Outlaw/Rally-styled 1966 Beetle

Carl Heideman said:

 

Stay tuned.

1. Looks like Carl designed the parking sticker.

2. when Carl says stay tuned, that's what I do. 

Carl Heideman said:

In reply to preach :

I've used those "no load" universal flasher relays on other cars, but VWs have this box that is the flasher relay and handles some other stuff:

I haven't researched to see if someone makes one that works with LEDs, but like I said, I don't think they're any better than an 1157 bulb, so I don't know that I'll need one.

You shouldn't need a different relay if you give the old one enough resistance to work. The interwebs say a 6 ohm resistor across each bulb will do the job. It'll make some heat so you need 25 or 50W chassis mounts. They sell for $10-20 each when listed as LED resistors but go for about $4 each from Digikey or Mouser.

I have LEDs in my 911 because they light up noticeably faster than incandescents. Each millisecond that the guy behind me gets to put down his phone is a millisecond less distance he runs into me.

In reply to paddygarcia :

Thanks for the tips! 

My son Jack bought an unfinished Cummins-swapped F250 project (should he put up a build thread?). I lined the rear bumpers up and took this picture.  I think there is just enough room to park a Mini in front of the Beetle and be about the same length as the F250.

Okay, here's the photo dump for making the heat work. I put a lot of detail in as many Beetles have parts missing or messed up and maybe someone will find this useful.

New cables, which are solid, not stranded, and swedged into a little hook at the control lever. The control levers (the red knob controls heat, the other lever has a white knob that directs the heat) had bad black paint so I wire wheeled them back to their plated original look.

There are nylon washers on each side of the lever to have it move smoothly yet stay in place. Of four needed, one was missing, one was in pieces, so I got new ones from the hardware store.

I had to pull the rear carpet to have access to the levers and cables, and of course the seats needed to come out before the carpet. It was a good excuse to grease the seat rails and change back to 2 point seat belts. The 3 points that were in the car weren't retractable. Some day, I may look into putting retractable 3 points back in. 

That's clean, bare metal on the floorpan. This car is solid.

The cables connect to a Rube Goldberg linkage to open and close a flap on each heater box. I had to bend a few things to make the linkages move smoothly. I'm sure the heater boxes are aftermarket and a little less precise than factory boxes.

Another view.

Two accordion hoses connect the heater boxes to the body and it's ready to go.

I think the B-pillar will clean up and I'll find a plug for the 3 point mounting hole.

Everything back together.

It was about 45 degrees today so I had a good chance to see how it worked. It took quite a while to feel real heat--maybe 10 minutes. But I guess the heat goes quite a way, and through long, cold, heater channels, so all that stuff has to heat up before it gets to my feet and the windshield. But it got there and was plenty warm for the current temp.  Since I love to measure things, I'll probably see what the output temp is and compare it to a couple of other cars (spreadsheet to follow!).

I'm not quite done as I have to undo this. This shows one of the two rear heat outlets under the rear seat, which should have a flapper valve controlled by the cable connected to the lever with the white knob. Someone capped the outlet with a freeze plug. Hopefully, the flappers are still in each side. But I would have closed them anyway to get more heat up front. 

I gave the front end a little attention, too. 

The steering damper was damp with fluid and no longer damped, so a new one replaced it.

When I first set the ride height, I was happy with it on the 2nd try and thought I'd drive it for awhile to see how I liked it. I liked the height, but it had a bit of the lowered car bounce. As the photo shows, I didn't adjust the beams equally. So today I adjusted them to 7 notches each. I also brought the front end up about 1/2." It rides better this way. I may lower it back that 1/2" but honestly I think I like the rake better now. 

Heat and defrost on a Beetle are highly over-rated.

Noddaz said:

Heat and defrost on a Beetle are highly over-rated.

  

And don't forget underwhelming at best.

Carl Heideman said:

My son Jack bought an unfinished Cummins-swapped F250 project (should he put up a build thread?). I lined the rear bumpers up and took this picture.  I think there is just enough room to park a Mini in front of the Beetle and be about the same length as the F250.

Um, yes? CL and FB are littered with stalled Cummins swaps

Functional heater boxes/defrost and carpet and no rust!? What is this magical thing?

In reply to buzzboy :

Unobtainium.

I drove a Beetle to high school for two years and remember using the ice scraper numerous times to clear the inside of the windshield.  Our VW had bad heat exchangers, so turning on the heat wasn't a good option.

Thankfully it doesn't really freeze where I live, but when it was down in the 30s/40s my fast idle wouldn't cut off before I got to school. I got a lot of looks with my loud ass 50hp car.

I love to measure things. Like if I was a superhero, I'd be The Measurer. I decided to measure the heat on the Beetle compared to some other cars. My methodology was to start with a cold car, turn the heat all the way up, then measure at the defroster duct at 2,5,10, and 15 minutes. At the end of the test, I also measured the floor outlet to see if there was a variance to the defrost. 

