Clementine: A New Hope (June 2020)

After getting Clementine situated at Davis EV, we unpacked all the EV conversion gear and laid out a plan of how we would get started. The first task was to install the electric motor on to the transmission.

We began by pressing on the flywheel adapter with a hydraulic press while being very careful to keep the Woodruff key in place while we slowly cranked down on the press to drive the adapter home. Once the adapter and the pilot bearing were in place we added the flywheel and then carefully centered the clutch while we torqued down the pressure plate to 25 foot pounds.

With the motor and clutch assembly in place, we used an engine hoist and a somewhat redneck arrangement of tie down straps to lower the motor assembly in place. Once everything was lined up, we wiggled the motor on to the main shaft of the transmission and then bolted the engine assembly to the transmission using the special bolts supplied by EV West which slid into the original VW locations.

Now that the power unit was in place we turned our attention to the battery boxes. After checking for proper fitment and making a few modifications we drilled and tapped holes to mount the lids on to the boxes and fixed the EV West brackets into the front box which would hold the two Tesla Model 3 batteries in place and also serve as a mounting point for some of the electrical equipment. We then mounted the lid to the rear box and test fit the battery mounts for clearance. Everything checked out but we did have to clearance a few things to make it all fit perfectly. We snugged down the rear battery box with six stout bolts and again checked everything to make sure the batteries could slide right into place when the time comes to fire everything up.

We then moved on to fitting a new set of engine compartment seals and test fit the motor side plates. All looked good so ace mechanic Ed went to work mounting the cooling system and fans to the right hand side plate.

The next step was to modify the pedal cluster to use the Prius throttle instead of the VW throttle cable and to begin the daunting task of getting everything wired up.

EClementine: Imagining a Green Machine (February 2020)

When I built Clementine, I tried to recreate what a fixed up Beetle would look like when I got my first Beetle at age 16. I had a bunch of help from my friend Jeff Lain at the Kaddie Shack located in Pasadena, CA where I grew up. We set the car down a bit with an adjustable front beam suspension and added some trick bits like a strengthened transmission and a 1968cc engine that shot the car down the road like a marble out of a slingshot. Clementine already had a cool worn-in patina look from her adventures on the road over the 42 years before I met her so I left all the paint, upholstery, and seats alone while I focused on the mechanicals.

After the addition of front disc brakes from a Karmann Ghia and some suspension tweaks, Clementine cruised along like a proper ‘80’s style Cal Look VW. We did some fun road trips to VW shows and I drove her around town until a few mechanical issues cropped up which resulted in her being parked at my shop gathering dust for far too long. While the built-up super quick motor was built just as I wanted it to be, which is totally gnarly, pretty loud, and a little nasty, I started to want something a little mellower to drive regularly.

I was thinking about just replacing the hotrod motor with a stock 1600cc version when I saw one of the EV West VW’s on TV. I was fascinated by the performance and the not-so-bad range along with the obvious environmental advantages. I did some homework on the EV West conversions and after watching some videos of their cars ripping up tires and smoothly cruising on the highway I was sold. I hoped the horsepower would not be too far off the power of the 1968cc bullet and the range would be enough to get me around town and perhaps to a car show or two.

Around the same time, I began working with the local high school auto shop program at Davis Senior High School in Davis, CA where I live. With the help of instructor Robert Thayer, we formed a booster association to support automotive and transportation education in Davis. The Davis Auto Tech Booster Association (DATBA) has been coming up with new ways to add to the education of students who are interested in the automotive and transportation trades and one of those ideas was to make sure the students had a chance to work with both hybrid and pure Electric Vehicles (EV’s) in the shop. Although I had planned to do the gas-to-EV conversion of Clementine myself, I felt this would be a perfect project for the kids to undertake.

