Will It Run? Classic VW Beetle: "Restored" then Parked in 1927

didn't sound the best and now our key stuck that is not what I expected come on key oh do it we got one cylinder that fires oh that's very very SM pretty darn disgusting so would have been pretty bad to try and pump through the [Music] engine breath your G howdy my friends welcome to the channel today I'm Luke Thunderhead 289 here on YouTube and today we're going to try and get this 1968 69 not even sure what year it is Volkswagen Beetle here behind me it was restored back in the late 80s early 90s and then you know some things happened and it ended up parked so today we're going to try and see if we can get it running and driving and back on the road now at a glance this is a pretty nice old Volkswagen has a pretty good paint job pretty decent restore on the thing I think it was originally red it's really kind of hard to see but it might be red primer too but they did a good job to go through and actually you know paint all the door jams and and everything if it was a different color um pretty darn rust free car obviously it's sat a long time and some of the the mold and things are starting to get to the interior has a good mice smell to it but it's your typical four-speed Volkswagen and actually for once Volkswagens never have doors that shut good all right and this one this one shuts really nice so you know it was a pretty decent car um I had a hard time not picking it up when I did see it for sale a little while back has a I can't remember if it's A500 or 1600 but it is a single port engine so it's a little throwbacking and I know there's some stuff that kind of goes on with the dog housee and different things they're a little more undesirable on the single port but we'll get more into that at first I know that it has gas in the gas tank and it absolutely reeks so we're going to have to handle that and hopefully we still have a good gas tank but you know whatever's it's it's got quite a bit in it and it's definitely been there for a while so first things first we're going to have to get that out of there now not that your old school American stuff is more difficult to work on but everyone says Volkswagens are easy to work on in this way you know I would have to agree with them where instead of going through the filler neck you know I can just pull our little unit out and get really good access to whatever turpentine is in the gas tank at this point so we're just going to use an old fuel pump I keep these around after they quit making pressure but they still work good as a transfer pump um especially if you put a uh just a directional valve on the end of the suction line so that coupled with a good old jump pack and we should be doing really good now there's probably going to be a lot of things throughout the time I'm working on this Volkswagen here that are going to stress you Volkswagen offici andad out quite a bit um you know I'm like a V8 American Car manual transmission hot rod guy but my wife really loves these Volkswagens you know it's like she's loved them ever since she was a kid and this is our third attempt to put one together for her that um works and she can have fun with now this is probably our best attempt oh man taking that screw out it just it reeks like bad gas in here but anyway so hopefully we get this settled out for her and you know I I really want to not like these but you know seems like when I work on them I just reall in love with them again and maybe that's why all you guys that really like Volkswagens you know maybe that's why you're as into it as as you are so I was lucky enough to get a third chance here and hopefully we make good on it I have expected our float to be rotted away so that's already a win smell it about knock you off your feet I got a clear container here just unload some of this gasoline into or turpentine or whatever it is at this point you know just for fun to see it in the daylight you know I'm sure it's absolutely disgusting if it's anything like it smells in there but uh you know to be expected after it sits for 10 15 20 years and it's kind of an interesting irregular backstory as to why this car got parked and I'll probably get into it more as we get into the video but you know let's just get a fire extinguisher this seems awful close to uh whatever that is probably still mildly flammable there's a hood there or a trunk or whatever you call it all right we got our fire extinguisher here just in case anything goes weird you can get a good look here at what that kind of looks like pretty darn disgusting so would have been pretty bad to try and pump through the engine so just a comparison here of what was in the tank versus you know gas that I have around the farm here that actually runs an engine just fine you know relatively new within the last 5 months probably you can see the difference here you know other than it looks like now I'm carrying around jugs of of urine in my garage you know this old stuff is seemingly quite a bit more viscous and kind of almost has a gel effect to it where a normal gasoline is much less viscous but all of that aside you know it looks like the Volkswagen could probably stand to drink a little more water you know this is more along the healthy lines of what you would expect for good fuel so with that we'll finish getting that pumped out and we'll fill it with fresh gas I just kind of like using this period correct gas can so any opportunity I have to use it even if it's completely nonsensical like right now you know I don't know I just enjoy using the thing all right I think that concludes our work up front at the moment it'd be nice to roll the car forward so I could get access to the trunk or