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Hey folks. It has been a while since I posted anything. It was a nicer day so me and my budding mechanic got a quick job done on the family car. Even though this was not for the bug specifically, it is a needed skill for any mechanic to have. A while back, I got a call from my beautiful wife that the car had died on the way home. I took the truck to go give the jumper cables a try and see if we could deal with the issue in the morning. No dice. After a couple attempts, we called a tow truck and had the car brought home. Soap box moment. I pay for a premium battery replacement service that claims to be able to bring me a battery where the car is in trouble and replace it free of charge. I was rudely awakened to the fact that the very large company I pay to provide this only provides it when and where they choose. Real handy for someone who is stranded on the side of a cold dark road. The tow driver was kind and professional. The problem was not with his service at all. The next day, I called the roadside assistance company and verified that, Yes, I was entitled to a free battery provided and installed by them, however, I would have had to have them tow the vehicle to one of their shops and have one of their installers do the work. I asked if I could simply go to the garage and pick up the battery, I am fully capable of installing it. The answer was a definite “NO”. Instead, They were “Happy” to tow my vehicle to the nearest shop with their name on it (10.6 miles away) and have one of their people install the battery. So, this means I now have to wait on a tow truck, then wait on a garage and then get home after. I figure this would take a few hours at least, when I can go to the big box store right in town and have the whole thing done in 15 minutes. Oh, I forgot to mention that the reason the battery was dead was that the factory alternator had finally given up its existence. The poor thing only lasted 190,000 miles. So, here I am having to replace the alternator and battery and the roadside company is taking away my precious time and standing in the way of getting the car back on the road where it belongs. Thanks be to God alone for my brothers who came over and helped with the alternator. I could have done it alone, but having them with me made it much more enjoyable and faster. It did not take too long for me to tell the roadside company to buzz of and I went and bought a local battery and replaced it along with the alternator. After a few weeks, I am still waiting for my refund for the out of pocket expense. They will gladly reimburse me, if I go buy the battery itself, but, they won’t just hand me a battery over the counter. I understand fully that their service is more about them than it is about the people who are stranded. Climbing down now from the soapbox. All of that was brought on by the battery terminal was eaten away from corrosion. Of course, this is no ordinary battery terminal. None of the local parts stores carry the one that fits this vehicle. The universal ones all have a bolt that is too big for the hole in the cable. I had no choice but to buy one that did not fit only to order the right one and wait a few weeks for shipping. The new battery terminal arrived and me and my daughter went outside today since it was reasonably sunny and replaced the terminal. It all fits together nicely and seems to work just fine. She did this one all on her own, and I am so proud.

It is not often that I get into the Christmas spirit. When I do, it does not last long, but, it does satisfy that in me for about a year. This year, it came out in song. I added my own version of O Holy Night. This is really one of my favorite songs.

So. Even though this happens every year at the same time and we all know its going to happen and when, Christmas has managed to sneak up on us again. I was spending some time looking through the interweb shopping things and ran across this old Telephone/Radio/T.P. holder. It spun my wheels and in a few short clicks, I was caught in a CORNADO! I guess funny toilet paper rolls are a big thing. I won’t blast with as many as I can find. You can explore these things on your own. I picked the ones that rang a Bell with me. You see what I did there? When someone says they will bring an Apple Roll for dinner, I admit that I thought of something resembling a pumpkin roll. I did see another roll with an IPOD attached and thought “Someone misspelled this…” Merry Christmas And Extra Special Blessings to you and yours for the Holidays. This year will be a tough one for the extroverts and social types. To be fair, it will be just as difficult for the introverts and anti-socials too, we will all process it in our own ways as usual. Stay safe and healthy. Keep on rollin’

P.S. I got rid of my Day Job, so I also got rid of the page. I replaced it with the Christmas Play I wrote a while back. With it moving farther away on the Posts page, I figured it might be nice to have a more permanent home. And when I say Home, I don’t mean Home as in Home page, but “Home” as in where it lives on The Play page. Its only 30 pages long, give it a read and get into the Christmas Spirit.

To the veterans out there who may find there way here. I personally, thank you so much for your service and dedication to this country. Without you, we would have fallen long ago. We really do owe our freedom to you.

