Karman Sutra

[Martin S.]

I see. Do you leave it on all the time, and what is the correct fuel pressure?

[Martin S.]

I bought one of these fuel pressure testers, and got a brass 1/4" to 3/8" adapter to fit the tester into my MSD regulator port.
Is it the right way to go?

Here's the fuel pressure tester link:

http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/equus-3640-fuel-pressure-tester-kit-0251020p.html

Here's my regulator:

https://www.msdperformance.com/products/fuel_systems/fuel_pumps_regulators_and_filters/parts/29389

[Fiatdude]

Martin -- THat should work for al least checking where you fuel pressure..... As far as what pressure you should be at is a combo of several items... It is dependent mostly on your injectors and what pressure they are most efficient at. Also is your EFI system boost referenced? I had one system where the starting psi was at 40 and then psi would added as the boost came on. The current system is set at 58 psi per manufactures recommendations with no boost reference....

I think with your current problem I think a reading should be 40+ and you can eliminate problems from there.

[Martin S.]

Yes mine is boost referenced. I see there is a vacuum/boost line connected to the regulator. I suppose revving the engine in the driveway I won't be able to test the boost in fuel pressure, but if I can somehow see the gauge while driving I could test that out the jump in fuel pressure too.
I just watched Electromotive's youtube vids they have posted to refresh my memory on this setup, and the guy does mention the engine running super rich if there is a vacuum leak in the intake. We have looked it over and found no obvious leak and my boost gauge shows plenty of vacuum while cruising still, although I don't remember exactly what it did before (other than PLENTY of vacuum on cruise  To find vacuum leaks I was told that you can spray quick-starter fluid at the intake and the engine will speed up if it sucks it in. I thought possibly that I could pressurize the manifold with compressed air (engine off) after plugging the air cleaner and rotating the engine with valves closed and listen for leaks?
I'll let you know what I find when I get some time on the weekend.

[spanners]

Quick start is dangerous sprayed near a running motor, flash at least, boom possably,  I use WD40 as it will fire the relavent cylinder if sucked in but inert enough to be fairly safe around a running motor.

[Fiatdude]

Making plans to camp out at Fontana Saturday night before the Bug-In -- --

Check in at Fontana at 4pm Saturday --- Sneak the Ghia over to the Drippers thing in Ontario that starts at 6ish --- then have to be back at CMS by 8pm when they lock the gates.......

Sunday ---  Bug-In


Where, Oh Where, are those Silver Bugget guys these days???

[Fiatdude]

Showed up at 4pm at California Speedway to spend the night -- unfortunately there was a test and tune that day and there was still a ton of V8 guys there clogging up the pits -- so I choose a spot that was way out beyond the finish line.... peace and quiet,,, Yeah right the Silverbugget guys were 100 feet away.



So there I am profiling with my motorhome thinking I'm cool -- -- then Dave Rosique (sp?) drives in.....



And he ruins the neighborhood with his coolness..... LOL

I jump into the Ghia and drive over to the Drippers meet at BurgerTown hoping for the magic of Nick's to return to SoCal.... But most everybody must of missed that memo as there was only about 15 VW's there. Maybe the DKK thing all day killed this meet...... But what was there was really nice, I should of taken more pictures





So, everybody that was there from the campout had to be back by 8 as the gates were locked at that time... I did my best to do a nice leave, had some sideways action going and headed back to CMS... found out my headlight switch is going bad as I had no dash or tail lights for the 9 mile return trip in the dark... also Had a nice fog following me as I had sucked a valve cover gasket at some point too (wonder when that was?)

When I got back, the party was going full blast at numerous locations, everybody seemed to have a full bar and the World Series going..... after visiting several of the parties I stumbled back to my MH and proceeded to nose into my pillow and ignore the several occasions of pounding at the door to get me to come out to play some more... that is until someone drove an uncorked VW by at 7 AM... I could of killed them, if I could of lifted my head off the pillow....