Clementine: Where do we go from here? (February 2020)

As long as I can remember, I have been a certified gearhead. When I was a baby my parents would plop me in a running car to stop me from crying and one of my first words was “wheel”.  I was obsessed with old VW’s and spent much of my time pretending to drive my Dad’s ’68 Beetle in the garage. I pestered my folks every year to take me to the Los Angeles Auto Show as many times as they could stand it when the show was in town. When I hit 15 years old, I knew that my driver’s license was my ticket to freedom and I was the first one in line for the drive test at the DMV on the morning of my 16th birthday behind the wheel of my Mom’s ’82 Eldorado Biarritz. As soon as I got my license I was traveling to all the VW and hotrod shows SoCal had to offer. When I finally got a VW of my own, I spent every spare dime at the local VW parts place to fix up my ’71 Super Beetle to make it lower, faster, and generally cooler while poring over car magazines to moon over dream cars I thought I could afford one day if I made it big.

Over thirty years later, the automotive scene for teens has changed a great deal from when I came up in the 1980’s. My kids and their friends are not in a hurry to get their licenses and mostly are content to use their folks, Uber, or Lyft to get around. Some do want to drive, but most of them seem to want a Prius or something even more boring to easily get from Point A to Point B with no drama. They are after practical, ecologically responsible transportation rather than the big-cammed, glasspacked, and generally obnoxious rigs my buddies and I tore around in burning gas as we looked for some excitement when we were in our teens. There are some young gearheads out there but most of them seem to be into super high tech rides instead of older vintage machines that require a bit more cash and love to keep on the road.

So how do we get the attention of the kids who really aren’t into cars while inspiring the kids who are into both vintage iron and new “green” transportation? The answer came to me when I saw some projects coming out of the EV West shop in San Diego. EV West has been modifying all sorts of classics and even more modern sports cars with electric powertrains that use a combination of parts to create vehicles that truly marry vintage iron with modern thinking. Their monster twin motor Baja Bug has been featured on many TV shows and there is a new wave of automotive TV shows like Vintage Voltage on the Motor Trend network that are generating plenty of excitement among automotive enthusiasts and the general public.

With building that sort of sizzle in mind locally, I made the decision that my ’71 Beetle “Clementine” could be improved with an EV West kit. She will be rechristened EClementine to fit her new greener identity and I will be documenting everything done to make her much cleaner, hopefully faster, and easy to keep on the road for many years to come. 

1971 Volkswagen Beetle "Clementine"

Meet Clementine: A Study in Synchronicity (June 2013)

After taking many years off, I had decided that a ’69-’72 Beetle would be just the ticket to get back into the bug trade. I had identified a few local candidates that looked good off The Samba (www.thesamba.com) and Craigslist but two in particular stood out. Interestingly, it looked like the same guy had both cars and the ads contained the magic phrase “rust free”. These two were a white ’70 and an orange ’71 located not far from me in Roseville, CA.

So, after sitting on my hands for a week after Bugorama, I called up the owner of these two cars who was a fellow named JD. JD agreed to meet me and we set a time for the following morning.

When I showed up both Bugs were parked side-by-side outside a neat old brick warehouse right by the main railroad line that runs from the Bay Area up to Reno and beyond. There was also a tow yard next door and the area surrounding the building was littered with derelict classics-some very familiar to me from my childhood.

I looked at the white ’70 first and immediately found a bunch of Bondo lurking and some fairly botched repairs that I did not want to deal with. I moved on to the orange ’71 and I am so glad that I did.

JD told me the car belonged to a fellow who was a civil engineer and also an endurance horseback rider. He used the ’71 and a sister Beetle as his work trucks so neither had the passenger seats when JD got them as the owner used to carry his tools and saddles in that space. The orange car also was rigged up with an electrical plug in the front apron as he used to tow this behind an old semi-based rig he had that he used to take his horses to events and camp out in.

As I looked the car over, it became readily apparent that it had been loved and had never been hit hard enough to have any panels replaced. The left door and fender had some pretty good dents that had been pounded out but I could not find a speck of Bondo anywhere on the car. The floorpans also looked pristine and there was patina galore but none of the usual hacking that was done to most of these cars. I began to get excited as this car was a real “survivor” type ride that would be the perfect base for what I had in mind.

