Date:         Sun, 9 Jul 1995 13:16:49 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         nrubin@s1.csuhayward.edu (Martha Rubin)
Subject:      I finally got a VW Thing ('74)!


Some of the more observant of you will note that my .sig has been altered for 
all time.  I've changed from a VW Thing "wannabe" to a real owner!  The story 
of the acquisition is not really bus/van-related, but it IS vw/vehicle-related 
(especially in the case of one emergency item, which may end up helping some of 
you one day), so I'll include the tale below.  A special thanks to those of you 
who've kindly noticed my desire for one of these vehicles over the past several 
months, and have called several of them to my attention when they saw one for 
sale  :)

----

About 3 weeks ago, a friend of a friend of a friend of a relative of a friend 
called to let me know of a 181/Thing for sale.  The seller turned out to be the 
son of a man who owns a junk/salvage yard in the worst part of west Oakland, 
CA.  Before I go further, I should perhaps explain that this son is a heroin 
addict.  

I immediately wanted to go check out the vehicle, but it was a Sunday, so 
getting a mechanic's opinion wasn't possible.  Wanting still to get an 
objective 3rd party assessment of the mechanical and overall condition of the 
car, I phoned Bradley Prunehead from our vanagon.list, telling him of my 
plight, then finally threatening him if he didn't go check out this vehicle for 
me, I would withhold beer from him at the next outing.  As you might guess, 
this ploy worked immediately.

We checked out the vehicle and were totally creeped by it.  It had an amateur 
camouflage spray-paint job, missing things here and there, filthy, oily, dirty, 
grimy, disgusting in and out.  The underside had rust, plus big glops of gluck 
hanging down.  No one was able to figure out whether this was mutiny on the 
part of the undercoating, or the original pans trying to escape (newer badly 
fitting ones had been welded (and I use the term loosely) in over top of the 
holes, although I still haven't figured out what the previous owner found to 
attach them to.

The junkyard wanted $1500 for this car.  All body parts were there, didn't 
appear to have been in an accident, and further it was the unusual Acapulco 
model (sort of like a surrey with fringe, no windows, open air version for 
fair-weather areas - a VW version/option of this car).  Both Bradley and I 
thought this was way too much for the car considering the amount of work that 
would have to be done, but I didn't give an answer on the spot.  

Late that evening, as promised, I called the contact person to let him know of 
my feeling that this car was more than I could tackle.  I said I felt I either 
had to pay more getting a vehicle in far better shape, or pay a lot less, 
getting a total junker, so that the low price would allow me to afford to get 
things done on it I wouldn't know how to do.  

Turned out when I phoned this guy that he was sleeping, and didn't have much 
recollection of the conversation by the next day.  In the meantime, he'd looked 
under the car and seen the rust I was complaining about, and said they'd 
decided on that basis to lower the price to $700, and was I interested in that 
event.  I said I'd think about it.

After consulting around (including with the Trim Shop, a VW Thing speciality 
place in Phoenix), I decided that in fact their original asking price of $1500 
was not so unreasonable after all.  The Trim Shop told me that ANY Thing in ANY 
condition if it ran (no matter how badly) was worth at LEAST $1500, and that I 
should grab it while I could, especially if it was the Acapulco.  

Here is perhaps the best place to explain the condition of the mechanics of 
the car:  there was oil and filth everywhere.  The car was filled with perhaps 
a dozen empty oil containers, funnels, and leaks visibly pouring out of the 
engine.  When I test drove it, I had the feeling that it might explode any 
minute, and oil was leaking out everywhere into the engine cavity and on to the 
street).  With all this in mind, I called up and said that I felt the car was 
"worth" $500 to me, and that that was my top/final offer, but that I also 
required a smog certificate and a clean title (i.e., not salvage or junk).  
Amazingly, they accepted my offer.

Because of a variety of complicated reasons, and because of this seller 
person's drug problems, I had to pick up this car in the middle of the night in 
that awful neighborhood.  Needless to say, this was an almost bigger task to 
tackle than how to restore a car in trashed condition:  How was I going to get 
there in one car but back in another?  It wasn't safe to leave a camper on the 
street there.  Would I even "survive" in that area of town at that hour?  How 
was I gonna get this car back to my house with both me and the car being alive? 
 What to do?  

Suddenly a light bulb went on in my head.  I tracked down Bradley's work 
number and found him there.  Without explaining everything, but promising him 
an adventure that might possibly include some igniting, smoke, or even 
explosions, I persuaded him to meet me there at the appointed hour.  We agreed 
to turn on our CB's to channel 19 in case of an emergency.