But by now the gates were open, people were POURING in, and there wasn't any more sleeping to be had.... Great turn out! The Car show area was 90% full by the time I got to functioning, so I said screw it and kept my oil leaking pig in my pit.... Soon all the Red Baron crew started showing up and I almost didn't save enough area for everyone to park.... The baron was running real good and Eric took it all the way to the finals until a oil filter took a poop and started leaking as he was staging and he had to shut off giving the win to Racing' Jason who was running real strong with his Pro Turbo car (5.70's)....

Here's a picture of the area in front of my MH between rounds... remember just how empty it was??? not now, the pits almost went all the way back to the scales!!!!

[Dave Rosique]

It was good to see you Harold!
Been a long time..

[Fiatdude]

The word is that Irwindale is closing as of December 31...... Since I'm working about 5 miles from there, I'm thinking that one last trip down the strip is in order.... So Thursday the 28th, the Ghia is getting trailered to Irwindale for one last time.....

Well, here it is the Saturday before Christmas and went to the morning Cars and Coffee in Mentone -- Had about 30 cars and 1 VW show up to congratulate each other on making it through another year LOL.......



The star of the show 'Winston" taking a lap around the lot, collecting the price of admission, a good petting from all in attendance

[Neil Davies]

The word is that Irwindale is closing as of December 31...... Since I'm working about 5 miles from there, I'm thinking that one last trip down the strip is in order.... So Thursday the 28th, the Ghia is getting trailered to Irwindale for one last time.....

We've got the same with Shakespeare County Raceway - no official confirmation but rumour that 2017 is the end. If so, I had the last aircooled VW runs on the strip at the end of October.

[Fiatdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfwOS9BXvbc

[Fiatdude]

Had plans to hit 2 different events today -- Donut Derelicts and the 'New' OC Cars and Coffee at the outlet malls in San Juan Capistrano -- Derelict's was from 6-9am and C&C was from 9 to 11 with about 45 minutes of a drive between the to (counting loading and unloading the Ghia from the trailer). So got up at 4am and met my buddy at 4:30 and headed to Huntington Beach ---

The Derelict's didn't disappoint, with over 300 cars there to check out ---









Then at about 8am everybody started heading out and we were guessing they were down south for the C&C -- -- We unloaded the Ghia about a block away and headed over to the event -- It was pretty hilly around there and I stalled the Ghia going up a steep incline at a stop sign.... ((dummy, I know... But that 4 puke disc is just not very forgiving  when you're trying to slip it)) -- Anyway, the engine popped real hard when I was cranking it and blew one of the intake boots off,, and suddenly we were running on 2 cylinders and sounding like chit.... and I hadn't thrown any tools in the car, so we limped back to the trailer and put the car on it. then drove through event ... Didn't take any pictures, but there was some very NICE cars there and quite a few VW's -- There are tons of pictures of this event on the web and on you tube to see.....

[spanners]

very nice Flat.

[Fiatdude]

Decided today was the day to head down to Woodland Hills for Supercar Sunday. Loaded up the Ghia on the trailer and set the alarm for 5am and drove the 92 miles down there for the event.... Unloaded the Ghia and drove to the event getting there at 7:30 and there was only about 50 cars there and I was pretty disappointed. Found a spot near a bunch a ricers and started checking out the rides in the lot.... Man, about 8 am the cars started coming in and by 8:30 there were over 500 cars spilling all around the nearby lots.... Every different type was there!!! a few air cools with a really patina-ed 58 low light ghia parking near me.... and suddenly at 9:30 it was over and everybody was leaving. That's when I found all the other cars parked at the outer lots that I hadn't even seen ...... Good time, long ways to go for such a short event though.....

The Ghia parked in the middle of the action.....

 

[Fiatdude]

Damn -- -- It's been since January since I've been on here ...  Some of you have missed me, Some of you haven't LOL

Well, Here's the short story.... Last October I turned 65 and I had been dragging my feet at retiring .... I had hooked with a good company and really was enjoying the type of jobs they were doing and the work I was getting to do. Well, on February 1st, the wife insisted that we list the house and try selling it again (last time things didn't go very good). I, in my infinite wisdom and thinking, thought that it would be the same stuff all over again. NOT, we had 4 full price offers the first weekend..... Damn, we're gonna have to move and do it in 21 days.....

