Arg! Rattle!

Over lunch today I enjoyed a sunny, mid-30s day driving the Ghia out to the suburbs just to get a sub. On the way back I heard a horrible sound on the highway. It was a fast, rhythmic "ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka!" sound very obviously keeping pace with wheel rotation from the rear-right of the car.

I pulled onto a side street and drove 10 nerve-wracking miles home getting very familiar with the sound and symptoms. It was just as I've experienced before: only during acceleration and more pronounced when turning right. This time, though, it was still pretty damn loud going straight and even a little turning left. I'd hardly hear anything coasting or braking, although every now and then I'd hear a little *bump-scrape* even then.

Got home to the garage OK, jacked up the rear-right and took the wheel off. For the second time I checked for evidence of bad bearings or CV joints and everything still looked OK. If I had bad bearings or CV joints and it was only showing up after those parts heated up from driving then I should have easily felt something amiss. I poked around some more for anything else such as the clip holding the emergency brake cable to the diagonal beam and found nothing until I wiggled the heater box.

There was a good inch of free play with the heater box around the exhaust pipe right by where it connects to the rubber accordian ducts that provide cabin heat. I figured it was loose enough to hang down onto the drive axle and scrape on it. I wired it up to keep it out of the way, replaced the wheel and took another test drive. No more rattle.

I'll have to figure out a plan to patch up that heater box as I'm no doubt losing a lot of heat out that gap when I could really use it in the cabin. But, for now I'm just glad (again) to know there's nothing seriously wrong with the car.

Easy. No, Really!

Got the new thermostat in the mail and just installed it. It was a 30 minute job with no complications. Car runs great.

I said before "It should be an easy job" and usually that's the kiss of death meaning it's a full weekend and a half project. For once I was right!

Apparently, I Need a Thermostat

My car won't idle well when cold. And it's cold lately, just in the teens during the day today and about 1 degree tomorrow. But, hey, it's an old VW, they just run kinda crappy in the cold, right?

Yeah, and they smell like a dangerous gas leak, have doors that droop, drive rough ... gotta stop thinking like that! The thermostat is apparently quite insturmental too good, cold weather operation:

http://www.vw-resource.com/vanes_thermostat.html

The mechanic at Quality Coaches here pointed out to me that my thermostat was "blown" adding that it wasn't really needed and they don't make them anymore so don't worry about it. Well, they dont' make the OEM thermostats, but I did find this:

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=265325

There's a new, better thermostat I could get for my Type I engine that isn't the old "bellows" style which had a habit of rupturing after a while. You know, they'd become "blown." The effect is the engine will actually run too cold in winter which not only wears the engine out quicker but it promotes carburetor manifold icing. Basically, fuel will either condense or even freeze to the walls of the intake manifold if it's too cold.

That's basically what's happening to me. I think this qualifies as a necessary part, so I'll probably just order one and blot it on. Removing the old one and installing new is quite simple from what I've seen. Drive the car's rear wheels up on the ramps, get underneath and remove the single bolt from the old thermostat, take it out, put the new one in and tighten the bolt down. Done!

Might want to find out about your thermostat, Dad, just in case. Any idle problems below freezing for you?

New Parts Wish List

My wife Reese has put a moratorium on parts purchases for the Ghia except for items of absolute necessity. At first I thought I'd be putting in an order for new bearings or CV joint repair kit but yesterday was glad to discover none of that is needed. Of course, that means I'm not ordering anything for a while unless I con her into letting me get a couple things "for my birthday."

Here's what I'd like to eventually get:

New door checkrods, pins and rollers.

These would make getting in and out of the Ghia easier for driver and passenger. As with most cars the doors are supposed to prop themselves open at a few points and keep them from opening too far and buckling the front quarter panels. Right now I've still got the original metal checkrod only for the driver's side. At first one of the rollers on that side wasn't connected properly but I've since fixed that so the door doesn't open too far.

The original checkrod I have is all metal but it had a tiny bit of old, dried and cracked rubber still on it. When I took the 0ld rubber off I found three round holes that used to hold the rubber in place. I tried to hack together a solution with a cut up old bike inner tube. That would probably work OK if I could figure out just the right amount of inner tube needed for each spot and how best to secure it to the checkrod through the holes so it wouldn't slide around. Well, for about $13 each a new set of checkrods is more worth the money than the time wasted trying to fix the old one.

New lower, driver's-side door hinge

I do have a pretty good temporary fix in place for this, though. My driver's-side door does droop down more than my passenger's-side and sometimes you hear that horrible creaking sound of the lower front corner of the door rubbing against the front quarter panel. The paint is scraped off on that spot now, too.

At first I passed it off as "Eh, it's the driver's side door and they just get used more so it's worn out more. My old Beetle was the same way." I should really stop saying that. It's no different than "Eh, they just smell like gas" or "Eh, they just don't idle well" for that matter. After further inspection I discovered weld marks on the lower hinge. It also looked to be welded a bit off from where it should have been, causing the lower front of the door to sit more forward than it should.

So, I cut up a can of Mello Yellow and put six layers of aluminum can between the hinge and the door frame to shim it and position the hinge more toward the back of the car. It could use more shimming, but it no longer scrapes and the door doesn't drop nearly as much as it used to.