JD let me take a quick run around the block that revealed a nice tight gearbox with no grinds and a motor with a surprising amount of pep that started right up on the first turn of the key. The brakes were doughy and the steering was a bit darty, but I wrote this off to old fluid and the 30 year old Michelin XZX tires on the front end. The car had been off the road since 1993 so some of this was of course expected.

I thanked JD for his time and told him I would call tomorrow with a decision, but I knew I was sunk. The little car was practically winking at me when I looked back and it was by far the nicest original car I had found in months of looking. I did not want to lose the car but I also wanted to marinate on the decision a little.

I headed home, did some chores around the house, and then called JD back to buy the car for the full asking price. I am sure I could have knocked off a few Franklins or Grants but there just aren’t many cars like this one still out there.

As I pondered plans to pick up the car the next day, I began to think about the many signs telling me this was the right car for me.

Sign #1-The color of the car was code L20D “Clementine” which is also the name of the main character in the traditional Gold Country and Boy Scout dirge “My Darling Clementine”. Turns out the car spent most of its life up there in those some ‘49er hills so this was the first interesting coincidence.

Sign #2-When I pulled into the lot at the warehouse, I parked in front of a beat old Chevy pickup. When I went to leave, I gave it a closer look and it turned out to be a twin of the truck my Grandpa  Fred had when I was a kid. It was a ’71 Chevy C20 longbed finished in Russet Gold and White with the same 400 small block and Camper Special package. Spooky indeed.

Sign #3-The Beetle was last on the road in 1993 which was the year I graduated college. Here we are 20 years later and she had not turned a wheel since the University of Southern California kicked me out the gates. She was waiting for me to grow up apparently.

Sign #4-The Beetle and I are only four months apart in age-both of us are 1971 models.

Sign #5-I found the car in Roseville, CA. My late Mom collected “Roseville” pottery for most of her adult life and loved it dearly. It is true that the pottery was named after a city in Ohio but the coincidence is still there.

Sign #6-The color of the car is the same shade of a ’71 Super Beetle that my buddy John Deacon bought in high school. He had it repainted a horrid red at Earl Scheib but it started out as this shade when new.

The Seventh Sign-When JD gave me the title, the last name of the previous owner was Davis and the little car now lives in my backyard in Davis, CA.

With all these things in mind and the song “Synchronicity” by The Police ringing in my ears, I present to you the newest member of the Gearhead Tourist fleet, Clementine the Beetle. The kids and I will be digging in soon to get her back on the road so as usual stay tuned…

EClementine: Getting Started (March 2020)

The first step in the project other than sending in a deposit for all the EV West gear was to set a baseline for Clementine to see what values are currently in place for weight, horsepower, gas mileage, acceleration, and air pollution before we get on with the process of removing the gasoline engine and all of its supporting bits.

I filled Clementine up with around 10 gallons of 91-octane and hit the road with some apps on my phone to check acceleration, noise, and other performance metrics.

The first testing regimen was to see just how noisy Clementine was under different driving conditions like idle, cruise, and full boogie acceleration. I downloaded an app to my phone that was intended for OSHA-type noise measurements and took to the streets of Davis and the country roads of Yolo County.

Most modern cars clock in around 50 decibels (db) at idle and might get up to 75db under full throttle and settle somewhere in the mid 60’s at a 60 mph cruise. Clementine, however, was very different given that she has very little sound deadening on board and the engine was set up for performance over comfort or smoothness. I found the measurements of just how loud Clementine is to be pretty surprising but not too shocking as I did note some ringing in my ears after a long trip and I often struggled to hear my passengers when we were out cruising. It is significant to point out that the decibel scale is a logarithmic measurement, which means small numerical differences are a big deal as every 3-dB increase represents a doubling of the sound pressure.