Again didn't think this thing through very much.... We had been living in this house for over 27 years and you can guess all the stuff I had collected during that period of time. So, why worry, I'll go to work and let my wife pack it all up.... Can you guess where this is going LOL. Needless to say I gave my 2 weeks notice and all the while, every waking moment was spent packing and moving stuff into storage.... Did I mention we didn't have any place to go to yet? Nope, not a clue where we were gonna end up....

So, on the very last weekend we were to own the house, I called hire-a-mover and had 3 guys move most of the big stuff from the house and into 3000 cubic feet of storage and some of the essentials into the motorhome... We moved to the local regional park (about a mile from the house) and then sat there trying to figure out what was next..... can you guys tell I wasn't really happy about moving out of the house???

Anyway, we decided to head towards Missouri where I had about a million relatives and we had been there a ton of times on vacation. Oh Chit, what about the Ghia, There was no more spaces left at the storage, and the wife told me I wasn't gonna spend $250 a month on space rental just to put that dumb car inside somewhere. ... .. ...  So it got loaded onto the open car trailer and wrapped with 2 car covers, some blue traps and then bungee'd wrapped and hoping it would survive out in the open at a friends lot....



So, we put the Flex on a car dolly and packed up the MH and off the MO we went...... Holy Crap was it cold in March in Mo... and it wasn't really that cold by Mo standards 12 degrees (f) a few nights, 22 a lot of nights, and a healthy dose of snow on occassion... LOL ------- Please notice all the Marble size hail on the ground from an overnight storm -- IT WAS LOUD IN THE MOTORHOME!!!!



Anyway, we started looking for a house and of course what the wife was wanting and what I was wanting were in two different parking lots on opposite coasts of the continent LOL.... But after 2 months of full time looking at stuff in our price range, she decided on this house in Monett MO....



Not a bad little place 1700 sq ft upstairs and 900 sq ft in the finished basement.... really funky designed thing, but the wife wanted it so.. ..  you know the story, Happy wife blah blah blah...

It did have this detached little 2 car garage where 1/2 of it was set up as a paint booth and a nice covered RV parking thing that was about 15' too short for my Motorhome,,, but....



The house is sitting on 5 (20200 sq meters) acres of land, of which 3.5 acres are of grass which needs mowing -- -- Damn... So I ended up buying a lawnmower that cost more than the first 5 cars I owned combined!!!! Damn nice lawnmower if you ask me, even has a cup holder if your worrying about that... OH yeah it did also have this other little building sitting on the property.....



Something about a 40' x 60' (223 sq meter) shop building that just brings tears to a man's eye!!!!!!!

Well, the place had some issues, so we bought it in "as-is" condition and took possession the first week in March and 2 days later were flying to Cali to get the Ghia, .. oh, and the rest of the stuff...

We hired the same movers to take all the stuff out of storage and put it into a 26' Penske rental truck -- about half way through this it became apparent that one truck was not going to be enough, so I got another one and filled that one up too... I then hooked the car trailer up to the 26 footer and we prepared for the second part of adventure.....



Man, there was a ton of things that happened on the trip back to Mo which would fill another blog. but I won't bore you with here. but we made it right before Memorial Day weekend, put the Ghia in the 40x60 and it sure looked awfull lonely in there with my multi million dollar mower,  I need some more stuff don't you think?



Anyway, it's taken me 2 weeks to get around to unpacking all my office stuff and setting up my computer, so I could give you a update... Aren't you glad you had all this extra time to spend reading this LOL Love you guys!!!!



  

[BeetleBug]

Nice! There is a time for everything and I find it inspirational that you can still find time playing with cars! Thanks for sharing!

Best rgs
-BB-

[nicolas]

Nice! There is a time for everything and I find it inspirational that you can still find time playing with cars! Thanks for sharing!

Best rgs
-BB-

i can only second that!