hood or whatever you want to call this back here more easily but we got some flat tire action going on and unfortunately I don't have an air compressor I recently broke mine I had been using this engine pump but we don't have a running engine in this garage at the moment to use to air the tire up so I literally think I'm going to air it up really quick by hand with a bicycle pump so uh stand by this will probably take me a little bit but I'm going to have one really ripped shoulder by the end of this I imagine oh boy here we go I should probably stop now because the car probably would roll but I'm I'm committed I think that's enough of that business looks like it got to like like I don't know 20 psi I don't even want to tell you how many pumps that took to get there so we're just going to uh move on and never do that again ever in my life but I guess it could be done in dystopia end of the world you didn't have an air compressor and you had a flat tire you know as if that would be the most important thing put this thing in neutral so we can roll it forward you guys really haven't had a good look at the interior yet whatever year this this is it's much less ornate than the you know earlier 60s models so you know but still a pretty decent looking Volkswagen somewhere along the line someone got pretty wild with a radio and it's got some speakers and the kick panels which is pretty nice albeit I doubt it works after all this time but we'll see so first second third fourth it is in neutral the brakes do nothing so that'll be fun to figure out but very feels like very much so a German car right down to the questionable 9mm casings on the floor such a light car all right now we got pretty good access to the back end here you can see it it's just a pretty darn clean old Volkswagen you know doesn't really seem abused like most of them were but I'm going to get the air filter housing pulled off here you know don't know what's inside that probably a whole bunch of goop and and garbage there's a good chance none of this there's going to be an issue somewhere you know I'd totally expect it after all this time but I think at this point we can at least throw a battery in it and hit the starter and you know just see what'll happen and we're not going to damage anything too terribly bad and it does I have rotated around here before oh it's in it's in gear check that out these cars are just so light one of the things here that people claim to be you know easy about Volkswagens that I don't particularly like let's just appreciate this door one more time look at how nice he shut okay I won't I won't bring that up again but I've just I've never had a Volkswagen with the doors that shut decent anyway back to our battery deal here come on see so the battery is located under the passenger side of the rear seat here see if I can give you a good angle so you know comes with its issues a lot of times it rots out the floor this looks like someone has the red cable on the wrong side there as you can see it goes to the ground so I want to make sure I don't hook that up to positive but you know this is pretty subject to fire I actually see one of these little covers sitting back here because the seat Springs would contact across the battery terminals and then create a dead short and then you know you have this massive Volkswagen fire and my favorite part about battery fire stories is it usually happens when someone is sitting on top of the battery in the back you know it pushes the Springs down they touch the battery and then all of a sudden they have an instant seat heater that they didn't ask for all right our brand new 2013 battery is all in here so red to negative because that's how you're supposed to do it and then black to positive you know I could see someone very easily mixing those up so I won't be surprised if our uh generator is blown at some point check out what this little cover says basically it's a warning about these Springs touching the battery and you're supposed to put this over the positive to prevent it cuz that's going to really help I added a couple of jump packs here for extra fun that are fully charged up so we should be able to spin this little lawnmower engine over now one thing I'm concerned about which I have been ever since I bought the car is you know at some point you would fight compression and you kind of do it rotates you know without any grinding but you know I can turn it easier than I have on Volkswagen in the past so H suspicious and if if you're a Volkswagen guy and familiar with Volkswagen valve train um you probably already know what I might be thinking so is that the case I don't know we're about to find out but uh I've experienced it before and it's a pretty unsavory scenario if that's what's going on here hopefully not all right here we go assuming our clutch isn't [Music] seized it actually just ran how did it get fuel up there that quick wonder if that's the turpentine didn't sound the best and now our key stuck that is not what I expected come on key oh it do it we got one cylinder that fires we might actually not have to do too much holy crap that's way better than I thought it would be a I think it's stuck in gear unfortunately it's trying to move forward something's kind of fishy I can figure out how to work the key that's first that's second the linkage is moving and it I can feel the detent of the gears this should be neutral but if I let up oh there we go must have just been the the gear oil drag in the automatic or the the manual rather all right generator light went out that's good sounds like garbage but it does run W good grief I forgot this oil bath air filter on here come on that's probably full of junk you could