Hearing damage starts to come into play whenever you are exposed to levels of 85db and over consistently.  At idle, Clementine was averaging around 73.8db in the interior and a 60 mph cruise was clocking in at 83.9db which is pretty loud. Full throttle was even worse with an average measurement of 93.7db which where most folks start to feel a little pain. Standing 10 feet behind Clementine as she idled registered about 81db.

The next metric I decided to measure was fuel economy. I calculated how far the odometer was off due to the change in tire size from the original spec and verified the error using a speedometer app on my phone compared actual speed to indicated speed. After running through nearly an entire tank with some fairly hard driving but also a significant time spent at cruise Clementine notched 16 MPG which was not surprising due to the hotrod nature of the motor and how hard I was driving the car while testing acceleration. With a ten gallon gas tank this would work out to about 160 miles of range if all held to plan.

The next item to check was acceleration. I knew from drag strip visits in the past that Clementine ran in the low 15-second range in the quarter mile. I found some quiet private roads and backed that up with GPS data that showed a quarter mile time of 15.1 seconds at 87 mph and 0-60 time of around 7.9 seconds with a ton of wheel spin. A better and perhaps less stocky driver could easily get Clementine in the 14’s which is where many modern performance sedans land. Although not impressive when measured against a modern sports car, Clementine’s performance was pretty good given that the stock time to 60 was 18.7 seconds and the quarter mile took over 20 seconds to complete at slightly over 65 mph.

With all of the drive testing completed, Clementine went over to the DHS Auto Tech shop where we put her on scales borrowed from John Pagel of Evil Genius Racing. Most modern small cars like a Toyota Corolla ring in around 2800 pounds so it was eye opening to see that Clementine only weighed 1769 pounds with around 8 gallons of gas in the tank. The weight bias was 38% front and 62% rear which made sense for a rear engine car with little weight up front.  Adding drivers and passengers would change this a bit, but we had our baselines for Clementine in her petrol form established so it was time to start removing all the ICE running gear.

Clementine: The Curse of “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit” (August 2013)

Whenever you start into a car restoration project there are always two specters in dark robes hanging around in the shadows waiting to strike. Their names are “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit”. Your day gets much more expensive and difficult when they decide to show up.

With Clementine, my vision has always been to make her into a fast daily driver that can do some drag strip work but still be civilized enough to take on cruises or errands around town. The idea of a complete nut-and-bolt restoration seemed a bit much to me as I did not want to worry with creating a 100-point show car. However, as I started taking parts off for restoration or replacement, ol’ “While You’re In There” started running the bill up to darn near the cost and complexity of a full show car build and “That Don’t Fit” began to ruthlessly bloody my knuckles and furrow my brow. Regardless, I have refused to go too nuts or give up but damned if I am not learning how to take apart Beetles in a hurry and my first aid skills have definitely improved. My shed is now full of old Beetle parts and the trash can in the shop is home to a pile of bloody Band-Aids and empty Neosporin tubes.

The first priority was to get the car to where it could run and drive safely and reliably so I decided to tackle the chassis first and leave the drivetrain and body work for later on. Clementine’s suspension consists of a torsion beam front suspension (the “beam”) and an independent rear suspension (IRS) that connects up to her transaxle. As I got the car up on jack stands and began to poke around, it became very clear that not much had been done to the suspension in a very long time and that the brakes also were pretty tired. The shocks were Sears brand dampers that probably were new somewhere during the Carter administration and many of the lines, bushings, and hard parts were clearly original to the car. The previous owner had attempted some freshening in recent times but pretty much everything else had reached the end of its useful life.

