The Cal-look Lounge

Sometimes it’s fun just to sit and watch….

Working the parts counter @ Buggy House always proved to be entertaining. Some of the projects that customers would bring in to brag about…  many of them must’ve had a lot of luck give that their stuff made it out of their garages. Most of it didn’t and we got to see the aftermath. Lots of blued and purpled parts. Lots of the comment “I thought it would work…..” Electrical parts were always good for an interesting conversation. “It smelled like that when I bought it”…. “Is it supposed to get real hot?”…. “I thought my car was on fire”

But we had our own “WTF Department” internally too…. Those had to be the funniest. We had a guy that built the motors in the back…. He smoked his lunch, I’ll leave it at that.   

I used to sit back in the shop and eat lunch sometimes and just watch the guy “try” to work. No, I ate sandwiches… g-rated.

He was famous for leaving parts out. Cam plug and rear main seal were his favorites. Of course, with the flywheel on, the person installing the motor had no idea either or both were missing until they turned the key.

Beyond the cam plug…. How about the cam and lifters? I sat back there eating a salami on rye watching him, after his return from bong-land, try to finish a longblock up. Had the heads torqued, was about to drop in pushrods and rocker assemblies. He goes to drop in the first pushrod and it falls into the case with a “PLINK” yep he forgot the cam and lifters… don’t ask.

Another time he was setting flywheel end play on this big 94 x 86 autocross motor. He ran the gland nut in with no lube on it with this giant ¾” drive impact turned up, and ripped the threads clean out of the Bugpack 86 crank and drove the nose of the gland nut through into the oil galley… not pretty. I just tried not to laugh and kept eating.

The best had to be the full dressed Type 1 motor he was finishing up on the stand one day… everything was on… fan housing, generator, stock carb, clutch, heaters, stock muffler, belt… everything,… but the oil pressure switch. I’m sitting there drinking my milkshake and eating a Jumbo Jack and he comes back from parts room with a new oil pressure switch, takes it out of  the box and goes to install it (you know, by the distributor)… and stops short and just stares at the motor. I hear him sigh and say “aaawwww dude…. F*cckkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!” He had built this engine out of a Type 3 case, which has no provision for the oil pressure switch.

I stopped by Buggy House a few weekends ago. It was great to see the doors open again. I talked to James Collins and Jerry for a while. Rich "Oraska" Davis was also there working the counter. Kind of depressing seeing the store so empty. James said it will be an uphill battle for a while trying to rebuild the Buggy House name, but they are willing to put in the hard work to save an Icon.

Brilliant  ;D

We had an electrian who fancied a go at a bit of engine maintanance he said to me that the engine was totally out of water.
I was a slightly concerned and realised the muppet had filled the oil filler with water.

He was more of a whiskey man than a weed buff.

I could talk for hours about the good ol' shop days... truly some of the best years of my life...

Way back in the early days of my VW career, I made a switch from a small specialty shop to a large production shop. It was great money for the time and we stayed real busy.

Anyway the motor man, (I'll keep his name out of this--Rayburn knows him ;)) could build air cooled VW engines faster than anybody I've ever seen! He could also do comebacks faster then anybody!! It was not unusual to have a "fresh rebuilt engine" come back in a day or so on the hook with something wrong, sometimes catastrophic, and he would usually get the thing back to the customer the same day! I would guess he had a 10-20% failure rate...

The best part about this guy, he could not explain how an engine worked... not even basic theory!

Pretty amazing... this guy did this for decades.

FWIW, he was a real nice guy... I guess that has to count for something ::)

~DR.

                                                       The guy in question would assemble these engines completely with an impact wrench, and then check everything with a torque wrench afterwards....Awesome!    He was a nice guy, though.