hear the engine change set that down that's super dangerous to have on a Volkswagen um between the battery and fuel filters and this brass fitting that goes into the carburetor pulling out pretty much what causes o that's very very Smokey that's pretty much what causes all the engine fires I was going to say let's just take a look at what we're dealing with looks like we've been dropping a lot of oil on the exhaust so that's fun a moment of peril there but I think we're okay it's probably a good leak like every Volkswagen engine I've ever seen smoked the place out here pretty good um it did run and then when I went to start it there after our first run it's like it has no ignition and you know it's probably just the points or Cod and whatever so it does seem like it's pretty okay but one thing I noticed when I came back here to look under the cap check this out wee so the ignition timing is who knows where so we'll do a little bit of tuning on this it someone was kind enough to First incorrectly marked top dead center and then over here correctly marked top dead center so you can see the little bit there so we'll get the cap off sand the points CU I'm sure they're gacked maybe maybe we'll get the cap off there we go feel like there's supposed to be a dust cover under there this feels like a mechanical Advance mechanism and then coupled with a vacuum advance which if you're a you know typical American car guy that's not super strange but I can't say I've seen that in the Volkswagen before and I'll have to look but this might be it looks like it's going to Venturi vacuum so I'm sure timing ignition is all whacked out so a little bit of cleaning and tuning here I'll probably go a long way this is the best start I've ever had to a Volkswagen project okay you know I don't want to be overly optimistic but this is going way better than the other two cars did at least it seems like there's a functional core of an engine and the whole bottom of the car isn't falling off so winning at the moment now this is pretty standard op for classic car people although most of us have moved to some form of electronic ignition but if you're into this stuff ultimately you've probably messed with points before they're a very simple ignition system that all they do so let's get this out here it looks clean enough so as the engine rotates there's a little piece that rides on this lobe and basically when it gets to a high point it opens this contactor now this is attached directly to the ignition coil's ground so basically it breaks the ground connection to the coil and then the coil discharges voltage through the secondary windings goes through the uh your main coil wire comes into uh your rotor it redirects it to the cylinder and then you know the spark goes on its merry way so super simple I wouldn't call it the most reliable but it's very robust and easy to deal with and after years and years a little bit of cleaning it will still work where elic gets pretty questionable with some of those electrical components so anyway I think this is good here I am pretty sure if you're familiar with Volkswagen this is supposed to have a a dust cover here but this one this one doesn't so that seems like someone just pitched it I've been trying to figure out how this vacuum advance works if it is an advance or mechanism or whatever because Volkswagens you know they just really don't play by the rules so they've been known to do weird stuff different than our typical American cars do but it seems like the vacuum advance mechanism does work albeit the original tubing here is um completely clapped and doesn't hold a vacuum whatsoever so that probably doesn't work but the vacuum advaned canister itself does and then it also has mechanical advance and again I've never seen this in a Volkswagen distributor usually it's like the9 it's mechanical only or it's a vacuum advance only it's hooked to Venturi vacuum which I believe this was you know your Volkswagen people are probably going crazy if I'm wrong but I think up here this is Venturi vacuum so the more you'd open the throttle the more timing you would have which with how this distributor is laid out I don't think that's what you'd want to do you know is this the original distributor I don't know you know we're just going to make it work the best we can so let's get the timing light out here and as long as we adhere to correct engine print a Volkswagen engine a Ford V8 a Chevy V8 an engine is an engine as an engine ignition timing works the same way on all of those all right so I think we're ready to go we're hooked to spark plug number one which is way up here with our timing light got a little bit of a redneck managerie going on here with a jump pack but as much as I would love to get these cords wrapped up in the fan belt or fan belt rather or a generator I guess there's a fan in there anyway we don't want to get that all wrapped up there I got a vacuum gauge hooked to what I think is actually a timed vacuum or ported Port so we're going to test that out so if it idle without any throttle input this vacuum is zero then we give it some throttle and we have a vacuum signal manifold vacuum that'll be pretty handy for doing some really fancy ignition timing things so I'm hopeful for that looking in here it's no surprise this is loose you know I didn't take a very very close look in the beginning but you know the Volkswagen has actually a few timing marks you can see one there and this is actually one here as well this is TDC and you want to line it up with the um you're you're looking for your timing marks rather on the center line of the case of the engine so this side of this little nub this is actually that they have marked here and