Date:         Sat, 2 Mar 1996 17:44:12 -0600 (CST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         cheeses@arn.net (Cheese)
Subject:      

I was out working on the bus this evening when I got a phone call.  I went
in to answer and this guy says, "I got a note to call you about VWs or
something from my son.  He got it in the Internet, or something."

So, I remembered responding to an ad on my local service provider that said
something to the effect of, "Old VW Buses wanted, running or not.
Somebody@Email.Address."

It had been a couple of weeks earlier that I saw the classified and had
responded.

Turns out I'd met the guy about 15 years ago.  He used to have a warehouse
with quite a few old VWs in it, including a Type III Ghia, which is pretty rare.

We got to talking about old VW buses and the nostalgia that keeps boomers
and yuppies wanting to relive their youth by buying old ovals, splitties and
so on, for their kids and themselves.

This guy said that he had been gathering old splitties, ovals, late-50s
Beetles, etc., to sell.  He said that he'd been taking them to the west
coast, where someone is exporting them to Japan, where, I guess, they bring
a good price.

After we'd talked for a while he mentioned that he'd recently located a
junkyard in the vicinity of Oklahoma City, where there were "about 300
Splitties, and about 500 or more late '50s - early '60s Beetles," etc.  An
old man had been collecting them for years and was now liquidating them.
Many of them were rusted out, but some weren't.

Anyway he said that he was interested in only pre-'67 VWs and that he had a
late model VW Bus that they'd pulled the motor and tranny out of. It's red
and white, just like mine, and he said I was welcome to any parts I want
from it, for free.  Come on out Sunday afternoon and get what I want. Okay!

On a slightly related note, I went to a local fix-it place today to get a
part for a photo copying stand fabricated on a lathe.  The proprietor has
several big, expensive machine shop tools in there.  According to him, he
could build an entire VW engine from scratch, if he wanted to.  He showed me
his latest project, which was a VW-powered sand dragster.  It had really
wide paddle tires and no transmission.  Instead, it was a double, heavy
chain drive with a 2800 cc Type I engine with a turbocharger.  He said that
he'd just had it dyno-tested and it pumped out 550 HP, or something like
that.  The engine looked tiny, though, except for the blower.  He said the
whole machine weighed about 700 lbs.  He hoped to win a couple of races and
get in Hot VWs, on ESPN, etc.  I wished him good luck.  He said he was
designing an air-cooled, two-cylinder, horizontally-opposed, 100 lb. engine
that would produce 400 HP.  Hmmm.


Cheese