So, I called up good buddy Jeff Lain at the Kaddie Shack and we started putting together a pretty impressive shopping list of gear to get the old girl back up to speed. Jeff and his crew put together a new height adjustable front beam for me with drop spindles, polyurethane bushings, KYB GR-series shocks, a bigger sway bar, and Karmann Ghia style disc brakes. He addressed the rear suspension with height adjustable spring plates, the same KYB’s as used on the front, new bushings, and an add-on rear sway bar to really tie down the handling of the car. I also sourced parts to redo all the brake hard and soft lines, change out the master cylinder and brake fluid reservoir, freshen the rear drum brakes, and refurbish the rear control arms and axle bearings. Unfortunately, “That Don’t Fit” was in the house and the rear control arms refused to get along with the trick spring plates so I had to go old school and just dial in the ’71 vintage stockers with an angle finder and plenty of swearing despite Jeff’s best efforts at remote tech support. “That Don’t Fit” also sprinkled magic dust on the new brake hard lines with leaks galore and a janky fluid reservoir which refused to fill correctly that took up two days of fiddling, two rolls of paper towels, and two of the economy size bottles of O’Reilly’s finest DOT4 fluid before I finally got a hard pedal with no dribbles.

Of course, ol’ “While You’re In There” came calling too which added in a new fuel tank and lines since I had to remove the old crusty stuff to get to the beam, rebuilt drive axles, a new hood release cable, a rebuild of the pedal cluster when it came out to fit the new brake master cylinder, and some paint work to repair some damage caused under the hood by leaky brake lines. I also couldn’t help myself when my OCD kicked in so I ended up getting $100 or more of new bolts to replace the old nasty ones that were holding together some key components. The guys in the loose hardware department at the Davis Ace know me by name now and I have nearly earned enough in rewards points to buy that smoker in the leisure department that I have had my eye on.

Next up will be an upgrade to Clementine’s rolling stock with some wheels from a Porsche cousin along with dialing in the alignment and height settings to get her just low enough to look cool but not so low that I end up stranded on every speed bump in town. Get ready, greater Willowbank, 45 horsepower of sheer Teutonic fury is about the hit the streets…

EClementine: A Slight Change of Plans (April 2020)

The DHS Auto Tech students had already overcome some real challenges to get Clementine ready for the electric conversion. With properly busted knuckles and the ability to problem solve on the fly when the reality didn’t match the manual we were ready to begin laying out the conversion parts so that we could get them fitted. Then, COVID-19 happened and the world took a hard turn in the wrong direction.

After a few weeks of hoping for a possible reopening of the school later in the semester, it became very clear that the shutdown would last and that it would be impossible to finish the project before the next school year. The Auto Tech program was closed until August which left Clementine and her new squad of friends in the lurch. After some discussions with lead instructor and good friend Robbie Thayer, I went over to the shop and put Clementine on the trailer so that she could sit in repose in the backyard until the world opened up again. However, a small town twist on the six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon scenario played out in a way that would open up exciting new opportunities for Clementine, a great local business, and the Auto Tech students who would return in the fall.

I had been using a very competent local lube and repair shop called Davisville Express Lube for a while as I was very impressed with how careful and professional the techs were with the cars and trucks I brought to them. I noticed on one visit that they had flyers out about a new business building eBeetles just like Clementine so I asked one of the techs, Mario, about the plan for this new venture. Mario introduced me to one of the owners of Davisville, Ron Lautzenheiser, and multiple lightbulbs began to go off as Clementine was sitting ready to go and the ’67 Beetle Ron was planning to build was still in paint without the conversion bits in hand. We decided to have Clementine serve as a beta build for Davis EV’s bespoke eBeetle business and we began the conversion process over at the Davis EV shop with lead techs Ed and Andy working with me to learn just how to sing the Beetle electric. We also began planning how to have the Auto Tech students learn about the eBeetle build process and possibly get some of them over to Davis EV to get hands on experiences with projects like Clementine and factory built EV’s. Despite the initial darkness, we were beginning to see some real light on the horizon.

Clementine: The Little Things (October 2014)

Since getting Clementine back with her much improved Kaddie Shack motor, the balance of the work now has been sorting out a few things just to make her a pleasant driver.

VW’s come stock with steering wheels that are huge to overcome the “Armstrong” steering with no power assist. This is great for a stock granny mobile but a thin rimmed whopper did not work for what I had in mind and it also pinched my legs a bit.

So, with a quick click at Summit Racing, I sourced a new Grant GT wheel along with a shift light to remind me when I needed to bang the next gear. Both were easy to install and made a big difference in the cabin comfort level.

