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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.

So, this is not a beetle update. just a quick post about a great day. My brother visited and was an amazing help in transplanting a couple small trees. we certainly hope they survive the move. It was a wonderful visit to catch up and get some things done in the yard. The kids were very excited to see their uncle and I think he was just as excited to see the kids. After a productive day of moving trees and painting our light pole to match the cloths line poles, we had a short thunder storm. We sat outside on the porch and had a nice visit and enjoyed the rain. Shortly after the rain stopped, we got a visit from a nice couple of ducks. They just waddled up the yard and quacked a few times and foraged in the yard for some food. Elise gave them some seed and we got the camera out and just hung out with the ducks. The ducks we very polite and they enjoyed eating the seeds in the yard, then they visited a couple other houses in the neighborhood and then they happily flew away.

Chapter 5

This one gets to jump to the front of the line as we had a lot of fun on this project. So, the subject is windshield squirting. On the bug, there is a perfect example of genius engineering that is so smart, but is sick with problems and kind of dumb in the long run. Under the hood, there sits a bottle for the fluid, and some hoses. In looking around on this, I found there are no electric components to this specific system. Sounds cool right? It looks good on paper. That’s about it. Here goes. The theory on this system is to use the air pressure from the spare tire to push the fluid through the tubes and onto the window. I know, I know, lots of questions start erupting. What happens when your spare goes flat? What good a spare tire that is flat from too much window washing? Clearly this was invented by someone who has always had clean windows and never ran over a nail on the road. It pretty much stops there with the exception of the 2 hoses that are now required to be connected to your steering column to control the air flow and the special check valves on the bottle that you cannot get at your local parts stores, and the fact that this is a silly solution. This is how energy conservation turns into terrorism. Luckily these types of things are mildly irritating at worst until one of two things happen. Number 1 you get a flat and have clear windows, or number 2 you can’t see to avoid the bed of nails on the road. Either way, you got problems. So, the kids and I decided to take this problem on and solve it . This was a new thing to explain to them as I am the type guy who favors the original designs and concepts. I got a couple sideways looks and head scratches on why we were updating this car and abandoning the original design. Once I explained how the old system works, it did not take long to win them over and we wandered down the path of redesigning the squirt system. I found a $10 “universal” pump for washer fluid and it arrived at our doorstep. This one did not come with a button, or a long hose, or as it turns out, even a working pump. I am dealing with them and it will be okay. This curve ball led to a whole new adventure, but more on that later. I did not really want to drill into any part of the metal as this invites rust. So, as a telephone guy typically does, I stopped and thought about how to run the wires without disturbing anything. The answer was to run some phone wire through the air hose that is already routed to the right places. The first attempt was not successful as 1 pair wire at 22 gauge is not real rigid. So we backed out and I showed the kids a cool trick from my lab days of tying the wire on one end and putting the other in the chuck of my drill. We twisted the wires to a nice tight twist and now had the stability to traverse the rubber tube. We worked together and got the wires through and ready to power the new and improved electric pump. Now, we had to solve the button problem. Since the lever on the steering wheel is a valve, I decided to look elsewhere. I went to my college parts kit and found a great momentary button. Now, we still don’t want to drill, so, this led me to installing this button into a non-flush, magnet mounted “103” phone jack. The magnets are plenty strong to keep the button from wandering and, no drilling. Just a few cuts with a rotary tool and the button and a washer fit perfectly into the block and can be stuck onto the steel within reach. We got out the new pump and connected the rubber tubes and used a grounding screw near the headlight to install the pump bracket and connect the ground from the pump. I used a train transformer to get the 12 volts so I wouldn’t have to run a wire to the battery in the back seat. I showed my daughter how to test volts with a meter to assure we were not going to burn up the new pump before we got it working. We connected power and heard buzzing, but got no movement from the pump. We simplified by removing all wires and hoses and tried it all on its own with a bucket of water in case the pump needed the water in order to get it moving. No dice. Switching polarity and hose direction as instructed on the 3×5 instructions that came with the pump (also written in mice type) did not affect the outcome. We got a lemon and returns are very slow right now. Since the lock down is still in full swing, we happen to have grandma’s old van sitting in front of our house. We have been pulling little random bits out of it if we can because it is headed to the junk yard. The funny thing is, each time we have attempted to rogue something out of it, we have been disappointed as the thing never fits exactly what we need. This time, it worked. We managed to pull the washer bottle out and recover the connectors needed to get it working. We connected this one up and of course it works like a champ. The only issue with this set up is that it is shaped funny so mounting will be an issue, and it has 2 pumps on it for front and rear wipers. We plugged the rear pump and disconnected the wires. It will be our spare. We connected the hoses and still no squirty. We hand over hand inspected the hose and found a split. Unfortunately this was after removing the nozzle which broke in the process. No biggie, we found some aluminum ones online that will ship sometime in July for all of $9 for 6 nozzles. This is great considering that one from the local store is plastic, does not fit, and is $38. We ran the wire through all of the stuff and zip tied it down to keep it from snags, then we got to work on the mounting of the bottle. Since this one came out of a modern van, it was not a perfect cylinder like the original, it was a 3D triangle shape designed using software to fit it in after all the other stuff had been stuffed into the vehicle for machines at a factory to mount to the van. Still no drilling, I found some old metal handles that I used for brackets. I drilled the holes on the handles to fit the 14mm bolts that hold the coil springs in the bug. This way we could bolt them down and have plenty of metal and holes to tie things onto. Some long zip ties made short work of that. In the future, I will buy some flat steel and custom bend it and drill the right holes to make it look better over all and be more stable. Also, when I get tired of the weird shape, I will buy one online that has a more suitable shape. This is another advantage of not drilling holes. I can experiment and not do any damage.