On to something a bit different for me. Since School has started, the bug is on the back burner, and we are focusing on other things. Sorry to the bug enthusiasts, we will return to the project when the weather becomes more accommodating, or, when I have time to clear space in the garage. I did release a couple songs recently and I certainly hope you continue to enjoy them along with the earlier projects with friends. I also did another “Tall Tale” and put it in that category. These are total drivel and are for the sole purpose of my getting some weird out in another creative way. This post is strange because I an venturing into different waters by adding some of my own thoughts and feelings instead of simply reporting facts. Not to worry, I am not going to go into politics or other taboo subjects. This is just something different to stretch my writing and try to entertain you with other tools in the toolbox.

Nothing like a simple project to ruin a day off. Don’t get me wrong here, I enjoy doing things that improve my living space. I feel like when I accomplish something positive, it helps lift my spirits and make me more pallet able to the people around me. Some times, little projects come up that are involuntary. This project, you may have already figured out by the picture, was replacing glass in a very old garage window. I have been told be more than a few people, that I just think differently than “Normal” people. As I work on this project, I cannot help but relate the window to perspective. There are the obvious things like windows are used to open up perspective in a closed room so that one can see things they were unable to see through a solid wall. This is what I would consider low hanging fruit in the “Things to be learned” department of any situation. You see, I have been a repair person for 22 years. It has been my job to walk into unfamiliar situations, and figure things out. Let’s define Low hanging fruit. This is the easy stuff to pull down and benefit from. If you are hungry, this is the fast cure that can get you by for the time being. This is all well and good, but, there is almost always more. Being a professional in the IT world, it is difficult to go through a career without attending classes or training that addresses the idea of changing your perspective socially by standing on a desk or dividing the room into categories in which you self define as whatever they want you to cuss and discuss until you see another perspective. These are well meaning and do have an effect on people and assist in the breaking down of barriers between people of all shapes. The point is to get beyond yourself, and try to see things from the other person’s perspective. I try to do this on a regular basis in as many different situations as I can. I know this makes me strange. I know this puts me at odds with most people. I promise you that this does not bother me. On to what I learned about me during this little unexpected project. A few weeks ago, I was mowing my grass and passed by my garage window. I noticed that it had several cracks in a nice spider web pattern that all met into a tiny hole. This was not the size of a BB, but bigger. It was round, ruling out rocks or lawn mower fodder. Those of you who know me, likely understand that I don’t get hung up too much on blame. At this point, the damage is done and it really does not matter who done it. The real issue here is getting it fixed. Dealing with broken things at work all day kind of cured me of trying to spend time figuring out who’s fault things are and moved me to a place of getting things resolved so people can return to normal life, and I can move on to the next puzzle. As any dad would do, I asked the kids what happened. I got a nice story of archery and accidents. The thing that surprised me was that all of the people that were there decided that I might get angry and didn’t tell me, or, they just plain forgot. Again, this doesn’t change the broken window or the path back to normalcy. Turns out one of the neighbor kids along with my own, were shooting arrows and one got away and went through the window. I am glad it was a piece of glass instead of something important. I am glad the kids were having fun together and not causing real trouble. Thinking more about the window itself, I came up with a different perspective. A window is also limiting. Yes, it can give you a view, but it does limit and change the whole experience. You can see out, but you are still behind a wall. You can experience the light, but, the sounds change. The window limits your other senses. Your sense of sight is only opened partially, but the other senses are all limited further and change your experience of the world. We all do things to windows to alter our own perspective as well. We buy curtains, and blinds and other decorations to make the window fit into what we want or how it comforts us in some way. This is natural. Some of the things we dress our windows with are to make them more pleasing to us, and other stuff we put on the windows are for the purpose of limiting the prying eyes of our neighbors and passers by. We do this with almost everything we encounter, so why not windows too. In a time when we have been forced to isolate and view things through the window of the media, please be extra careful about being aware of your perspective. Be cognizant of the fact that we are seeing the world through the lenses of media and technology more so than ever before. Do with this what you want. I am not trying to change who you are or what you believe. I am simply showing you something I thought about. The reality here is that I am thankful for the neighbor kid who shot an arrow through the garage window. It gave me something to think and write about. I also think that I learned that sometimes thing happen to teach me about me. Today, I learned that I despise glazing old windows. I am glad I learned a new skill and that the weather allowed me to do this on a nice day. So, there you go. A long and pointless journey into my world that you will never get back. I hope the rest of your day is filled with enjoyment and turns out in your favor.

Please read and enjoy a new short story.