Bradley beat me there by about 2 minutes.  We banged on the junkyard sliding 
metal door and woke Jeff out of his stupor.  I'd completed the paperwork, 
including transfer of currency, smog certificate, pink-slip, etc.) earlier, and 
now all that remained was for J. to bring the Thing around on the street in 
front.  It was decided that Bradley would leave his '66 kombi parked on the 
sidewalk, he would drive the Thing back to my house, and I'd follow right 
behind in my '81 westy - again using the CB's for communication (his is 
portable).  For some reason (I can guess), it took Jeff an unearthly amount of 
time to manage to find the car in the junkyard and figure out how to drive it 
around the block, but during this period Bradley and I sat in my westy and were 
treated to an unexpected entertainment show watching (behind locked doors of 
course) the drug and prostitute traffic on this block.  Do you know that there 
are people who live and work in old industrial buildings they don't have to pay 
ANY rent for?  In the case of one interesting call girl, Bradley was somehow 
successful at managing to guess precisely how many minutes her clients would 
stay in the warehouse with her before they emerged.  :)

About this time, fearing Jeff may have "forgot" to fetch the car, I was kind 
of beginning to look around for possible weapons to use in self-defense, and 
rather lamenting the fact that neither of us had a sub-machine gun.  Just then 
J. emerged with the sputtering, coughing Thing.  Bradley just sort of shook his 
head, rolled his eyes, threw on a jacket (because of the Thing having no 
windows or real top), and hopped into the driver's seat.  I said I'd follow 
closely behind with my tool kit.  

It wasn't until I suggested taking a fire extinguisher that Bradley's eyes got 
a sudden inexplicable look of at once simultaneous happiness and 
lack-of-control.  This look of hysteria/delight/expectation/hoping/thrill has 
been noted by some of us in the past at vanagon camp-outs, and we've come to 
associate it with his arsonistic behavior.  Bradley didn't seem to think that 
my smallish fire extinguisher was of any value whatsoever, and with sudden 
great enthusiasm he decided to bring along is heavy-duty one (why is it not 
surprising that he carries a professional model? :)

So, we're driving along the freeway chatting on the CB, me looking at the rear 
of the Thing to see if it all looks in order.  We'd brought and added gas (cuz 
it had almost none), and some oil just in case.  Suddenly, B. asks me if I 
notice anything coming from the rear of the car.  Even with the wind rushing 
loudly by his ears in the open air (this car looks sort of like a golf-cart), I 
guess he'd thought he'd heard some familiar sound he didn't like.  I said 
nothing yet, but that I'd keep watching.  

All of a sudden great puffs of smoke start to emerge from the air scoops on 
the rear sides and from the engine compartment.  He immediately takes the next 
exit, which is fortunately right there (Old Tunnel Road near the Caldecott), 
jumps out with the fire extinguisher and fearlessly pops open the rear hatch 
lid of the engine compartment.  He's nearly asphyxiated by the smoke, but 
prepared with the extinguisher, although didn't have to use it.  When the smoke 
cleared, he saw what he thought he had heard earlier - a broken fan belt  :(  

At this point, I thought I detected a little disappointment on his part that 
there hadn't been an actual fire, but I bit my tongue.  

I shuffled thru my tool kit and found something in there I've been carrying 
around with me for nearly 20 years - a red plastic emergency belt.  It's sort 
of looks like a long red raspberry whip, but smooth, no spirals, round, and has 
a connector on one end. You simply cut to the desired length, insert the 
connecter, and this is supposed to suffice as a belt (not just fan but anywhere 
you need it).  Bradley knows these type I engines well - he deftly maneuvered 
this red plastic thing and the shims to fashion the thing into an actual 
operating and correctly adjusted fan belt.  

However, during the installation, we noticed why the original belt had 
probably broken in the first place, and that was because of it's being in too 
close proximity to what looked to be a housing of perhaps an accelerator cable 
- bent out of location, and too close to the belt.  B. felt because of this 
situation that the same disaster would likely recur, and that the red plastic 
substitute belt would wear thru immediately in the same fashion.  We decided to 
let the car cool for another 10 minutes or so, and then try it again.  

At this point, Bradley asked me if I cared if the engine blew up.  This ought 
to have been my clue.  I said that I didn't care about the engine, because it 
was probably on its last legs anyway, and also that we could get towed if 
necessary by the AAA.  I told him to worry about himself first, and the 
vehicle/engine last of anything.  If we could just get the car to within either 
4 miles of my home or of my mechanic we'd have it made.  With a look of sudden 
sheer inexplicable euphoria, Bradley headed back into the driver's seat of the 
Thing.  It then dawned on to me to wonder which would be more dramatic:  
watching a car catch on fire, watching an engine explode, or watching B's 
response observing either of the two above situations he'd been able to 
cleverly engineer into happening. 

Somehow when he got back into the driver's seat, I guess his multiple 
personality syndrome took a shift to my advantage.  Thank god!  As mysteriously 
fast as the pyromaniac side of him had appeared, that "person" equally quickly 
decided to submerge, and the responsible driver (?) reappeared.  He informed me 
that he'd decided to turn off the engine and coast down the small hills 
whenever possible to save the engine.  We stopped as I recall a time or two to 
check to make sure the red plastic emergency belt replacement was doing its 
job.  

The whole thing took about 3 hours, but somehow we managed to nurse that Thing 
into making the trip home without blowing up.  In retrospect, I think Bradley 
ended up a bit unfulfilled.  There had been only smoke.  Billows, admittedly, 
but no honest flames, explosions, or molten magnesium.  Alas, I guess those 
will have to wait until the next vanagon camp-out.  The end result is that I 
have a Thing sitting now in my driveway.  It's a year of solid work I'm 
guessing, and that's with professional help.

The moral of the story, however is not just for Thing owners, but for all of 
us - I highly recommend carrying one of these emergency belts and a fire 
extinguisher at all times.  That is, unless you think you can't control your 
multiple-personality-disorders  :)

/martha