I used a food thermometer as it seemed more repeatable than an IR unit.

I was surprised by the results, especially how much better the heater is on my modern car!

Might as well add a graph:

I also found that with the classic cars, there was a 10-15 degree difference between the car at idle (cooler) and 3000 RPM (warmer).  

I know we're all thinking that British heaters suck, and this shows that they actually suck a little more than a VW heater. I wanted to check a classic American car, too. The only one I have that's about right is my 1966 Plymouth wagon, which I expected to have great heat. However, the heater valve appears to be stuck so I'll have to fix it before adding a line to the table above.

One note about the 2020 Civic Si, which has HVAC. I did the testing on "Hi." The numbers go up to 90, so "Hi" is above 90. When I set it to 66-72, the temp at the defroster was about 10 degrees more for each setting. 

There's a chance I'll repeat this when it's 30 degrees ambient...

If I remember right beetles and our ghia have heat blown in just from the engine fan while my 914 has an electric blower and some 914s (6s maybe) and 911s have an electric blower for both sides. I'd be interested in seeing the difference those make. Our Type 14 will get a blower even though it will be parked mid November always.

Holy grail if you find a gas heated VW to put in the mix too but those really really sketch me out at 50 years old.

Man, when I was learning to drive on my buddy's '73 Super Beetle in Western PA we had to scrape the inside of the windshield and mop it with a rag if it was condensing but not freezing, then we tried a marketed electric heater/fan that would clear up to the wipers so we'd have to hunker down to see while driving. Not great being 6'2".

When I finish my repair, not restoration, of my 914 it will have 2 blowers and heated seats. I am 53, probably 55 by the time I am done, and if you have a problem with that you can berkeley off...get off my lawn! Haha!

I'm still driving this 3-5 times a week. I recently treated it to an oil change and decided to deal with a floppy turn signal switch that wouldn't stay on in one direction and wouldn't cancel in the other. 

The steering wheel comes of easily.

I'm  trying not to use reproduction parts on the car whenever possible. I bought this switch used from a guy on the Samba. Not only is it OEM but 50 bucks beats roughly 200 for a good reproduction. 

I did a careful test fit and canceling still wasn't working right. Quick inspection of the canceling piece on the steering wheel being flattened showed why the other switch had been damaged.

I used socket as a dolly and tapped it back into shape.

One less annoying issue. This car still isn't as nicely sorted as my other '66, but it's getting closer. 
 

I have a friend with some Porsche 356 steering wheels and may consider making a switch. Unfortunately, he and I both know what they're worth.

I run ethanol-free fuel in my older cars and the gas station I buy it from is about 15 minutes from home. I usually take a car down there with a bunch of 5 gallon fuel jugs and fill up. Since I've had this Beetle, I was putting 5 gallons from a jug into it from time to time. Recently, I took it to the station with some jugs and filled the tank.

Once home, I smelled a lot of raw fuel and found pretty big leakage around the fuel sender.
 

Early VW fuel gauges are completely mechanical--the float/lever is connected to a cable that goes to the gauge. When I popped the cover off the float assembly, I found that someone in the past had filled it with silicone. That explained why the gauge only worked above 1/2 full. I'm surprised it worked at all.

Further inspection saw that the sender had a waffle pattern as the screws were likely overtightened on the gasket in the past. I think there was more fuel leaking past this seal than internally where the silicon was.
 

While I'm trying to use only original parts on this car, a new sender was about $20 and will hopefully get me by until I find a good original. Cheap enough, but nothing like the original.
 

I was expecting it to leak once reinstalled.

I put 3/4 tank of gas in it as that would have sloshed/leaked previously. No leaks! I'll put some more in and hope for the best until I find another sender. And the gauge should work below 1/2 tank. 

Interesting setup!

We had a big rain the other day and I ran the wipers for about 10 minutes running errands. The next day, I started the car and popped a fuse.

It turns out the wiper motor was pinching a wire and it must have gotten hot enough to get through the insulation. It was a quick fix for now--I just rerouted it and taped the bare spot. The wire has at least two butt connectors splicing it for some reason, so I'll eventually run a replacement when I clean up some of the other wiring.

As long as I was messing with the wipers, I thought I'd check why the passenger wiper is kind of lazy.

It turns out I have mismatched wiper arms, and the passenger one is a loose fit. I'll have to dig into wiper arm trivia to figure out which ones are correct for this car. 

And, the used turn signal switch I installed wasn't staying on for right turns unless I held it. I was hoping it either needed to be cleaned or lubed, so I popped the steering wheel off to try. The release mechanism was pretty gummed up, so I cleaned it with some brake cleaner and all is well.