Yup, You guessed it. Like most older musicians, I was in a BAND! As you can see from the picture above, we were called Steadfast. We had a great time together. We played at a bunch of local churches and coffee shops and even the occasional birthday party. Coincidentally, we played a show 1 block away from where my wife lived when she was growing up. She was invited, but thankfully couldn’t make it. I think maybe if she had seen me at that point in life, my kids never would have made it to existence. Anyhow, We really made a go of it and made some good friends along the way as we ROCKED the house. Our typical show was the “Three Band” setup. We would have 2 openers, a speaker/preacher, and then we played to close things out. We had matching jackets, we sold t-shirts, we even traveled a bit. This is where I truly started to play the drums and guitar. Before this, I just played video games and went to church. This endeavor really encouraged me to dig deeper into my relationship with God and into music. I am thankful for a small group of friends who could worship together in our own way and have fun while doing God’s work. I am sure that you have noticed by now what a big geek I am. I revisited a good time in the distant past and reworked an old favorite of mine. If you were with us in the old days, I hope you enjoy the updated version. If you weren’t there, you are most welcome to enjoy this for the first time. I may get some requests to put up the original studio recording, but even I am not brave enough for that. As always, Enjoy! There will be a second song release soon to come, so stay tuned.

After some drama with an online vendor, i decided to stop trying to chase the dream of finding the distributor that was made of unicorn tears that was designed specifically for our bug and upgrade to a more readily available and modern solution. I was able to buy a new coil and full distributor with electronic ignition for about $50 bucks less (and drama free) than the restored original that i am still unsure even existed. Once I got used to the idea that i could not effectively get my hands on the exact right distributor, I did a little exploring and found a reputable vendor for the updated distributor. I ordered a new coil to go with it as the new dizzy states in bold print that I must have a 3ohm coil. Of course, I ordered the wrong one. It was an easy exchange and I finally got the right one shipped in. We got a nice day on Friday and decided to start to tackle the distributor project. I love when I can get both kids involved. After looking things over, we decided to replace the 12mm vacuum line for the auto stick as well. This was especially soothing as this hose was steel reinforced and the support coil is rusting so badly that there are razor sharp barbs slicing and dicing my hands any time we try to adjust the carburetor. We found that it would be much easier to replace this hose while we had the distributor and coil out of the way. This has been another engineering adventure as this type of cable is very expensive and is still substituted for a brake booster cable. In our case, we didn’t like the braided cloth outer jacket on the hose, so I looked for something that we could use that wouldn’t rot and produce so much trash in the engine bay. Who knows, it may not last the 40 years that the original has, but, for a cleaner interface, I am willing to take the chance. I found a source for some heavy duty fuel line and another source for a support spring to put inside the hose. This should satisfy the structure requirements of the hose. I had each kid take a turn removing a bolt from the coil and we took some notes on how the old wires were connected. We looked over the old coil, and it appears to be the original. We replaced it with the new one to assure compatibility with the new distributor and now have a functioning spare. Next, we took out the old distributor. It was much easier than I anticipated. Again, we noted how the old one was connected so we could go back if needed. This is the first time that we felt there was enough room to work in the engine bay. From here, we switched gears to focus on the dreaded vacuum hose of pain. We noticed that the clamps on each end were screw clams, but they faced the wrong directions making them impossible to loosen. Now that we had all the extra room, we could move those around to be more accessible. I pulled out the ends so the kids would not have to get sliced up. The hose pretty much fell apart in my hands. We held the pieces together and measured what we needed for the new one and cut to length. We did the same with the support spring. Putting the new hose on was far easier and less painful than removing the old one. Now we can get back to the distributor. I am pretty proud of my kids in how they are learning and staying involved as best they can. I am happy that we have something fun that we can enjoy together. We looked over the markings and realized that there is only one way that we can install it. We had to install the electrical ends on the wires and put some oil on the O-ring per the instructions. With a few tries, the new dizzy dropped right into place. We assured that all the bolts and wires were in the right spots and then returned to the coil. The new coil came with spade tips for each of the terminals that would only accommodate 2 wires. The old one already had 3 wires and a 3 wire connector, so we just reused that. Adding the dizzy required a 4th connection. so we took the new one, modified it slightly and added it to make the 4 we needed. For some reason, the new coil was slightly bigger around than the old. so we had to find a longer bolt for the clamp. I dug through my stuff and found a toggle bolt. I use the heck out of these as they are usually long enough to do just about anything and I had a bunch on hand due to past projects. With that solved, we tried to mount the new coil back where it came from, but, the toggle bolt was too long and prevented the wrench from getting in there. Rotary tool to the rescue. The old bolt was too short and the new one was too long. So we simply cut the new one to size and all went well. We connected all the wires up and double checked our work to see if there were spare parts, or anything else in the way that we needed to attend to. All was well, so we moved the tools and boxes out of the way of the exhaust pipe and tried to start Bee. I admit I was a bit paranoid that something was going to go wrong and that we missed something. By the time, I was processing this, my daughter had the big started and were satisfied on a job well done. Since it was now dinner time, we decided to stop for now and revisit at a later time.

