A New Addition To The Family

No Tammy's not pregnant and we haven't been back to China. We have been visited by the VW stork however. He delivered this sharp looking 1975 Super Beetle a couple of months ago. The real story is that this purdy little bug was out on a corner for sale just a few blocks from the house. We watched it for a few weeks (actually thought it had sold at one point when it didn't show up for a while) but I guess it was meant to be. Thank you Eddie for test driving with me (between the two of us you know that car didn't stand a chance). The car looks great, especially from a distance. Up close it's got some rust popping up and even a little hole in the roof. This will get cleaned up some time in the future. For now there's no rush (the roof may get taken care of sooner rather than later to prevent bigger problems). You can see in the photos there's also a dent in the left front fender (it came that way). I'll do what I can to hammer that out after I've gained some experience on fraulein. It's obvious someone went through this car at one time and did what I'm doing to the other. The inside is very clean (new dash, headliner, stereo & speakers). The carpet and upholstery appear to be original or older replacement that lare in good shape (the sun has eaten a hole in the top of the rear seat though). The outside sports fresh paint (fresh when the restoration was done), new tires, mouldings and I believe a freshly rebuilt motor. This car drives like a dream. It's fuel injected and pretty peppy. There a sun roof which is real nice (and will be even nicer in the summer when the sun is kicking). Tammy and Jane Ellen are looking forward to driving this one (Emmy has named it "the buzz" since that's how she pronounces "bug"). For Tammy it's only a matter of honing her clutch skills as it's been a while since she drove a stick. Janey on the other hand will be starting from scratch. That should be fun....



A funny story (that wasn't so funny at the time) which reminded me that with old cars like these there's always going to be something that comes up - no matter how nice the car is. Katie had a race in Marianna (an hour-and-a-half away) a week or two after we bought the car. I was leary about taking it this far, and on the interstate none-the-less, before doing more locally to test it out. On Friday night Tammy and I drove to Crestview (half an hour) and the car did great. Come Saturday morning, the day of the race, I talked myself into driving "the buzz". Katie was game too and understood that if something went wrong on the way there she would not make it to her race. We arrived in Marriana and all was fine. Once again the car drove wonderfully. After the race I walked out to the parking lot to warm-up the car (it was cold this day) and saw the pavement was wet underneath the engine. My first thought was that something had gone terribly wrong with my oil change from the day before. Upon closer inspection I saw there was "water" dripping out from behind the engine compartment (this is actually in front of the engine compartment and behind the passenger compartment). It had been raining alot the days leading up to this so I thought maybe the car had stored some water in the body and it was just draining out (no such luck). Katie and I proceeded to drive to the Whataburger in Marriana to meet the team for a post race meal. On the way I kept smelling gas and began to notice my fuel gauge was dropping much faster than expected. At the time we were in stop-and-go traffic. I peered into the rear view mirror only to see a trail leading up to the rear of the car. When we pulled forward, the trail revealed a puddle with another trail following me. This is when I realized we had a gas leak. Did the prayers start then! "Lord just get us to the Whataburger without exploding" was repeated over and over. By the time we got to Whataburger, the dripping water had turned into a steady flow a gasoline (of course I had filled up shortly before we got to the race). I couldn't get near enough to see what was causing the leak for all the gas that was coming down. I called Pat back in Niceville, who immediately stopped what he was doing, jumped into Richard's truck, borrowed a trailer from a friend, and came up to get me (thanks brother). Together we loaded "the buzz" on the trailer (ask me later and I'll share that experience with you) and toted it home. Turns out the fuel line, which is metal from the gas tank (in the front of the car) switches to hose in order to go from the driver side of the car, over the transmission, to the passenger side of the car, and clamp to the fuel pump (the pump is in the engine compartment but has a tip sticking through the firewall for the fuel hose). This hose was a little too long and was thus laying down on the transaxle and a sharp edge there had worn through the hose. It was an easy fix and we've been back on the road without a problem ever since.