Date:         Thu, 21 Mar 1996 16:46:53 -0800 (PST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Craig Standley <cstand@u.washington.edu>
Subject:      Aux Battery in a 74

Hi all,

I was poking around in my engine compartment today, replacing the
distributor cap that had cracked open, and noticed something.  On the
driver's side of the engine, there are two battery terminal clamps with
wires leading off into the firewall.  The battery is on the passenger side
of the engine compartment and working fine.  The two clamps on the
driver's side have wires that are much too small to carry the kind of
current needed for starting the car, so I wonder if this was for an extra
battery, maybe just for lighting when camping.  Any ideas?

Also, as I was working on my engine, I was very impressed by the tenacity
of these motors.  I drove around for who knows how long with a distributor
cap that had a HUGE (I could see light through it) split in it, and the
bus ran fine.  Previously the coil wire corroded and fell off, but again
the bus ran fine with no symptoms of any kind, until the wire actually
came all the way off the coil.  I've driven many cars, from a 1968 Pontiac
to a 1985 BMW 535i and have never had one that is as tough as this one.

Craig

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Craig Standley				1974 Volkswagen Westfalia
University of Washington
Physics  				"Life is like riding the bus, it
cstand@u.washington.edu			 requires change." -Dennis Miller
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~cstand
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