it was iffy. And then it would get ruffly and oscillate. I had never dealt with that before. What in the hell?
By now it was far too late to button things up for a test drive. I'd be pushing my luck with the neighbor. Instead I finished up, put the decklid on and planned on driving it to work the next day.

I can't wait to read the rest of this story  ;D

I'm glad this is stored in a database now for the future to read also :-)

Misfire: 278 degrees @ .050" in an otherwise mild street engine. Spring 1991 (Part III)

The following morning found me in the garage a little earlier than normal, as the somewhat ragged idle and angry engine note had left me with some doubts about how well this new cam would be accepted by the engine. In all seriousness, I had very little, idea of what I had just done, by vacating the W125 and moving in the VZ35. As mentioned a few posts above, I fell under the spell of just 3 pieces of the pie here:
a. 0.490" lift at valve
b. 309 degree duration
c. no need to invest in high-ratio rockers

I don't even ever remember seeing the 278 degree at 0.050" lift entry in the JSC catalog, or on the cam card. I had yet to buy a dial indicator and had no clue as to what "checking cam timing" meant. These were all numbers and chores that "didn't matter" unless you were manufacturing cams. A guy as smart as I was didn't need to be bothered.

And something else here- and let this be a lesson to those that don't take the time to read, understand, re-read and study things like this, and also to some of the manufacturers out there!
I had yet to stick my nose in any of the Gene Berg literature (this was coming soon though). I had thumbed through a blue catalog at work, but there was so much to read, and from what I had actually read, it seemed very opinionated and maybe even forceful in what it had to say. I couldn't have my spirit broken with all that "you must..." and "only at the time of ordering all your engine parts from us..." hassle. So I didn't pursue reading it much more (but in a few months that would change). So instead, when it came to cams, and what they were for, and description, the "less is more" tactic was perfect. In the Engle book or the JSC book or the SCS book, there were no foreboding warnings of valve spring early death, or keeper grooves wallowing out, or matching heads and compression to the cam. They gave you the numbers (which I only understood, maybe 1/3 of them, really) and the layperson's description of their intended use. How could a guy go wrong with such concise and simple information?

The initial drive off, in first gear, leaving my parents' house, wasn't all that bad. Not even that different from the W125 incarnation. If anything, the engine, at this load and low rpm, just seemed less refined and more present. Like the engine was now in the back seat, as far as noise. There was a more chunky, mechanical noise-quality to the sound and feel. As the engine was cold, I was very careful going through the gears as I headed west to I-680 near Bernal in Pleasanton. So far, this seemed ok. I headed north, getting on the 680 onramp, engine still cold, so I proceeded with care, with light throttle and clicking from 2nd to 3rd to 4th at maybe 3000-3200 rpm. In a few miles, it was time to take the 580 exit, which is a tight sweeping offramp which loops you back under 680 freeway and spits you onto a long, slightly uphill approach ramp to merge onto 580. By then the oil temp gauge had come off its peg. As I exited the curve, in 2nd gear, I squeezed some throttle on- and waited. At around 35-3800 the engine almost STALLED. The hesitation was so bad, the car's nose drooped for a split second, and I remember glancing in rear view mirror to look for parts leaving the car or fuel or maybe the whole motor fell out? And then, all hell broke loose. In the time it took me to focus on the lane ahead of me and get composed the motor was screaming and the 914 tach was swinging like crazy way beyond 6,000. Into third, but revs never fell much so it just PULLED. But now into fourth and back out of it some, as I had no clue in hell what had just happened. And now in fourth the engine was running like a plug wire was off then on then off then on. Again, around 3500. Applying more throttle, no change, until the revs came up and then it was too late, as I'd be right up on some minivan's rear bumper.
My first thought was I didn't get the carbs sorted, as I was rushing after all, and looking over my shoulder for the mean-ass neighbor.
No problem, I'll get it to the shop, and on my lunch break, go through setting them again.

So lunch break came and I asked Jerry if I could borrow his Unisyn. ("What in the hell for??!" [as if there are multiple uses for one?]). After pulling KN air cleaner off the 44's and going through the entire procedure again, I found, really, nothing to be "off", as I made it run with basically the same settings it had been dialed in with. Maybe a vacuum leak? I grab each carb and gave them a tug to make sure a manifold wasn't loose. Nope. Grabbed some brake cleaner and sprayed around base of manifolds as the engine idled, no change. Ok maybe it's ignition related. Checked all the connections, nothing seemed off. Checked static timing with the "blue spark" method, no, it was pretty much dead on, 10 deg BTDC. So now what??? Maybe there was crap in the fuel. I'll go drive the life out of it with the time left in my lunch break.
Which found me chugging and faltering along the MacArthur freeway, west out of Hayward. Right at the usual cruising rpm, the engine missed, bucked, choked and hiccupped and then became uncaged and went full kill. This was going to be a huge problem.

i can SOOOO relate to all this  ;D

Doesn't this sound like the perfect engine for a street warrior?  ;D ;D

There are a lot of parallels to my own VW career. When I was 18, I took a minimum wage part time job at a VW parts store (Smokin' Small Car Parts) that was about 25 miles from my house. During the year or so that I worked there, I'm sure I spent more than I made. I also have a lot of fond memories of working on my car in the street or my parents driveway without the proper tools or knowledge. The first time I put an engine together, I didn't have a piston ring compressor so i just used my fingers and ended up cutting my finger tips pretty badly on the rings. I also spent a couple of frigid days swapping a swingaxle transmission in the street, in the snow. Good times!

Smokin' Small Car Parts!
On The East Side of I-25, huh?

I remember that place!

Correct! When I worked there, it was off 104th and Irma Dr. About 2 miles east of I-25.

Please, time for a up date.