what they're in line with is 5° after top dead center I believe and then this is some very ation here but basically I'm going to really highlight our TDC Mark really well and then this is a dial back timing light so we don't need all of those other marks we just need TDC and then we can figure out all of our timing events all right this is the mark that we want so see if we can eyeball this there we go so that is what I want to be looking for for TDC and it's really hard to see on the uh original crank pulley here but there's a little divot that kind of denotes where TDC is you know I don't know a lot of this Volkswagen stuff you know just offhand off the top of my head but I have this really nice thing in my pocket called a cell phone that has the internet on it and you know instead of just guessing or asking Facebook and getting a bunch of ridiculous answers I just looked it up and so then you know where a cylinder one is uh what the balancer supposed to look like all those things you can just figure out for yourself so you know we live in a world where if you want to act helpless it's definitely your own doing there's just so much info out there anything you want to do in this life at this point you can figure out how to do it probably need to make sure it still starts here I'm sure it's good and flooded from the ignition being you know the way it was oh some popping AC it's a good sign this key is very finicky got to hold your tongue in your mouth just right there we go there we go getting somewhere there we go I don't know if you guys could see from the video there but Color Me impressed that thing was idling at 10° after top dead center I've never seen an engine be able to handle that before and actually run so good grief Almighty I don't know if I should be impressed or afraid Dan thre that's probably a pretty healthy engine [Music] yet so I think this is Venturi vacuum here we're hooked up to it and the more throttle we give it the more vacuum it has you see it's kind of proportional to air [Music] speed makes sense cuz it's plumbed right in here right into the Venturi area I don't know if that's with this being a classical vacate band I don't really know if that's what I want to be doing with it other than that I mean dang the thing runs pretty good it's amazing what reasonable ignition timing will do and everyone always thinks more advanced more advanced means more power it's not about how much ignition timing or how little it's just about having the right ignition timing igniting that mixture at the right time in the cylinder stroke so there's no other rules other than that an engine is an engine and if you're igniting the mixture at the right time it's going to run as good as it possibly can whether it be a Volkswagen or an American car like this Gremlin or a supercharged car like my 65 Galaxy all the same principles and I have literally never owned a Volkswagen that wasn't wore out and didn't smoke like a banshee just check this out and listen to that carb whistling away this thing's pretty healthy engine super cool super pumped about it this car is really thrown up the dust here I'd have the garage door open so I wouldn't expiate myself but it's 30° outside and I'm just not about that expiation freezing to death I don't know pick your poison I'd rather not be cold though so it seems like our ignition is working pretty good the engine is fairly responsive um some of the ignition stuff is a little gummed up but it does seem to work pretty good where the engine now starts and idles and I don't have to fiddle with it too much the carburetor was a little bit out of whack so you know our ignition is decent enough to move on to address the carburetor now we can kind of tell what is and what isn't and so these are kind of interesting where they have a this big screw here on the VW carburetors is basically a bypass so that's for controlling your idle speed and then above it this little screw is a mix screw so a good starting point with those is 2 and 1/2 turns out and then it's a big misnomer with non-vw people or anyone that didn't do any Googling that they'll get Buck Wild on this adjustment screw and this is just for your choke and basically with the choke my understanding is all the way off you want to run it in to where it's just barely engaged with this lever if you start really engaging it and actually opening the throttle with this screw you start screwing up how this is designed to operate and basically the whole geometry of the carburetor itself so you know it's a huge mistake that people seem to make to play with that for idle speed but anyway so we've made our 2 and 1 half turn adjustments on everything see if we can't get it to fire up I don't need my words here there we go now right off the bat that already seems to be quite a bit better it's actually pretty respectable revs out decent returns to idle isn't running too rough I think we have a little bit of adjustment to do here it smells a little Rich I'm just going to slide in here see if we can't catch the index of the screw there we go just going to lean it up turn it clockwise ever so slightly oh see that's too [Music] lean and you can hear the engine responding on as you make changes that's too rich seems pretty happy right there at the moment too much idle speed right about there's okay about caught my pants on [Music] fire man it is just running Rock Solid pretty happy with that it's about all I can take here looks like I'm crying well I guess my eyes are I got something in my eye and it's exhaust so I think we're going to shut it down here there we go man I'm pretty happy with the way that's running I think we should figure out why our brakes don't work and see if