Date:         Fri, 10 Nov 1995 08:41:26 -0800 (PST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Jeffrey Olson <jjolson@u.washington.edu>
Subject:      Re: Pulling the engine.

After reading Bob's post on pulling VW engines, and that there are two 
kinds of VW owners, those who have pulled their engines, and those that 
will, I was left with a feeling that he is right.  During the ten years I 
owned my 66 camper with the 1300 I pulled my engine five times, four of 
which entailed rebuilding it.  I only got 40,000 - 60,000 out of an engine.  
I shifted at the red line and over, both up and down.  I carried lots of 
people lots of miles.  Once I went down the east side of Tioga Pass out of 
Yosemite on Hwy 120 at 50 - 55 mph in third just to see if I could do 
it.  Imagine slowly building up to it, and very slowly braking down from 
it, taking those wide bends a little faster than you should, listening to 
the engine scream a pitch never before heard.  My heart was pounding in 
my chest and my palms were clammy.  At any rate...

I think one of the main reasons I'm once again in the market for a 64 - 
67 bus is because I'm relatively competent at something mechanical and 
technical.  I don't have to think like I do now in school again, (at 43 
yet!!!)  But that competence was won only after facing fear and 
bewilderment, the frontier of pulling the engine and breaking it down, 
putting it together all clean and shiny, and then as Joesph Fournier has 
recently described, turning it over.  

There are few frontiers today in our lives, frontiers that we can explore 
and make into our backyards that don't require some sort of training 
and/or previous technical knowledge.  Rebuilding VW engines, older ones 
at least, is one such frontier.  We grow up in a world that overwhelms us 
with its complexity and so we view everything as somehow bigger than we 
are.  "Idiots" as John Muir pointed out, rebuild VW engines.  And 
actually, it's better if you're an idiot.  

The fear of pulling the engine has nothing to do with pulling the 
engine.  It has to do with stepping away from civilization into an 
uncharted frontier.  Fear of the unknown is what we feel.  Rather than 
just reading the book and taking out the engine, step by step, we think 
about it, make lists, talk to friends, wake up in the middle of the night 
with the pressing need to get the car back on the road.

Pulling a VW engine for the first time is an opportunity to do some 
"life's work".  Martin Heidegger made a distinction between fear and 
anxiety.  Fear is the feeling of a threat, something coming from 
somewhere.  Anxiety is the feeling of nothing coming from everywhere.  
Pulling an engine for the first time can be coping and working through fear, 
and discovering anxiety.  For Heidegger, anxiety was the gateway we walk 
through towards our own authenticity.  The "dread" felt just before the 
key is turned for the first time after a rebuild is not fear.  It's the 
anticipation of "anything can happen", another way of saying "nothing".  
Rebuilding a VW engine then, can be a path to discovering this kind of 
anxiety.  Notice I said "can be".  The choice is always there...

Jeffrey Olson
Seattle, Washington, where it's sunny, warm, and freeways are clear...