Misfire: 278 degrees @ .050" in an otherwise mild street engine. Spring 1991 (Part IV)

I'm sure many of you have experienced the war within yourselves.... when you know at your core that you've made a real mess of things with your car, but that cheap, insincere voice in your head keeps throwing ideas out that aren't actually going to fix anything... at best the "fixes" from the little voice might merely mask the issue.

This was now the situation I was in with the revamped engine and my choice to gut the W125 Engle out of it, and replace it with a VZ35. What was a visceral, yet velvety smooth running street engine was now reduced to a misfiring and basically undriveable waste of time and money, and 90% of me knew it. The lame 10% of me figured a jet change would be the magic answer. Carburetors are made for adjusting and fiddling with , look at all the screws on them. The ability to turn a screw will of course negate any issues with too much overlap, too little compression, and the intake charge not knowing which direction to head in.

The upcoming weekend, a Goodguys VW show and shine near the beach in beautiful Ventura, CA. All the shows I had been to in the past were always landlocked affairs at a racetrack or fairgrounds, somewhere inland. My brain conjured images of seeing my VW tucked in with the cool cars of Southern CA, glistening under the setting sun, in the shadows of gently waving palm trees, the air perfumed with girls wearing Coppertone sunscreen. Somehow I had to make my car run well (enough) over the next few days, so I could make this daydream real.

Are you trying to tease us, Sir Ratto.  ;)

I just hope we don’t have to wait another 2 months. I was beginning to loose interest.

work and family commitments have consumed a lot of my old free time. I still enjoy thinking about these early days and all that was going on, however trying to find time to do anything VW related is proving to be very difficult this year.

No problem. Same thing for everyone. Family, work, friends, house  get in the way and hobbies are put on back burner  ;)

Just keeping this on the 1st page and hopefully not let it die.

VZ35 and the long drive from Bay Area to Ventura

Just south of the city of Gilroy, on US-101 is a slight uphill grade that crests near CA-129 west, and the small mission town of San Juan Bautista, and then funnels into the upper mouth of the Salinas Valley. It was near 10:30pm and my friend Jason and I were miserable already. As we passed the last few exits of Salinas, he had to ask me, "Is you car ok dude?" I knew why he was asking. Interstate 101 in this part of CA was and still is, only 2 lanes going each way, and it's often slowed to 50-55 by the crawling procession of agricultural trucks and trailers. At this slow speed, the new version of the 2054 in my car was absolutely useless. There was now a very wide window of crucial RPM where this new engine did nothing more than buck, hesitate, cough and go through fuel at an alarming rate. I had become silent in my ever increasing rage and embarrassment as the car hiccupped along for what was going on 2 hours now. I didn't even answer Jason, I just stared ahead, wondering why in the hell we were doing this trip anyway. By King City (about 40 minutes later) I had had it. Enough. We pulled off 101 into a Chevron station to get more fuel (again) and I told Jason "I need to change something, we're going to be here for a half hour. Just hang out." In my driver's door panel pocket I had a greasy bag of Weber main jets. In my stupidity, I decided $20 worth of main jets would eventually mask the mistake of changing out the cam. During the week leading up to this Saturday night, I was kidding myself, spending all my time chasing this bucking and hesitation by screwing different main jets in and out of my 44 IDF's. And none of them did a damn thing. But being hardheaded and still not willing to publicly admit I had a ton to learn, I kept trying and re-trying the same jets. "Maybe at this sea level, these 145's will do the trick...", "It's going through fuel like a mother, maybe it needs to be leaned out..."
All of this was wrong and completely desperate.
I stood there in the cold farm air, under the glare of the gas station lighting, fumbling around with extracting emulsion tubes up and out, from in between the air stacks and the A-frame bracket that held filter lids on. Twenty minutes of getting madder and madder. A horsefly kept circling and divebombing my neck. The sound of the diesel trucks entering the highway, the cold, the late hour.... it all just added to the frustration. And I knew deep down inside this was a complete waste of time.
And it was.
Jason had hoofed it over to the Denny's down the street and had returned with a strawberry milkshake for himself and some cheap shitty coffee for me. I hadn't even swapped the jets into the emulsion tubes yet. "How's it going? Is this going to fix it"
None of this was his fault, but I was seething mad. I swear, in that cold night air, I must have had steam coming off of me. All I could say was "I don't f-cking know right now"

A half hour later, my bad coffee was now cold. Jason's shake was gone. And I was thumbing the wingnuts back on the K&N's. I almost just knew it was going to be worse. I just didn't know how much worse.
The long onramp back to 101-S gave me hope. But I had put my foot into it, and there was nothing else this engine was accepting of, other than a nice big slice of wide open throttles. That frigid midnight valley air was shattered by the deep and lusty howl as the 914 tach bounced and jumped around to "6" and beyond. But of course we were back to dealing with the lettuce trucks and the other slow moving vehicles. So it was either down into third and then back off, or stay in fourth. We passed the exit for 198 east, and it hit me how much farther our trip was. We had barely made a dent in the big picture of this night drive. And the jetting change had only made this night much, much worse.
In an hour, we had the Cuesta Grade to contend with.
"All Jason's fault. He talked me into going tonight. He doesn't have one f-cking idea of what the hell is wrong, and there he just sits, staring out the f-cking window. Him and that f-cking milkshake." It was a tapeloop in my head. Oh look we need gas again!!

And we were only in San Luis Obispo.

Sounds unpleasant to say the least... Glad you're still up for writing a bit every now and again!

A mate of mine once said that the more you get into old Volkswagens, the more you hate them. He was several years and tens of thousands of pounds into a build that I still don't think is finished, so I think I know where he was coming from!
Its reading things like this that makes me glad I'm far too lazy to change cams just for the hell of it!

Thanks for the update. I’ve not been checking in as of late due to health issues. Help keep my enthusiasm up. Got a few more months of recovery from liver transplant before doc will kick me loose. I need these words of wisdm.