[Martin S.]

You know you're old when.... the mower is more exciting than the race car  

Maybe consider paving over all that useless lawn and having your own 1/8 m. Wow I'm jealous of that shop, no problem fitting a few monster trucks in there 

[Fiatdude]

Took the Ghia to a car show in Joplin MO Thursday night -- --



First car show I ever went to that a relative stock 2013 Camaro won best car …..

So I guess I shouldn't of been surprised when I won this …. But I was amused, very amused …... LOL

[Martin S.]

Awesome! It is truly a wildabeast 

[Fiatdude]

Took the long way around a cul-de-sac recently

 https://youtu.be/Z59LrK6NY5U

[Fiatdude]

THe fact you know their headquarters are troubles me Fye LOL

[Fiatdude]

Yep, Information like that could scar you for life,,, LOL

[Fiatdude]

Thought I'd give you a warning that the end of the world is coming soon!!!!!!!

This Died in the wool Ford Dude bought a Chevy Truck today...……………………………………..




Thought I'd let that sink in a few moments..... It must be the end of time LOL..



I've been looking for a good/nice used 4x4 truck for a few months now and today the wife wanted to go to an estate sale down in West Branson.... So I took her, and lo and behold, here was this CHEVY truck for sale as part of the estate... It's a 2011, always garaged Z71 Silverado with,,, get this,,, 27K miles on it... The price was right so I kicked a few moths out of the wallet and bought it.... too many scratches on the bed, but I'll make do..... LOL

[Fiatdude]

Paid my money -- Will be there for Saturday

http://eurekaspringsvwshow.com/

[Fiatdude]

Went to the Eureka Springs AR VW Show on 8-25-18 -- What a Day!!!!

Yep, First thing Saturday Morning as I was trying to back The Ghia into a spot and a "lady" rolled up on me. The drivers door is creased in 2 spots, so I'm calling it FUBAR'd?. I think most of the show had heard about the accident by 9am and lots of people came by and checked out the damage and told me how it sucked ??. LOL

It just wasn't my day at show.. Later in the day, I was sitting in a directors style folding chair on the knoll at the top of the parking lot watching all the cars returning from the parade around town, when the ground started to collapse under the chair (had a lot of rain the day before) and I did a slow motion fall over backwards.... It was so slow I had time to think about reaching over and grabbing the guy's chair next to me.... But he was sitting in a similar chair and was in his 70's, and I thought, Oh Chit, I'll probably drag him over too.... So I just tucked everything in and let gravity take over and splatted onto the ground. But luckily it had rained and the grass and ground were soft(er) and the only injuries I received was some more brain damage and a wounding to my pride...?..

I did win a 2nd place trophy for something LOL ?.







The Award:



The DAMAGE: Chit picture -- doesn't show where the paint is split in 2 places

[Neil Davies]

Congratulations on the trophy, sucks about your door and haha about the chair!

You might be able to save the door, at least for a while. Bottom dent looks like it will just push out, as there are no actual creases. The top one may be trickier, but a decent dent removal guy should be able to get it 99% right. You don't want to be swapping doors on a Ghia if you can help it!

[Fiatdude]

Went out and did some Auto-X at Neosho Mo -- Great group of guys from Ozark Z's and they put on a great event!!!

Was airing up my tires and just glanced at the dates on my tires.... They're freaking 8 years old. Damn!!! Spent the whole day short shifting and trying to stay off boost.... The second it would come on boost the back end would just crawl out from under me.... Loads of fun, like being on a slick track, My old butt wasn't up for the challenge LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x3wY33YUHQ&feature=youtu.be

[Fiatdude]

My first winter in Missouri.... Learning experience has started. Winterized the Barn, the Shop, the cars..... Last weekend was the last car show, track day and get together for the year, so I guess it's time to put the Ghia to bed for the winter (especially since it is suppose to be 17F (-8C) degrees here in the next couple of days and snowing). And start the Mods I've got planned for her... The shop is done and ready for the big move.

[Rocket Ron]

Nice garage