The next step was to add some new Wolfsburg West repop floor mats to replace the ripped originals along with some cleaning and greasing of the seat rails.

One trait old VW’s are known for is their propensity to catch on fire so I decided to add in a nice 2.5 pound fire extinguisher with a trick aluminum bracket that my neighbor fabbed up for me (Thanks Mike!).

With that done, the next big project was to add some pop-out rear windows to improve ventilation a bit since the car has “2-50” air conditioning (2 windows down at 50 mph). I had found some glass on craigslist but it was missing a bunch of hardware and no one seemed to sell the parts that I needed independent of a full $400 kit. Thankfully, I managed to score two decent sets at the Bugorama show swap meet for just $80. This was an even more smoking deal than I initially thought as the sets included not only the latches which can fetch $50 a pair on their own but also the pinch welting which sells for around $15 a pair for new pieces. I took the best components from both sets, replaced the window seals, and then got the rest of the hardware needed to install the windows. It was a great deal of work to carefully polish the chrome bits and then work the seals into place but for around $150, I had one really nice set of windows with all the goods to build another set that would be just fine for daily driver duty.

With all of this done, the car is ready to enjoy for the Summer with just a few little projects left until the big repaint which most likely won’t happen for a couple of years. Guess it’s time to start looking for that Baja Bug project...

Clementine: Theory vs. Reality (October 2013)

I really thought that I had everything planned out just right to get Clementine sitting low and mean on some pretty snazzy looking rims. I read some reports that what I had planned would not work but I figured I was smart enough to MacGyver my way around them. Boy was I wrong.

My original inspiration for the final appearance of the old girl came from seeing some really snazzy looking late model Beetles riding low on Porsche 914 “2 liter” Fuchs rims. Some of the cars had replica rims instead of the real deal Fuchs but being a Porsche dork I really wanted to go with the original forged goodness that the Fuchs forge had produced as OEM quality goods nearly 40 years ago. I did pick up some static on the forums that suggested the offsets might not work well with the drop spindles I had on the car which lower the spindle and ball joints in relation to the rim in order to drop the car down but most folks said they were able to easily clearance everything or had no problems at all.

With that in mind, I hit Craigslist to search out some rims and I finally found a set that belonged to a guy named Yogi who lived up in the Sierra foothills. After getting hilariously lost after not being able to understand that Yogi told me to look for Pammy Way instead of Tammy Way, I finally got to his place. Yogi explained that the two sets of rims he had were from an old project 914 that he sold a while back and that the rims had been under his house for 25 years. They looked pretty scruffy but they were very straight and I picked out the best four to throw in the back of the family Porsche once we cleared out the black widows from the rims. I figured they would polish up quickly and look very slick. First mistake-never believe it is easy to make old grungy stuff look pretty.

I got the rims home and set about to stripping off the old anodizing with oven cleaner and then going after the rims with varying grades of sandpaper and polishing compound. After six hours of finger straining work, I had one quarter of one rim polished. I gave up and took the rims to a rim repair joint where the guy quoted me something like $1200 to polish them. This seemed silly so I took the rims to a blasting house where for $100 they proceeded to completely destroy the finish on the rims to where they looked rough and awful.

At this point, a sane person would have given up and just spent the money on the repop set, but dammit I don’t like to lose so I took the rims over to my go-to paint and body guys at Anderson Brothers in West Sacramento. They usually don’t do any work like this but the owner Troy Anderson is a hot rod guy and set one of his guys to work on making the rims pretty. After a few short days, they were ready and simply gorgeous in a Porsche silver that positively gleamed.

Now, if I was smart I would have waited to get the rims painted until I had mounted some tires and made sure they fit right. Unfortunately, like a kid with a new Christmas toy I got them all pretty, slapped some new tires on them in the appropriate sizes and then bolted them up to the car with great glee. The euphoria lasted all of about thirty seconds which was when I noticed the ball joints where damn near flush with the rims and even with the car up in the air on the jack stands were scuffing the beautiful paint off the inside of the rims. No matter, I thought, it will all be perfecto when I drop the car down and the ball joints rotate away from the rims.