VZ35 and the long drive from Bay Area to Ventura and then back home Spring 1991

In the last installment, my friend Jason and I were bucking and burping our way down Interstate 101 in my terribly running car, on a miserable and dark 7+ hour drive south from the SF Bay Area, to Ventura CA, for a VW show and shine near the beach. We were using a ridiculous amount of fuel and having to stop very frequently to refuel, and for me to try, in vain, to make my car run closer to correctly. The back story was, I got tempted, and ended up ruining a good thing, by falling prey to the "big numbers" on the page of Engle cams in the old Johnny's Speed and Chrome book. What this means, is I swapped out my good old Engle 125, out of a perfectly running, new 94 x 74 motor, in exchange for an Engle VZ35. Now that I look back, I have to wonder how many VZ35 have actually sold since 1991. Maybe 4?

In any case, when you're in your twenties, and you're having a good time, you're able to stay up all night. Life is good and you don't want to give up the fun in exchange for sleep. But when things are wrong, and it's late, cold and your car is running as poorly as mine was, every passing 30 minutes after 12:00am adds to the desperation. By 3:30am we were within 40-50 miles of Santa Barbara. The plan was to get to Ojai (just northeast of Ventura) and spend the night at Jason's cousin's place. We were probably an hour and half away still. The long stretch as 101 seems to continue south (though in reality, it's due east) south of Buelton is flat and and arrow-straight, skirting the beach and the Pacific Ocean on your right. It's also windy through here, almost any time of the year. Above 75mph in a swingaxle, rear-engine VW isn't a great idea. So here we were, being blown about, managing to stay right in the thick of the RPM range where this cam was making me most frustrated. Steady state cruising was actually impossible, as the engine would begin to miss, then it would get worse and then violently buck, enough so that the glovebox door would fall open. You hear the seatcback beating against the fenderwells. If I just feathered the throttles open slightly, it would sneeze through the carbs and hiccup and then begin to accelerate. Then the wind would kick us out of our lane and I'd have to back off. And the entire cycle would start over.

Compare this to earlier in the story, when Frank and I were bombing down Interstate 5 to Los Angeles, November 1990 and how well the car was running then.

By 5:00am we had made our way NE on CA 33 into the small hippie city of Ojai. The sun was just beginning to paint the area with brushstrokes of morning light. Lots of oak trees and houses with rock walls and shade. It looked and felt like a sleepier Berkeley CA. We arrived at Jason's cousin's place, one of the ubiquitous oak-tree/rock-wall places a few streets off the highway. She had waited up all night for us (wow, now I felt really bad). She also said she'd like to join us at the show and when were we going?
No sleep, out of patience and having spent way more than I had planned on fuel.... I was at the point where I didn't care. I was questioning inside, why we, no, make that I, was even here. I calculated in my head that the time it took to drive all the way down to Ojai, I could have had the engine out of the car and split wide open to remove this big mistake of a cam.

At 7:30am we left for Ventura, which is maybe a 30 minute, mostly downhill drive. The downhill actually masked a lot of the tuning issues with the car. The show was being hosted at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, right at the shoreline, and despite the time of year, and the location, it was already sunny out. The show first impressed me to be a smaller affair, but similar to the Bug Bash show and shine held yearly at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The difference being the beach atmosphere. As you might imagine in your mind, all the ingredients were there.... crashing, foamy eastward waves crashing on sand and rock, tall palm trees photogenically growing against the backdrop of a cobalt blue sky. It really was a cool place for one of these events. I anticipated the DKP cars I expected to see would look right at home in this setting.

We parked my car and didn't bother with the usual dusting and misting with spray detailer. I was too pissed at the car to care. I guess my only comfort to be found was Jason, nor obviously, his younger cousin had any fundamental idea of how well my car SHOULD have run on the trip south. For all they knew, the car actually ran and rolled and to them, maybe that was enough. But not for me.
And in my foul mood, I walked through the show, not much mattering, not much making any impression at all. Maroon lowered Buses with polished 5 spoke fake Empis and loud woofers, and powder blue Bugs tilted up at an unnatural angle on jackstands over a mirror. I fought my way here for those cold dark hours for this? And there was still the ride back home tonight!!

Across the show area and the crowd I saw something familiar, a salmon-tan Sedan roof with a grey folded ragtop. As we walked closer, more of the car became visible. I now saw the blue decal in the lower front corner of the rear quarter window. It was the coral-red Bug with the BRM's and the 1776, what was the guy's name again?? My friend Frank always referred to him as Fishwagen, but I knew that was wrong. It was the car I first saw in Costa Mesa, then Bakersfield, then Phoenix. Schwimmer! Bill Schwimmer, that's the guy. I remembered from the Hot VW's article on this car and the white Oval and the maroon '67, all with those never-seen, antique BRM wheels. Bill's car was a well-presented as ever, looking as neat as it always did. Like every time before, now seeing it I noticed details about the car I hadn't before. Unlike shows today, Bill's car was the only car present this day which really oozed whatever it was his car had. Yes it was "all business" but it was beyond that. Racecars are also "all business" but Bill's car took it a step much further. Seeing it here near the shore, against the ocean, it really hit me how "right" this car was.
To Jason and his cousin, it was just another nice VW, but that was it. They were growing impatient with me crawling around and under it and advising them of it's Berg DCNF carbs and one-off turbo muffler that I wanted so badly. So we moved on.
Besides Bill's car, the show was a major bore. We left the Fairgrounds by late morning and decided to go find a beach near Santa Barbara to kick back at. We headed up 101, with fuel gauge hovering just under 1/2 tank. In an hour or so, we were sitting on a beach somewhere north of Santa Barbara watching a group of people playing volleyball. By the mid-afternoon I was getting a twinge of anxiety to get headed home. It was Sunday afternoon and I had to work early Monday morning. And the driver home, somehow, I knew would be much worse than the drive here.

