IT'S ALIVE!

wow... i sort of feel like dr. frankenstein this morning... but more on that later.

hello faithful readers! if i have any of those left. i know it's been forever since i've posted, but nothing has happened on the bug since my last post, until last night. between an awful work schedule keeping me at work until all hours of the night and morning to other household projects getting in the way, i have had no time for the bug. however, that all changed last night. here's the scoop...

my friend paul, who is very gracious to help me out, came over last night to help me with the last few items. he'd already mounted a balanced the old tires on the new front rims. i'll have to post some pictures of the new look. it's not bad, but definitely different.

anyway, i'd gotten the front rims on before he came over and there are no caliper clearance problems! so things were starting off right. first thing we did was to tighten the rear axle nuts so that we could put the cotter pins in. i'd already torqued them to 215 ft-lbs. but they needed just a little bit more for the holes to line up. he brought this massive 3 or 4" long socket and we went to work. got everything lined up and the cotter pins in.

next item of business was hooking the accelerator cable back up to the carb. not a big deal. we got that done and within correct spec.

so the moment of truth came. i tried to start her up and she cranked like crazy (the new starter is awesome!) but no fire. so we checked the spark and absolutely none. first thing paul noticed is that the spark plug wires weren't on the plugs correctly. i'd thought that there was a problem before and since forgot. so we took the new plugs out, twisted off the new type connector and put them back in and everything fit great. tested the spark again and nothing. tested it from the coil and barely anything. i just put a new coil in last year, so i'm hoping it's not that. but i still had my old one, so we hooked that one up and even less spark. so then we start tracing lines. everything is hooked up properly but paul notices a break in the hot wire to the coil. it had already been "fixed" like most of the wires in this car but the junction was really bad and corroded. so we made a new fix, checked the spark and it was awesome. nice and blue and very strong. so we hook up the wires again and start cranking. it took a while to get her started but she did fire up. paul was manually working the throttle. once the engine got warmed up and working again (took about 10 minutes) she ran on her own just great. no more intake leaks and she runs stronger than i've ever heard. we noticed that she's running rich, but that's probably from the previous owner compensating for the intake leaks. so i'll drive her around some more and see if i can't lean it out later.

but she ran for about 45 minutes last night. worked all the junk out and was running really smooth. it was 9:00 by the time we were finished, so i didn't take her out for a test run. but, i'm working from home today, so i'll have to take a little break later on today and take her out. first a drive through the yard to make sure the brakes are ok, then i'll take her out on the road. i'm really excited.

once again, kudos to my friend paul and to all of you who gave me advice and encouragement. i'll post up some pictures of the bug later and also some pictures of my recent projects. now that the bug is back on the road, i'll have to start focusing on some other things.

that's all for now. i promise it won't be months before the next post...