 

BZZZAT. Wrong answer. A quick spin around the neighborhood resulted in horrible grinding sounds and generally awfully noises coming from the front end. Indeed the ball joints were smacking the beejezus out of the rims and needed some help. More research suggested 3/8 inch spacers might solve the problem and it looked like I had more than enough thread to work with on the lug bolts to make it happen. I bolted on the spacers and the scraping pretty much went away with only a light self clearancing happening on huge bumps and sharp turns. Feeling pretty smug, I installed a snarky new set of billet center caps on the rims in the front and moved back to the rear wheels to do the same…which is when I found out the center caps did not fit on the rear wheels as they were too shallow for the axle nuts. Another trip to the parts store and another set of wheel spacers for the rear got everything back in business.

So, Clementine is back on her feet and ready for some more tweaks to get her little 1600cc dual port motor back in shape and ready for some shakedown miles until the big thumper motor is ready to rock and roll. Time to sharpen up my valve adjustment skills, stock up on Band Aids, and take another read of the “Complete Idiot” VW manuals…

Clementine: Getting to Know You (July 2013)

Whenever you bring an old car home, it always has a few surprises waiting for you. These surprises can be good or bad and I have had many of both flavors.

I really did not check Clementine over in great detail once I saw solid floor pans and aprons on a car that drove pretty well and was way better in all respects than the other beaters I had looked at. I did miss a couple of rust spots on each front quarter and also the usual luggage tray rust which turned out to be worse than I thought. However, neither are a big deal as scads of replacement metal is available and I should be able to get away with a quick patch or two.

As soon as I got Clementine off the trailer, I took her for a brief but terrifying drive around the neighborhood. Although she started right up and happily pulled away in low gear, the old girl started to stall at idle once she warmed up, the steering was looser than a politician’s morals, and the brakes only worked at every third stop sign. None of these were unexpected given that the car was off the road for 20 years and is sitting on ancient tires but it did tell me that we had a ways to go before I would be comfortable leaving the confines of the greater Old Willowbank area. It’s nothing short of amazing how loafing along at 25 miles an hour in an old fairly clapped out car on a quiet street can be scarier than doing 150 miles an hour down the front straight at Willow Springs in a sorted racecar.

Although there is going to be some serious work involved to get the car back on the road, there were some little things to fix that the Lindsey Family Garage undertook in furtherance of our quest to get Clementine roadworthy and cruiseable by the end of summer. The big projects to come will be brakes, rolling stock, and suspension but there were a bunch of little tasks that looked like they would pretty easy to knock out. I was confident that we could get them done with three generations of the family on the job.

The first problem was that although most of the indicator lights worked, the right brake light was out, the 4-way flashers were dead, the marker lights were MIA, and the license plate lighting was not working. Fortunately, old VW’s have very simple wiring and a quick surf of the Samba revealed that a short in one particular circuit was most likely the culprit. I traced out those wires and found that the previous owner (the PO) had hacked into this circuit to wire up the running lamps to take power from his tow rig when he flat towed Clementine. Over the years, the wiring in the 6-way trailer socket had gotten crusty and eventually shorted out which in turn melted the fuse for this circuit and also blew the tarnation out of the lamps on the circuit that were wired in front of the fuse that should have protected them. Since Clementine ran and drove fairly well, I began to think this is what might have taken her off the road in 1993.

Fortunately, the fix was pretty easy. I simply removed the trailer plug wiring, repaired all the breaks in the wiring, and then added new bulbs. For good measure, I replaced all the faded and cracked lenses with new repop pieces and also added a nice front turn signal housing that I took from a roached out ’71 Super at the local Pick-n-Pull to replace the bodged one on the car. It also seemed like good practice to freshen up the fuse box since many of them looked like they have been microwaved so I replaced all 12 fuses and cleaned all the contacts. Once all that was done, a quick pull of the light switch and 4-way flasher switch confirmed that all was well with working lamps and steady voltage throughout the system.