Jim, that sounds like a thoroughly miserable experience. I can't think of anyone that I've ever heard of who has used a VZ35 - after reading that I don't think I ever will!
It sounds like the sort of road trip that could out someone off cars altogether. I think about all the people I've met over the last 25 years who have given up and sold their hobby cars and wonder if it was an event like you describe that made them think "this just isn't for me any more"?

This was one of many over the next 30+ years! But the good times, when the car just comes uncaged and the time is there to run it around and get everything out of it, it can give, makes me stay in this hobby. As I get older, it does seem more and more ridiculous and in vain, but I imagine it will always mostly be fun. Keeping the car keeps these memories pretty vibrant too. Which forces me to learn from these horrible mistakes.

Looks like a good hangover. When you wake up after a too good party and you head feels like somebody is crushing your head in a vice...
Growing older teach you to keep it more reasonable. Must be the same with bad cam choice  :D

Thanks Jim. This gives me some perspective on component choices. Doctors are about to turn me loose in my shop. Still limited as to what I can do, but I need to get back to my projects. 92 x 76, 120 cam, & 40 Dellortos on CB Panchito heads. Parts are acquired some assembly required.

RIP Buggy House..  :'(

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2336189 (https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2336189)

Please, it’s time for an update.   ::)

X2
More story telling would be GREAT ✌️

Any updates? Just trying to keep this from disappearing from the front page...

I’ve about given up.

Bumping this up to the top for those who are missing the shows and of course Ratto's writing always bring back my good memories about the fun times with the VW addiction.

VZ35 and the long drive from Bay Area to Ventura and then back home Spring 1991 (return trip)

As my anxiety grew and the Sunday high noon sun began to seek its way to the horizon, I found myself still just silent. Here I was at the polar opposite of the high times of just a few months prior. The trip to Phoenix last fall had gone so well. Obviously this was an utter disaster. Nobody but myself to blame.
We were headed south on US101, along the Southern California coast, straddling the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura. We had to take Jason's cousin back to her pad in Ojai, and then begin the arduous journey, for 6 hours, back to Bay Area. Jason and his cousin engaged in stupid, meaningless banter, while I just drove, completely submerged in my own disgust and anger. While they chit chatted about smoking pot and TV shows, and not paying rent on time, my mind jumped from one unpleasant reality to the next. Unlike Jason, when I returned later that night, I had to keeping mind reporting for a job early the next morning. A job I felt very fortunate to have. At this point, a job I very much needed. I began to conjure a plan of repair, a solution to what had gone so wrong. All I had changed was that damn cam. Everything else was identical, since I had moved to the Pauter ported 40 x 35.5 heads. No change in deck height, no change in valve train. Yes I had jetted the carbs to hell and back, trying to make this car run like it used to, but still remembered my reference point. And in my Dad's cabinet, on the north wall of our garage, was my W125 cam and the Scat lifters that were married to it, marked for location. It was that easy. Split this open, maybe as soon as tomorrow night, wash everything, and drop the 125 back in and move on. Forget the whole ordeal.
As I had consoled myself out of my own storm, as we burped along @ 65 mph south, the car began to falter. More throttle made it worse. Less throttle made it worse. Then the questions started.
"Dude, NOW what's  wrong with your car?"

We had run out of fuel. Here we were, powerless, slowly coming to a slow roll, along the shore, about 10 miles outside of Ventura. No choice but to pull to shoulder and, I guess, start walking. I sat there just staring ahead. By now it had to be 3-4pm, based on the tint of the sky and the sun's position. This was going to cost us. No, not us, it was going to cost me. I got out, not saying anything, walked around to passenger side of car, and just stared at the sea. How in the hell did I get to this point? My stupidity trying to "go extreme" had landed me here, literally, stuck at some position of despair, and saddled with company I didn't want at the moment. These two had absolutely no idea of the angst building within because of all this. I had flown too close to the sun, and here I stood, stuck and paying the price. My number one problem at the moment was how to get fuel and get the hell home, to be at work the next morning.
And I noticed, these were all problems entirely controlled and hopefully solved by me. Unlike the issues from last year with "her." The very issues I would refuse to allow my brain to process. The very issues that had set me on this path.
Nope, I could wrestle this and win.

Within a half hour, a CHP had spotted us crestfallen on the shoulder, like a dead skunk. He had asked what the trouble was and I explained the car was running terribly, and had run out of fuel, as I had estimated our range all wrong. He asked if I had "triple A", nope. A gas can? Nope. Money? Yeah, I've got cash. He lectured me and said "I'm not supposed to do this but I will give one of you a ride to next exit, you can use the gas can in my trunk, and I'll bring you back. Get whatever is wrong with this thing fixed and get moving."
(yes officer, I'll tear the motor down here on the beach and swap cams and all will be right in the world).
Jason volunteered to make the trip, so I could stay with my car. And so I sat, laden down with the scintillating conversation with his cousin. What took 40 minutes seemed like a bad winter. It was obvious she had no interest, let alone any understanding of what was going on. I avoided any explanation and kept myself occupied watching a bee trying to get nectar from my wiper blade.
After a change in geologic time, the CHP rolled up behind me. Jason brought me the jerry can of fuel and I poured most of it into the tank. Some, of course on the trunk liner. Within 5 minutes I was thanking the cop with a sincere handshake and firing my car up. Probably all psychological, but it seemed "sharper" in its tone and response. The dull idle and lazy yelp had yielded to a more urgent beat and feral feel. The pounding exhaust note was mostly back.
We pulled into southbound traffic, throttles wide. We fired ahead and assumed a place in the left of two lanes. The horizontal rays of the sunset created some new hues on my hood, which I had never noticed. Things were going to be tricky getting home, but I would have time to think and schedule the fix. Best of all, it was time to actually learn what all those camshaft numbers really meant. And why this all turned out so wrong.