I most likely won't be buying brand new as someone at TheSamba told me he had a reconditioned hinge he could sell me for only $25 with shipping included.

Instrument bulb socket(s)

I just need the one to replace the green parking light indicator in my dash but it would be nice to have a few extra on-hand just in case. The only place I can find these currently is California Import Parts and they've been out of stock for a few months now.

"Olympic Blue" touch-up paint

I believe this is my color. It's VW Code 58 and paint code L51P for whatever that's worth. My car has been re-painted but I don't believe completely. I think a lot of the paint on it is actually original with a lot of touch-up work already done to fix rust areas around the front and rocker panels. I've got a lot of little scratches here and there such as where the door was rubbing against the quarter panel. A touch-up of those areas would be nice.

Dream on, Chris

Fun to dream about and only $300. My current carburetor is original to the car and therefore restoring it to perfect condition might cost almost as much in time and parts. Why not just spend the same money for a dual carburetor kit and get a little extra power and fun?

Of course, I would want to put a brand new, higher-flow exhaust system on to really get any benefit from dual carburetors and not over-heat the engine. That would probably mean no more heater boxes unless ...

Just be happy with what you've got, OK?

High performance heater boxes? Mid America Motorworks' site doesn't have too much info on what makes these high performance compared to stock, so I'll have to ask around if someone knows more about them. It does state "1.5 inch OD pipes" for whatever that's worth and they're supposed to have "better flow." A new set of them is $50 cheaper than stock. *shrug*

And then, of course, why stop there?

To go with high performance, high flow heater boxes I'd need a muffler that fit it. I dunno about the four pipe look of this one, though. I think I have seen some cheaper that had just two pipes so it wouldn't look quite so different as stock.

Old Cars Rattle

I've been posting a few questions on TheSamba forums lately as I've been narrowing down issues with my Ghia. But, I didn't want the blog to go ignored, so I'll post a summary here for posterity.

The Interesting Case of the Continually Calibrated Carburetor

After finally getting my BTDC and ATDC straight and knowing for sure that I was setting my timing exactly right I was able to get the motor running about as well as can be expected in winter. Once it's fully warmed-up it will idle solidly enough at 850 RPMs, has good throttle response, low-end power and on-par fuel economy (23 in-town, 30 or better highway).

I have to accept the carburetor is 34 years old, though, and probably will never run 100% properly ever again. But, it's pretty good. The only issue seems to be the volume control screw needs to be 8-9 full turns out to keep the engine from stalling when I come to a stop. Standard for a brand new 34 PICT-3 carburetor is 2 1/2 to 3 turns out for the volume screw. My setting sounds common, though, compared to others with carburetors just as old.

It does stall at idle, however, when the engine isn't quite fully warmed-up. That seems not much different from my '72 Super Beetle from 15 years ago, though. Cold weather and center-mounted carburetors don't mix. You need to allow 10 to 15 minutes of warm-up before the engine will operate properly in winter. What happens until such time is the intake manifold is simply too cold and fuel actually condenses on the walls rather than getting to the pistons.

Worrisome Rattle Fixed with Brute Strength

I'd been hearing a disturbing "tock tock tock" sound coming from the front end sometimes when I was turning right and accelerating. It seemed to correspond directly with wheel rotation, so I'd stress out every time I heard it. At first I thought it was a rattling bumper as the right side of the front bumper seemed a bit looser. I tightened that down but the rattle persisted.

My theory of the sound being the bumper even though it corresponded with wheel rotation was because I'd heard that sound before and it was the metal end of a strap on my bike messenger bag in the trunk. It was hitting the top of the gas tank (I don't have a trunk liner like Dad) and the road vibration must have made it tap in-time with the wheels. Because of that I was convinced it was something equally minor just making a racket and not something serious waiting to turn one of the front wheels 90 degrees and kill me dead.

One guy on TheSamba thought it could very well be a loose tie rod ready to come off, turn one of my front wheels 90 degrees and kill me dead. If not that, it was perhaps bad bearings, bad CV joints or lose brake shoe. Other motor-inclined friends of mine thought it sounded like bad bearings, too. There were no other signs pointing toward a loose tie-rod ready to turn a front wheel 90 degrees and kill me dead. But, a bad bearing could seize up a tire and that's not good either.

I read up in the Muir book and the Bentley manual about how to check bearings and CV joints and then spent 1/2 an hour yesterday jacking up each wheel, removing it and checking for just those things. From what I could tell, and someone with more experience might give me a better 2nd opinion, all bearings and CV joints seemed just fine. The tie rods were also nice and tight. No play of any sort in any of those systems.

I did find the source of the noise, though, with about 94.32% certainty. On the left-front disc brake the splash guard was a bit bent at the bottom right by the brake caliper. The splash guard is just a flimsy piece of metal on the inside of the disc that keeps water and dirt from getting on it. The dent in it was close enough to the disc that it looked to be touching at first glance. I imagine that while turning right the wheel gets torqued enough to bend the disc into the splash guard that extra couple millimeters to make a "tock tock tock" sound that corresponds with wheel rotation.

After bending the splash guard back away from the disc easily by hand and replacing the wheel I took the car for a 1/2 hour test drive and never heard the noise again! May all your worrisome car noises turn out as innocuous.