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Date:         Tue, 20 Sep 1994 04:23:42 -0500 (CDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Ryan McGee <ryan@falcon.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject:      Re: now i'll i need is a backing beeper..

Looks like "CHUCK" got his backup light problem fixed, but after reading about chuck's problem, a friend told me this story and it's still a good story even if it's no help to anyone.

It seems when this friend finally decided to part with his '71 bug, Gladys The Silver Beauty, he sold it to a neighborhood kid for $450. One of the kid's bargaining chips in negotiating this price was the backup lights that didn't work and never had. The kid took Gladys to a "master VW mechanic" who told him that the coil had been hooked up backwards, and whoever he bought it from must have been some kind of idiot. He hooked it up "right" and then the once perfectly running bug would stop DEAD as soon as reverse was selected and the backup lights came on. The kid came back to my friend, singing lamentations of the "lemon" he'd sold him. My friend told him the "master" was a bonehead and that he could make the bug run again, but there would be no reverse lights. The kid let him hook the coil up "backward" again. Ran great.

Another reverse light item: my camper, Mabel, only has one working reverse light. Didn't have any when I bought her, but I fixed that quick enough by hooking up the wire the previous owner had left dangling in the engine compartment ("what's this?" I asked when I was looking her over. "dunno. runs fine without it," he said.). But now that they're connected, only one works. Getting power to the socket, but it won't make a bulb light up. Even tried the bulb from the other side, because I KNEW that one worked. No go. I'm beginning to wonder if VWs were meant to have reverse lights.

Ryan McGee Mabel, a '71 Westy


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