I was just about to bemoan the fact that I'd read to the end of the thread and you've updated it. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for taking the time to write and recount all of these hotrod VW experiences Jim! For a long time I thought i was the only one that ever selected the wrong cam for an engine combination and then the aftermath of a poorly running car. For me it was with my first car that was not a VW it was an Oldsmobile that I hotrodded. I overcammed the hell out of that thing on the first engine build and a year later changed the cam. It's funny (funny now but not funny then!!) but I had very similar things happen with that car that happened with yours. I remember feeling the same way that you did and coming to the same conclusions too. Sometimes I think it's part of the journey. My friends still remember most of the experiences as well and they laugh about it today with me. I still had lots of fun with that car and learned so much from building, wrenching and tuning it to finally get it to run very well. It was the hard way to learn but it was a great experience.
Thanks again Jim!

cant wait for the next installment!

Thank you!

Return Home, the Fix with 1-5/8 Header and the 1970 Bus

No need to bore us all with the long, dusty drive home, misfiring away, pointed north up US101. The cities and smaller communities all merged in a long and dark blur. I think I dropped Jason off at his parents' house sometime around 11:30 Sunday night. The drive to my parents' home was no more than 10 minutes east, and these mere ten minutes were bordering on an experience in hell. Back in late December I had driven down to GBE from the Bay Area to buy a GB6710 shifter, to replace the Scat Dragfast. The new shifter never went in quite right, getting first instead of third was a gamble. At the intersection of Santa Rita Rd and Black Ave, light went green and I am in no mood for drama. Of course, I was in third instead of first, and stall the motor. A twist of the key to light it back off results in nothing. Twist again, nothing. The VDO gauge install meant I ditched the stock speedo and the generator and oil pressure lights. Stupid move for obvious reasons. But here I sat, near midnight, stuck in an intersection. And out patience.
Luckily a shove start across the crown of Santa Rita fired he motor off in second gear. I didn't care if the goddamn wheels fell off, I just wanted the car to get me home. From there I didn't care what happened to it.
Except I did care.
A few minutes later, I idled into my spot in my parents' garage and nudged the brake pedal to stop the car. And the pedal went to the floor with a slow hiss. I would have at this point, paid to watch someone crush this car flat.

I went into work the next day, carrying the weight of the world on my back. Everyone was going to pester me about the trip to Ventura and where was my car? Not only was I exhausted, and defeated, but also ashamed. But I planned on sticking with my schedule. I'd pull the motor and just transplant the VZ35 out and the W125 back in.

Buggy House serviced the smaller independent foreign repair shops within a few miles in all directions. In the early 1990's, small-import-car repair shops were proliferate in Hayward, Castro Valley and San Leandro. Just south of BH, was Mike's Car Service, which rose to local fame doing VW air cooled repair, but also did Japanese. A variety of characters ran the place and I liked all of them. One guy, Mark, was known for his wild eye gaze and for some of his personal rides. One was an El Camino 396. Another was a 411 Fastback with a 3.0L 911 motor and real Empi 8 spokes. And there was also the story of the pan with the 2180 48IDA motor (which, sometime after midnight, one night, he drove through the Alameda-Oakland Webster Tube tunnel at well over 100mph, just to illustrate his good judgement). Another guy was Lee that wore flip flops to work on cars. And another guy was Eduardo, who was probably the nicest of all of them, but spoke very broken English. He drove a scab-blood red colored 1970 Bus that looked it had been through a nuclear war. But on this Monday, as he pulled up in it, in front of BH, it hit me. I needed a Bus. But not one of the early model Buses which I found too primitive. I wanted a '69-'71, the bigger body, the more modern interior and dash and the Type 1 style motor. My thought was a Bus could easily haul parts and tools, could serve as a place to camp, or even a place to live temporarily. And how cool would a mildly hot rodded place to live be? If a Bug could be made to run, then a Bus could be improved too. But first things first.... finding one.
So that Monday I asked Eduardo, where could a kid like me find a Bus like his red blood clot colored version? And I learned he was actually selling his: $300. And it had a "new" motor. (!)

Though I had every intention of dealing with the letdowns with my own Bug, I needed the distraction of the idea of buying the '70 Bus. I had the cash stashed at home, I had never heard of a car sold so cheap. Since it has a new motor, I could keep working on my '67 and give my Fiat X19 a much needed break.

That Monday night, once home, I wrote out my nightly schedule for the week, to attempt to return my '67 back to a better tune. Once done scrawling it out I hung it on the north garage wall, above the workbench. And then I began the engine extraction. Which meant digging into getting 13mm intake manifold nuts off. And draining oil from the AN8 hoses without making the garage floor a slip and slide of Kendall 40W. It meant wrestling the dressed longblock out on a much too small floorjack and hefting it up onto the engine stand. Which all happened that Monday night, and I fought my through stripping the motor to its bones- picking wrist pin spiral locks out, pulling oil pump out, and bagging everything up to drag to work the next morning. The VZ35 cam and its Scat lifter friends looked mostly new. The grey parkerizing on the cam had just started to thin at some of the lobe noses. I unbolted the gear and put the cam back in the box it came in. Lifters went in the trash, as I had no plans, ever to run the cam ever again. Ever. Here I was again, a pile of oily parts, and my car disabled once again, on jackstands, its ass in the air.

Each night, after work, I made progress. By Friday night, the longblock, now with W125 cam,  was clothed in its fan housing and now had a Fourtuned/Phoenix 1-5/8" brand new header bolted to it. Buggy House was now stocking the 1-1/2" and 1-5/8" competition headers (we had, up until that point, stocked single and dual can street header systems, and for some reason the dual mufflers for the merged systems). I think I bought the first one we received from Phoenix. I also bucked up for all new bearings, mains, rod and cam, since the motor was apart, and the parts were cheap. And I didn't want issues.