I know it has been a while since we last posted anything, but, life has been a bit on the hectic side. Down to business. I guess this auto stick thing is a bit unique. After reading many pages on the wide wide world of web, and the Bentley manual, and various other sources, I sought out to figure out how to finally fix the timing issue. Several attempts with little success led me down the road of rebuilding the elusive 34 pict 3 carburetor and purchasing a Tachometer, and a timing light and learning how to do all of these things. we got so close to timing perfection, but we never could quite get right. The manual says to begin with a valve job. We ordered some new valve cover gaskets and started down the road. we spent a nice hot day working on the passenger side valves and found that they did need some adjusting. so, we adjusted them and put some primer on the valve cover and then put i back on. just as we started to open up the driver’s side, we heard thunder and decided to stop for the day. Next chance we get, we will do the other side and repaint the cover as well. while we were working on that, I decided to make some inquiries on the distributor. Literally everything I have read on the subject states that for the vehicle we have, there is no better option than to have a quality dual advance distributor. This was what the Volkswagen engineers designed and this is the best and really only option for the auto stick. On through the samba pages and various other online resources. I found out how to test the little brass puck on the outside of my current distributor. This is a vacuum advance canister. Its job is to receive vacuum signal and pull the distributor in such a way to react to my pressing the gas pedal. I found that mine was not able to hold vacuum and the only way to fix it is by replacement, or extraordinary rebuild process. I studied and found that the one I have is the one that has not been manufactured by anyone (including knockoffs) for 20 years. to find one that has not been used costs about 1-200 dollars just for the can. I found one from an online vendor and purchased it, only to be told they didn’t have it and could no longer get it so they simply refunded my money. I came to a fellow who claimed he had one that was freshly rebuilt (along with a whole distributor) and had the exact curve needed for my vehicle. After some emails back and forth, I decided to make payment and order the best case scenario for our little car. A bit later, I got an email from the seller that stated that he had sold the one he showed me and offered a “better” one that in fact costed more money, but due to the mistake, he make an exception and sell me the better one for the same price as the one that came so highly recommended by all people and articles that I talked to and read. The better one in question was a single vacuum distributor. This is a very common distributor and was not designed for my vehicle. Keep in mind, I have been a technical repairman for 20 + years. I certainly understand that later redesigns can be better solutions. In this case though, I really felt uncomfortable. I recently have had more than my share of online companies who showed me perfect pictures that motivated me to buy, then contacted me within an hour with some story that led to derailing the original agreement. Now, with all of the accolades and recommendations that this guy had was enough to get me past the online mistrust. In the end, I am still an IT guy who knows how easy it is to pump information to the masses and build a reputation. I am certain that this vendor is good at his craft, but, when he changed the deal after I paid, I was unprepared for the massive wave of mistrust and anxiety that this introduced. I an not typically a feelings based person, but, I felt this so deeply that i could not sleep. Those of you who know me, understand that I can curl up on a cold, wet rock and get a restful 8 hours. This was BIG. I crawled out of bed to email the vendor and request a refund. Thankfully, he followed through with an apology and a refund. Since this seemed to be my only shot at an original setup, i decided to put my refund to good use by upgrading the distributor instead to rid myself of breaker style ignition and go fully electronic. I found a reputable company and ordered what I needed. Unfortunately, i misread the coil specs and ordered a lower Ohm version. Sending that one back and ordering the right one in its place. Once they arrive, you should get another update on our next adventure.

Changing the subject slightly, we finally got a notice that the washer fluid squirt nozzle that I had ordered back in April were not coming. With the refund on that, I found a better online resource that shipped the right part and got it here in a week instead of 4 months. As you recall from the past adventures, we added an electric pump for this back in the spring. The new nozzle, was impressive. It shot water completely over the whole car. My daughter looked it over and deduced that we can adjust the aim of the nozzle to better suit the need. Well done. We finally can put the washer fluid on the window with a proper robot to shoot the fluid instead of relying on the spare tire to do the job. Plus, this new nozzle looks like a clone of the original instead of the universal model that never made it here.