I got my 66!

[Nevada Notch]

Well lets see, where do I start? I guess the beginning would be good! Ha Ha!

I had been out of the bug scene for quite a while since about 1997 when I sold my poor old rusty falling apart 64 bug. The only VW I still owned was a 1989 Cabriolet (water sucker) although I was still wrenching on my neighbor Dave's 1976 Westy and his son Jason's 74 thing.

Then it happened.....my wife wrecked her Cabby (she was OK thankfully)! Well it was not driveable and I refused to put another dime into the car so I gave her my 2008 Hyundai commuter car and I started driving my old 2003 Dodge 1500 back and forth to work. 50 miles round trip and the wallet was starting to feel it because of gas prices.

So I decided to get myself another bug! I looked around at probably 20 cars and couldn't believe all of the junk out there that everyone wanted a small fortune for! I was looking on the Samba and saw a partially restored 66 for sale for $5,500. Just for the heck of it I offered the guy $4,000 and he took it! The car supposedly had only 25,000 miles on the latest engine and transmission and the guy produced a receipt to prove it. The test drive went fine so I plopped down $4,000 and had myself what I thought was a nice little beauty for $4,000! What a deal!

Now the 50 mile drive home.....

The first 25 miles or so went well with no issues then the rattling started! The fan started hitting the shroud and made one hell of a racket. So I nursed it home and started looking into the issue. At first I thought the strap to hold the generator down had come loose and that was causing the fan rub. I thought well, lets put the strap back on. Well After checking, the strap was broke in half!

New engine time !@#$%^&*....

I called the mechanic who had been working on the car to check for parts and then try to get a little more history on the car. Then he told me what the previous owner failed to mention. The car had been severely overheated. This happened when the owner was cruising around during Hot August Nights in Reno and sucked the insulation off the firewall and straight into the fan it went. When it did this it managed to ruin the fan and generator which again the previous owner failed to tell me. Well rather than screwing around with an engine that god only knows what has happened to it I decided to buy a turn key 1600DP for the car.

I am still trying to find all the little "bugs" the car has but when she's all figured out it will be a pretty sweet ride!

Rand

[1966veedub]

Nice looking ride! Definitely going to get you some "thumbs up" wherever you go.