And by this Friday, the Bus was now mine. I had given Eduardo three one hundred dollar bills and he transferred title, and keys over to me. In fact I drove it home, leaving the Fiat at Buggy House Friday night. Driving a Bus, my first time, was a big shakeup from driving an X19. It wandered terribly at any speed above 35-40 mph. Any input to the steering didn't seem to mean much, at least for the first 45 degrees of steering angle. And it was slow. It felt as if the engine was actually intended for a scale version of the Bus. I actually felt bad as I drove east on 580 up the grade into Dublin. By the summit, I was struggling to maintain 45mph. Was this a mistake or what? Why on earth would anyone tolerate driving one of these? I had thrown $300 of 48IDA money away. A smell of burnt clutch and burnt oil began to pour from the heater channels. Once off the freeway and idling @ stoplight @ Hopyard, I found the oil pressure light firmly on. Not glowing or blinking, but on like a noon sun. I knew this wasn't good.

But I knew how to build a motor for the Bus.

Finally......so nice to read a Jim Ratto story again. Thank you, it's been way to long

cool, hoping for more...

Thank you so much! No looking foreword to checking in every day now.

Thansk Jim!

Oil Screen Tells the Truth; 1970 Bus (late April 1991)

The weekend was a mixed bag. The Bug's motor was up and running again, no leaks or drips and a much quieter valvetrain. In the earlier posts I had blindly and stupidly exchanged the W125 Engle cam I had originally built the motor with an Engle VZ35. As the journey to Ventura and back proved, this was a ghastly mistake. So the engine ran, but I had found the wire to starter solenoid (from ign switch) was apt to falling off, as the female connector seemed to have issues. And again, in an act of immature stupidity, I just slid the connector back on it's terminal and moved to the no brake pressure issue. I found a small puddle of brake fluid under RR wheel and traced it up to the RH axle tube and back of spring plate. The metal brake line between tang on axle tube and wheel cylinder had been rubbing on RH KYB Gas A Just shock, and had been sawn apart. Luckily, it happened as I was idling into the garage. This one couldn't be short cut fixed, so I bought a new brake line at Pleasanton Auto Supply, massaged it into a close to correct shape and bled the brakes.

But the Bus was another long list of issues to wrestle. It now sat parked at the curb, in between my parents' house and our super friendly, loud VW-loving neighbors house. I almost felt the eyes on me as soon as I parked it there. Sure, it was a complete eyesore, but then again so was he and his wife was no better. A silent, dead Bus couldn't be any less harmless. But in short order, the complaints started. By Saturday night, he was at my parents' door, demanding "that thing" be moved out of his eyesight. My parents pleaded with me to move it but I flat refused. Instead, I started working on it, Sunday morning, while parked in situ. I crawled under its ass end and removed drain plug, allowed a thick metallic grey stream to flow. Removing the sump plate and screen told a bad story with a worse ending. This motor was done. The sump plate and strainer both had what looked like valve grinding paste piled on both. The drops of oil now dripping from open sump had a sandy feel between my index finger and thumb. New motor my ass. So in an effort to really twist the screws to my next door neighbor, I began the engine removal on the poor Bus. Just the sound of rolling a floor jack down the driveway, along the sidewalk and into the street I knew was probably enough to light him up. Maybe it was time to turn some music on too. Walk Among Us, the 1982 album, from Glenn Danzig and the Misfits seemed appropriate. And so I toiled away, working to unbolt the motor, strip it to its guts, and make sense of what I had to work with. By the time I was yanking on the rear carrier with the motor on the jack, the neighbor was standing quietly in his yard, watching the proceedings. I knew he was there, but I said nothing. I drug the motor (on the jack) into my garage and stripped it down to shortblock form, and hefted it onto my engine stand. What a contrast from the '67's engine. Where I was conscious to use at least all same 13mm nylock nuts to close case, this motor had a potpourri of hardware, obviously retrieved from greasy coffee cans in a desperate mad dash to make it run by some deadline (I later learned the motor was built on the side of some desert road in Arizona where the Bus was stranded, no surprise there). Once down to the crank I found badly scored number 2 main that was also very loose in the case saddles. I knew the score marks were bad but I wasn't well educated enough to understand the significance of the loose crush.

I forgot to mention in the last post, earlier in the week at work, I had found a blue Gene Berg 1990-91 catalog, along with  yellow 1982 Gene Berg catalog at work. I asked the boss "mind if I read through these?" He didn't care. More on what this lead to, next time.

reading a Berg cataolg (and later the tech and instruction book) changed my VW life forever

“I personally” really enjoyed Gene’s writing!  ;D

My first read of the Berg books scared me to death. It I didn’t do everything exactly his way, my motor was going to self-destruct and the blow-by would fatally wound unsuspecting bystanders. With that said, there was a lot of really solid information there that helped me a lot.
Enjoying the story Jim. Keep it up

Enjoyed reading this Jim thanks for taking the time to get it down.

Thanks Jim . . . lookin' forward to the next installment!  8)

For a little bit of “where were you at the time” photography I believe this road trip to Mecca with my current car was around the same time. Pictured was during my visit to get the new at the time 2” Jaytech drop spindles installed which are still on my white bug.

the puma project from SCS

 ;)

So I was a little out with the time frame, after looking thru my old paperwork I found only my handwritten note about that visit to SCS. It was the summer of '86.
Looks like the engine in the Puma is out for a swap in my pic. Cool that they ran it both on the street and the strip!

Not sure if anyone remembers the auto mall that SCS was part of, but it impressed the hell out of me then with all the capabilities they had handy there.
I asked at SCS if they could fix an oil leak that had developed on my Bug Spray equipped low buck 68 Bug and they said, "No time", but pointed across the lot to another small shop.
I headed over there and the guy (maybe someone knows who it was?) took my car and asked me to wait in the waiting room at the shop.

