Nick and Sherri's 2 make 1 (65 Beetle) Restoration
Page 8  
Started December, 2001
Finished October 2006

                                       

                Norbert                                                                           Harley

June 2006
Nick started gluing some of the carpeting in. He can only do a little at a time as the fumes are very overpowering.

October 2006
Nick has been laid off from work so he now has time to continue the restoration on Harley. There really isn’t too much left to do. A few good days of working on it and it should be ready to roll.
Click on the pictures to enlarge.

October 9, 2006
Got my first ride in Harley since the restoration was completed. It was a major surprise to see Harley sitting in the driveway when I came home from work. I thought I would never see the day when it would be out of the shop. The first ride wasn’t what you would call a smooth one. Nick has some charging issues and needs to do some fine tuning but at least the engine is running and we are very close to having it completely finished.

October 10, 2006
Nick did some fine tuning on the engine and put a few more things on the car. The test drive proved to be somewhat successful. The battery is pretty old and will have to be replaced. Also, it still isn’t charging so we’ll have to look into that. Taillights were working but suddenly quit. Nick found several things that he replaced with new parts 3 years ago to be defective from just sitting. It was really strange to see things he had worked on a few years ago already rusting because it hadn’t been used.

October 11 2006
Nick worked out the bugs with the charging. Seems the commutator had some dust on it and that was enough to make it not charge. Nick also found that there was rust in the gas tank, even though it was redone 4 years ago. He ended up taking it out and flushing it. We will see if that helps. If not, we will likely have to take it off and redo it again. Today is the maiden voyage for Harley! I drove Harley from New London to Baileys Harbor (Door County). It was a 2 hour drive and Harley purred along like a kitten with no problems. Nick followed me in his 79 Westy as we were planning on doing some camping with club members for the Sister Bay Fall Festival. It was amazing to be finally driving this Bug. I thought I would never see the day when it would be back on the road again. It is definitely louder than my 74 Bug and the 57 Bug. Shifting is a little different, too. We’re starting to bond but I don’t trust it yet.

October 12, 2006
Harley was originally purchased from one of our club members who lived in Door County (Elison Bay). He purchased the beetle from someone who lived on Washington Island (off the tip of Door County). So it was fitting that Harley’s maiden voyage was taking him back to his old home grounds. We wanted to take Harley back over to Washington Island and try to find the previous owner but the weather was not cooperating today. The ferry to Washington Island wasn’t running due to high winds. They were going to reassess the wind situation at noon but Nick and I decided to just try it again tomorrow when the weather was suppose to be much nicer. So we bummed around most of the day visiting our favorite smoked fish store (Charlies Smokehouse), hitting some rummage sales and doing some souvineer shopping. We went back to the campground and made some chili over the campfire. I was very pleased with how Harley was driving. We did change the fuel filter as we saw some residual rust showing up in it. Figured this was some that was left in the lines after flushing the gas tank.

October 13, 2006
Today we were to go to Sister Bay for their car show and Fall Festival. This has become a yearly event for our club and is just a blast. The town is built on a hill that makes it’s way down to a marina. The marina is where the car show is put on. Some have renamed the festival to the Sister Bay Fall-Down Fest because as you make your way down the hill you get a drink from each booth and by the time you are at the bottom of the hill, you are about ready to fall down or have done so. Anyway, we get ready to go and Harley decides he doesn’t want to start. It did get a bit cold the night before so Nick sprays a little ether in the breather to persuade Harley to start. Harley starts but doesn’t want to stay running. What the heck, he ran perfectly the day before. So Nick and a couple other club members run through to make sure we are getting spark. That pans out to be good, so they think it must be fuel related. Nick finds that if he disconnects the fuel solenoid it will stay running so he thinks it must not be working or has a rust particle in it. We take it out and look at it but it looks fine. He puts it back in and reconnects it. Starts Harley back up and he seems to be running again. We decide to go ahead and take Harley to the show.

Harley made it just fine but isn’t running perfectly. He doesn’t seem to have as much power as before especially on the hills. We park him at the show and decide to watch the parade and then make our way back towards the campground. If Harley runs ok, we will go catch the ferry to Washington Island. If not, we will head back to the campground. We watched the parade. Harley started up ok so we head out of town towards Elison Bay. We are just about out of town when Harley loses all of his power going up a hill. Nick has the accelerator to the floor. He pulls over to take a look at what is going on. Harley eventually dies and won’t start again. We fiddled around with the engine trying different things for about 30 minutes. Nothing was working. Finally, Nick discovered if he took one of the spark plug wires off of the distributor and laid it by the respective hole in the cap it would run much better than if it was plugged in. We finally decided to tape the spark plug wire so that it would lay in that position and limp the darn Beetle back to the campground. It was a bit slow going, especially on the hills, but we made it back to the campground. Nick parked Harley and took a break for a bit before looking at the Bug again.

One of the club members had a spare 009 distributor so we decided to try that to see if maybe there was a problem with the vacuum advance or the distributor. Funny thing was that when we tried to switch the distributors out, the 009 wasn’t locking in. We compared them side by side and all be darn if the stock one wasn’t longer. We all thought that can’t be right! Upon closer inspection we noticed someone has welded on an extension on the bottom of our stock one. Geez, I’ve never seen that before. We came to the conclusion that whoever rebuilt the engine the last time forgot to put the shims in and they welded on the extension to make it work instead of taking it apart and redoing their screw up. So, we took off the end of our distributor and put it on the 009. Harley ran better but it was not perfect and there was still some lose of power although not as much. We think there is some rust in the carb spray tube that might be screwing things up but didn’t want to deal with taking it apart or taking a chance on dropping the tube into the carb at the campground. So we planned to drive it the next day as far as it will go. If we make it to Sturgeon Bay, we would be within our 100 mile towing range for AAA.

October 14, 2006
We get up early and pack up camp. The 79 Westy is loaded with everything and Harley started up this morning so we decide to get on our way. It will be a long ride back to New London. If we make it to Sturgeon Bay, we can call AAA if the Bug isn’t able to make the trip home. I fill up the gas tank and we are on our way. The Bug seems to be running a little cold natured at first but after warming up seems to be doing pretty good. Better at the higher RPMs with the 009, of course. I lose some power on the hills but it is still manageable. We make it to Sturgeon Bay and Nick asks if everything is still ok. I say yes, and we continue on our way. Harley made it back to New London and I parked him back in the shop. I have to say the maiden voyage wasn’t dull!

So Harley’s trip back to Door County was an eventful one to say the least. I wished we could have gotten him back to Washington Island but things just didn’t work out so we will have to take him back next year. Maybe by then we will have all of the bugs worked out.

The rest of the story:
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