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

[Brian Rogers]

Thank you!

[Jim Ratto]

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.

[67paulo]

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

[karl h]

cool, hoping for more...

[Brian Rogers]

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

[j-f]

Thansk Jim!

[Jim Ratto]

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.

[karl h]

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

[Martin S.]

“I personally” really enjoyed Gene’s writing! 

[Cornpanzer]

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

[jamiep_jamiep]

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

[56BLITZ]

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

[Martin S.]

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.

[speedwell]

the puma project from SCS

[speedwell]

 

[Martin S.]

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!

[Brian Rogers]

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

[andrewlandon67]

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.

[j-f]

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

[Nico86]

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

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.

[bedjo78]

We still checking every day ...

[karl h]

me too...

[Jim Ratto]

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.

[56BLITZ]

More next time. Won't be long.

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

[karl h]

thanx Jim! made my day

[andrewlandon67]

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.

[Jim Ratto]

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"

[56BLITZ]

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.

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

More please!

[j-f]

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 
You were the OG Asian and Farmtruck 

[Neil Davies]

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.