Meanwhile a young woman started chatting me up, asking me about the VW and telling me about her car problems, while I was thinking, "why is she still talking to me, and why is her hair so big??"
She went on... "ever heard of a guy called Rob Lowe, he's an actor and a real jerk! I dated him and he's no good, she said". Right, I nodded, wondering how my car is going.

The mechanic came over shaking his head, showing me the single port skinny fan that was in my dual port, custom Berg motor, with their 200 cfm Bugspray carb and Truehaft blue flat pack header, while grabbing a new wide fan that was hanging on the workshop wall.
"You won't make it up the grapevine with this!" he said, also noting the leaky oil cooler that he replaced, "and I'm putting 40 weight Kendall in it, you will need it in this heat!!"

All this made me feel pretty good about heading back north to Canada in the Beetle. The service was amazing! I found another receipt from a small shop in West LA who bled and adjusted the brakes since we couldn't figure out how to get pedal for the back brakes and were leaving plenty of room in front of us while zipping around the freeways before that. $20 paid in Travellers cheques did the trick and we were stopping on all 4 wheels, yay!

Time to move this to the top again. I get the feeling the whole forum is dieing.

Yeah, it's been very ghost-town-ish lately... I need to put together my write-up on the trip I took back in October, I know at least a few people were excited about that.

I hope people are in their garage, working hard to complete their projects for next year  :D

This whole website is dying since about 5 years sadly. A few have tried to keep it up but it didn't change most members have lost interest, so we've all dropped the towel and lost motivation.

In 2016 we've tried to make propositions to set something up for the 10 years of The Lounge, but seeing the lack of enthusiasm (to say the least...) the idea got, it was already showing the direction things were going.

We still checking every day ...

me too...

Sacramento Bug A Rama May 1991 coming up, what if we go racing?

I read some of the comments about the Lonuge or the scene dying off, sorry if you guys are seeing/feeling that. I think this is a weird year for everybody and what has taken place globally, not to mention locally, IS having an effect on people psychologically. But we don't need to go into that bad news here. Just something to keep in mind I guess.

Back to sometime during the spring of 1991, post-disastrous trip down the California coast to Ventura and back. We're going to skip ahead just a bit and that takes us to an after hours bullshit session, in the Buggy House office, about an hour after closing time. The shop manager, Mark was still there and Frank had stopped by to hang out or pick me up or pick up parts or something. We were sitting around in wheeled, ragged office chairs, listening to Mark reminisce about his earlier VW years, around 1978-into early 1980's, in the East Bay. At the time Mark drove a blue sedan with widened glass fenders and wide tires, powered by an 1835 with a K8 Engle, way too much compression and 48mm Webers. Mark and his car were part of a small, but exclusive performance VW club, Der Kleiner Lowen, for a short period of time. As we all know, a lot of these stories from days gone by get wildly embellished, but Mark made it sound like this was your usual army of like-minded misfit guys with Bugs, all with high compression and Webers and a lust to get into trouble. All kinds of stories about Friday and Saturday nights cruising and street racing, and Wednesday nights spent clicking off ET's at Baylands in Fremont. And there sat Frank and I, not blinking, listening to Mark like two little kids, once in awhile saying "Dude.... no way... how cool" and the like. And then Mark asks us "Why don't you two and your idiot friends start some kind of club?" Yeah! Good question, but uh, which idiot friends? Especially if we were talking a performance oriented club. I knew very few people, at this point, locally that had any interest in dumping their meager incomes into heads, new case, forged stroker crank, Webers and a gearbox. And even fewer guys with existing, already built, fast VW's. Yeah there were a few kids with 1776's with baby Dells and stuff like that, but nothing like Mark was remembering. Well, nobody that Frank and I knew or would talk to us (Only guys I knew of was Pete Staat, with the blue show car and ARPM motor and a guy that came around only every once in a while, that I had heard ran a 1915 with 48's and an FK89, but didn't know how to get ahold of them). But wait a minute, the big guy, the customer Roger, with the white 1967 sedan. The one, about 6 or 8 months prior, gave me a white knuckled ride down Mission Blvd and back. The car that ran an 82 SPG crank x 94, fuel injection case and full blown Super Flow heads, all in a stock looking Lotus white '67. Roger was a good guy and we had become friendly as he came to the counter and I began to learn how to properly look up parts and count back change. In fact, just weeks prior, I had instigated a Friday night match up, at our "undisclosed location" way off in a remote, dark corner of the extreme East Bay Area between Roger's VW and some mouthy spoiled punk with a "10 second" Chevelle. (More on that night later, I promise).
So I brought up Roger to Mark and Frank, "What about big Rog with the white car? The Super Flow car? He's cool and that car hauls ass. We should talk to him..." Mark kept us there for a good while longer, pulling out his yellowed old pictures and some sketches of his old club logo. He helped us think up very Germanic names and a few logos and suggested we make a flag and have shirts made and host BBQ and show and shines.

And go racing.

And then the questions started... "Jimmy, are you going to race your blue car at Sac? Aren't you going to buy 48's for that car (remember at this time, 48's had been out of production, you couldn't just call Russ at Worldwide and say "I'd like to order a pair of 48 IDAs, here's our account number.."). Mark was fully behind Frank and I not only setting up a new club, but also having the club make its debut at Sac, racing!
"What size motor you got in your blue car Jimmy?"
[ reply: 2054cc]
"that's a short storker in your car right, what 74-76mm?"
[yeah 74mm]
"Good for rpm! Which cam is in it?"
[Engle 125]
"And you have those old Pauter heads from Jerry on it right?"
[yep]
"if you can get that car to hook up it should go 13's easy"

Well that was it. All the morose and bummed out crap from the trip to Ventura was out the window. As were any concerns with the neighbor and my '70 Bus eyesore. And, almost, any regret involving the ex-girlfriend or her successor. Now none of that mattered again. I would call Roger, share Mark's ideas and we were going to go drag racing.