The next easy project was hooking the oil pressure warning wire back up which gave me a working oil lamp on the dash. Not sure why this had been unhooked but it did cause me to look closer at the motor which revealed another surprise. In this case, the surprise was that Clementine’s engine was not the original “AE” series 1600 but rather a “B6” case from a 1970 model with the proper dual port cylinder heads. While I had the deck lid open, I decided to also try and cure the crappy hot idle. This led to me discovering the engine had a Bosch “009” mechanical advance distributor instead of the usual vacuum advance model and that someone in the past had tried to cure the idle problem by just jacking the set screw on the fast idle cam into the stratosphere instead of using the proper adjustment method. After a quick check of the timing and using the adjustment method of incrementally setting the volume and bypass screws in concert, the idle smoothed right out and the car lost the stink of unburned gas that I had noted during my initial drives. There is still some hesitation just off idle, but the wisdom in cyberspace says that this is just a quirk of the 009 distributor so I will have to live with it until I install the hotter motor that I contemplating.

So, next steps are to get the brakes and suspension fettled along with fitting some fresh rubber to meet the road. As usual, the credit card is smoking and my knuckles are skinned so stay tuned...

EClementine: Everything must go (March 2020)

With the performance testing done, it was time to take out all of the parts that make a gasoline-powered car go down the road.

I was lucky enough to have a great crew of Advanced Auto Technology students to help so I mostly set goals, instructed when needed, but otherwise let the kids do the wrenching. My main students were Nolan, Cameron, Troy, Diego, Zander, Duncan, Cooper, and Max with assists from some other super talented kids when we needed more hands.

We began at the front of the car by draining the fuel tank and then removing the tank, the fuel lines, and the fuel pump from the front of the pan.

We then moved rearward and began the process of yanking the engine by taking off the carbs and intakes. We also thought it was wise to remove the super cool Vintage Speed exhaust so that came off as well. The decklid went into the parts storage bin as we kept banging our heads into it along with its assorted bolts, hinges, and spring.

We then removed three of the four bolts holding the engine into the car and summarily hit the proverbial brick wall.

When the engine and transmission were last joined together, there is one bolt on the top drivers side of the engine case that is often really hard to get to as it sits behind the fan shroud.  A common solution is to run a threaded fitting down into the case using a nut on the engine bolt which allows easy removal in the future as you no longer have to fish a wrench under the shroud to get at the nut that lives back there. When you do this conversion you are supposed to grind off a metal step on the transmission that fixes the bolt in place and prevents it from rotating when you tighten down the nut behind the shroud in the stock configuration. Unfortunately, no one ever ground off that step from the transmission.

This, of course, was a big problem. The bolt was fixed in place by the metal step and the fitting in the case could not rotate to allow us to back off the bolt. We discussed cutting off the fitting, cutting off the head of the bolt, and other destructive solutions as common wisdom dictated that the engine and transmission could not be removed as a single unit.

After much thought and measuring, the kids decided to make a run at getting the engine and transmission out together. The students tore down the entire top end of the engine by removing the alternator, alternator stand, fan shroud, oil cooler, and the distributor. They also disconnected the axles from the transmission, disconnected the shift linkage, and removed the bolts that mount the transmission to the chassis. Once this was done, the kids very carefully rocked everything back and forth until they were able to drop the whole unit on to a rolling cart and then lift the body off the powertrain which was impressive for a group of students who have never done much heavy mechanical work.

Once everything was out, the engine and transmission were moved out of the way and the kids went to work with a dremel tool to grind the step off the transmission. They made quick work of that and soon the engine was on its way back to my workshop and the kids got to work putting the transmission back into the car.

 We were confident that the next work session would see us laying out the parts for the EV West kit and coming up with a plan to get them into the car before the end of the school year so we could proudly exhibit EClementine at the annual Devil Day car show.