Dave's away

Dave went off to Paris Saturday morning as a birthday treat for his girlfriend Alison so Ray and I decided to do a few repairs. Ray collected me on Friday night and Saturday morning I took him to Volkspares to buy the spark plugs (see previous post).
The old spark plugs were removed reasonably easily and although they didn't look too bad I think the gap had changed. I say not too bad but one of them hadn't been tightened enough and was sooty black all over. After fiddling with the mixture control and tickover speed I was stiil not right and I wouldn't go into gear properly/easily. Ray cleaned the contacts in the gear lever and the contacts on the servo. The problem appeared to be solved and the clutch was moving in & out at the required movement on the gear lever. However driving me back to Dave's Sunday night my gears were very difficult to select again.
My two wipers are now fully functional although I am not hoping for rain!
Ray attempted to sort out the noisy speedo but with no luck. He had the bright idea of contacting Moby on the Volkszone forum and Moby kindly gave him instructions how to fix it. The boys will have a go at this and hopefully take some pictures to post in case anyone else has the same problem.

Inflatio, what inflation?

Hi guys, hope you (and cars) are all well.
Me and Ray (OK, Ray and I) just got back from my local Volkspares with some plugs and a wiper blade for me.
Ray had a £10 note and plastic.
"Four plugs for a Beetle. please"
Out from the back came four Bosch WBAC (Super!). Ray wondered if it was the £10 note or the plastic that would be required.
"Oh, and have you got a wiper blade?"
"Eleven & a half inch?" He asked , producing some bubble wrapped non-descripts!
"I don't want them 'one fits all' type they never seem to work properly"
" I've got Bosch ones", he said diving out the back and producing Bosch T1 (Plus Super!,even)"
By now Ray had forgotten all about the tenner and was trying to remember his PIN.
After a couple of minutes playing the EPOS our friendly parts man said: "Ten pounds and a penny, please".
Ray picked himself up and gave him the tenner.
So if you want to do an Anthony Newley and "stop the world. I want to get off". -buy a Beetle!
Cheers all.

Oil for Type 1 Beetle

I see a lot of questions on Google about the type of engine oil to be used in old (careful!) Beetles. The boys tend to use Morris Straight 30 but now have started using a reasonable quality 20-40. When Ray used me as his primary transport some 28 years ago he tended to buy Duckhams 20-40 and this doesn't seem to have done me any harm. I know the oil is important in keeping me cool (in the temperature sense) but when I was first built there weren't all these fancy new oils about. I think it was a choice of Duckhams or Castrol (XL?) so I am sure you don't need to spend lot of extra money on the fancy brands. After all, oil is oil.
Note I am talking about in the UK here, I don,t know about any of them exotic locations. I have only been to France and I suppose Gertmany where I was born.

Heating, how to get rid

Hi humans! How are you faring? What with all this talk of recession in America, house prices crashing, inflation soaring. The only thing that affects me is the high oil and petrol prices. I only do about thirty to the gallon at the best of times and I must confess I am running just a wee bit under par so I dread to think how much I am costing to run. Still if you want the best cars...... I tend to cut out when I come to rest which is annoying David a little, not much because he seems to like me so much he doesn't complain. Although Ray keeps telling him to take me down to see Jim at Wallhouse Motors for a quick tune up. As he says these things don't get better only worse. I think Dave has a lot on his mind what with the Shareworld website going great guns. Have a look at the new features. http://www.shareworld.co.uk
He has also started another website trying to impart his knowledge gained through three years of Shareworld to others. He likes learning and improving himself all the time. Have a look over to the links on the right, under Website Design & Promotion, if you can drag yourself away from my Blog!
So, I am afraid there is not much to say about myself, apart from the fact that the boys spent a lot of time last winter getting my heating system working. Do you remember all that palaver with those flexy aluminium hoses? Anyway every time I took the pair of them on a reasonably long trip they sweated like proverbial pigs. Mind you they brought back some French Brie from Paxton & Whitfield in Jermyn Street, near StJames's (yes this is a plug, if you haven't been there and you like cheese, go!)and what with the heat in the car, the Brie got really runny and delicious by the time they got home (about twenty miles). I digress, as usual. Anyway after a few months of British summer (?) Ray insisted they try and do something about the heat. One of the heater controls had been fixed open with a plastic tie so that was cut free and the other one......well, the other one actually worked!! So once again the boys are surprised to see that things still work, if only they had faith! Cool, as they say.