More next time. Won't be long.

Thanks Jim!!
Looking forward to the happy ending to the story with the water-pumper!!!

thanx Jim! made my day

It's always a good Friday when I can drive my '67 to work, plonk down at my desk and have a new Ratto story to go with my coffee and burrito.

The white '67 Super Flow car vs the white Chevelle night.

I will first spoil the ending, the Chevelle did prevail, by a fender. Running 3 times, it took the VW all three, but not by much. And let me add, the VW was a true 100% daily driver. No joke. This guy Roger worked for Otis elevators as a repair/maintenance guy and it was his daily transportation all over the Bay Area.

Think about that. A 24 year old car originally with 50hp, now with "race only" heads and probably 180+hp being driven (hard) every day. To me that's like using the Space Shuttle as a commuter plane.

Anyway, a friend of a friend, a guy that had the only stroker-motor VW when I was in high school, had kept tabs on what I had been doing with my '67 since I got out of HS, (he had moved on to V8 stuff himself, and should have been burned at the stake) and had heard me talking about this white car with Super Flows and almost 2300cc. To us that equated to being untouchable out where we street raced and goofed off. Everybody we had seen go somewhat fast, had, at max, some kind of 041 or similar heads, maybe breathed on. The Super Flow heads were unchartered waters for us. I had heard rumors about a few street cars running them (Pete Staat, and a kid named Kevin) and some of the trials involved to run them on the street, like modifying cylinder covers and some of the rear body of the car. Rob, the engine guy at Buggy House, actually built the 2276 roller crank motor in Roger's car and he knew all the ins and outs. Talked some about special air deflectors he bent up to go inside the cylinder covers, and his secret to getting valve covers off once the motor was in situ. All this talk about the commitments you'd have to make to run these only fueled the mystique fire. Back to the "setup", so my old friend from HS, knows of this "pro street" tubbed Chevelle with a 427 etc that is the current king of the hill. And knows the owner. And one day he tells me that he mouthed off to the Chevelle guy that there are 2 VW's looking to shut the guy down. Oh yeah? Which 2?
Your car, Jim and your buddy's with the roller crank.
My car? When did I say I wanted a piece of this? Yes I had been part of some informal matchups with friends, a 455 cu in Olds Toronado and a 389 cu in Tempest, but they were friends and we had just been seeing if a VW could keep up or not (it could, and then some). But I wasn't looking to topple this guy and his maneating pro street monster. But maybe Roger would be game.
So I told my buddy "Let me call Roger and see if he's around and wants to roll out there."

I felt an obligation to defend the VW guys in our area and keep our flag flying. Again, up to this point, I had seen my friend from HS walk all over a few V8's, and I had the two aforementioned under my belt. If I didn't act on the "threat" now, I wouldn't be keeping my pledge. And even though my buddy told me all about the capabilities through engine, heads, slicks, torque converter, rear end gears,  etc that this Chevy had, it didn't mean anything to me, because it was all a foreign language I didn't want to learn.

So I called Roger and there was no hesitation. It was as if he knew I was going to call and what I was going to ask him. All he said was "Oh yeah? When? And where is this? I'll come out"

And so that night arrived and we met by moonlight at our remote location. Roger and his white '67 were there before anyone else, Frank and I were next. And then we hear a diesel engine approaching. It's a four door full size GMC with a shell, towing a trailer! Uh oh, we've been had. And the guy pulls up and he and his crew hop out and start unloading the animal in the trailer, unshackling the tie downs, and rolling it out. I felt awful, I felt like I had sabotaged Roger. Obviously this wasn't anywhere near a street car. Once out of the trailer they fire this thing up and it's on open headers and not pump gas. The plot thickens

Roger didn't seem phased at all. Always even tempered.

Like I said, in the end, the whole thing was a big charade to me. Somewhere, someone misled somebody, and Roger and I had been duped. And the guy in the Chevelle couldn't have been more full of himself. He actually, after his third pass, made a point to walk over to Roger's VW and hold his gut, point and laugh. Roger was a 6'6" guy, but like I said, even tempered.

We left, disappointed. But I told myself "it was that far ahead.... this guy didn't win fairly"

Well . . . not the ending I was hoping for, but . . . still put a smile on my face!!
Thanks fer sharing Jim!!  8)

More please!

Damn Chevelle, but I bet the guy should had been a bit pissed of to only put a fender on a street driven Bug with a trailered pro street race gas sipping war machine  :D
You were the OG Asian and Farmtruck  ;D

I think the whole forum/scene thing goes in waves, and 2020 has knocked everyone for six. Facebook is another issue - I joined, found a load of people who used to be regular posters,and then for a couple of reasons decided that it wasn't for me.
Enough of that; Jim, I love reading your history posts, it's an era just a few years before I got into it, although half a world away geographically.

Sure, there's something about FB's algorithm that makes everyone intentionally lose their focus. At least in this forum, nothing happens unless someones goes ahead and makes it happen.  :)

We are a pretty easily distracted bunch!

Thank you Jim. I needed that. I’ve a few other projects that got dumped on me. But soon I’ll be back at it. My ‘vert will roll this summer!

Life has been very busy, both my kids have me involved heavily in their extra-curricular lives, little league and Boy Scouts. So I've been absent. As time opens up soon, I'll get back on this. I'll have to dig out my old pictures to absorb some 32 year old inspiration. I think next stop is Sacramento Bug-A-Rama or Pleasanton Bug Bash. Then a long and hot drive from Bay Area to Irvine CA and back. With a wiped out intake guide. The fun never stopped.

Have kids they said, it will be fun theys said  ;)
We all are on the same boat  :D
I hope to read you stories soon.