we can't go for a drive that's pretty good so we've been on kind of a roll here and things have been going well but I think this is the part that slows the process down so you can see the brake pedal goes all the way to the floor granted I haven't tried the clutch pedal so who knows what the situation is with that if the transmission actually works but I'm hopeful with what I've seen and given The Narrative of why it was parked I would believe that all that's fine now this is something that when you park a vehicle for a long long time it tends to happen and I've had to fix this on several vws that I've had that of course they've all sat for a long time but the res for the master cylinder is up here you can see that we have fluid in it which I was hoping we didn't down here is the master cylinder you can kind of see the end of it now I've had this issue with a lot of cars that sit you have to get the brakes working again and I've thought it was the master cylinder numerous times on these where I change it then it still doesn't work and what seems to happen if you can see this little rubber brake line here is that when these sit for a long long time it's almost like these rubber brake lines internally swell and kind of fall apart and then basically fluid cannot move through them so I've changed Master cylinders it didn't fix it and ultimately it worked out to be the lines and I bet you that's what's going on on this Volkswagen right now now that's all well and good but I'm growing impatient and this car runs so well I just want to drive it up and down the road here to see what I have and what I don't have and I live out in the boonies so you know this really isn't where it's dangerous for other people it does have a functional handbrake that I just tested so I believe at least at low speeds I can putt around okay and I probably likely won't even see another person on the road let alone get into any sort of traffic scenario so this is safe for me you know if I just wouldn't recommend anyone else doing it most of the time I wouldn't recommend anyone doing anything I'm doing but all that aside so I think I'll change the oil here uh clean out the oil bath air filter and refill it with oil and we'll pull this thing out of here all right we got the oil changed here and as much as I love oil bath air filters which I'm not kidding I really do like the concept of them uh this one in particular has a thermally controlled little air door and I'm just not sure if that would work anymore and I really don't want to suck a bunch of oil down into the engine itself so in the meantime we [Music] that was a pretty Monumental moment you saw there that's the first time I've ever moved a Volkswagen under its own power and I've owned three of them this being the third the uh clutch flywheel is definitely rusted up pretty good it's pretty grabby but it does work and it probably will clean up with a little bit of driving it's pretty cool at being this paint color uh my wife and I back in college when we had our first one it was this exact color and we never got the project done didn't have any money you know this was like 10 15 years ago and I had to sell that one so you know so far things are looking extremely positive this is about the quietest Volkswagon I've ever owned also but it definitely does have that classic Volkswagen sound to it which sounds like exhaust leaks but you know that's fine maybe no man it just starts up just perfect I got to be careful you know I've known these Volkswagens to seem like they're going to be okay and then stuff sneaks up on you but for the moment everything seems to be okay there's first gear rear brakes are a little draggy flywheels a little draggy but it's moving leaving my property without my wife here to come come save me it's probably not the best [Music] idea all right let's oh yeah the brakes don't work oh the brakes don't work downshift does the handbrake still work the handbrake Works we're fine we're fine handbrake do a little Volkswagon off-roading oh boy yeah this thing's going at like 300 RPM doesn't care what a tank now I've been known to drive old cars like this and compared to those which we all know how sketchy those are this Volkswagen feels very unsafe just like a complete bucket of bolts all right so we'll start out in first here and I mean it's not fast but it's Spunky for what it is still could probably beat it with the Maverick with the Maverick in Reverse but you know it's not what it's for it's a cruiser all right my friends I think that's going to do it for me today it runs pretty darn good I didn't want to get on it too hard soz I don't have any brakes I'm going to try and bleed them with my wife and I'm assuming it's going to end up being the hoses which really isn't a big deal you know on the spectrum of Volkswagen that's pretty easy to work on so we'll get that done and then I think my wife will have a really fun little Volkswagen and man after having driven one for the first time in my life I do have to admit they're quite a bit of fun and the fun a lot of it is in like the novelty of the Volkswagen it's not like anything else you'll drive on the road it's a vehicle all its own you know for whatever it is you can't really equate it to anything else because it's its own thing you know it drives like a Volkswagen um you know for better for worse it is quite a bit of fun I have to admit it I choose to kick you from your throne this sun which you sto

Channel: ThunderHead289

Views: 206,287

Keywords: junkyard digs, pole barn garage, vgg, vice grip garage, thunderhead289, will it run, easter, happy easter

Id: oIbRr5ZwyuY

Length: 40min 17sec (2417 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024