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Welome to the Home of Rust at awbmusic. It seems my history with the the oddly lofty AND lowly Volkwagen Karmann Ghia gets longer and longer....
August, 2008
Just a note to say that I was able to get a few days of acar work in the last weeks, and that the '61 vert is coming back tgether, FINALLY!! After the INCREDIBLE amount of work I spent on the thing from '05-'08 (well, there was an interruption of exactly 21 months while I was putting our 1893 house back together), it's a shame that I didn't spring for the professional paintjob. But I'm in this thing for the challenge, right? Which also means the challenge of living with your own amateurish paintjob until you can afford to have it redone. But as my father said, from 25 feet away it looks pretty good!
I also adjusted the valves on my '63 and the dang thing runs like a champ. Since I spent the $$$ and time to install a German master cylinder, the brakes behave consistently as they should, even stopping the car, and allowing the car to roll when my foot is actually off the pedal.
Check out the updated pics below. I also have a couple of videos that my new server pakage has ample room for.
Scroll down for pics of my two Ghias, a little blog and more stories.
There are a few pictures of my current Ghia restoration project at the links below...
1) See
Purchase and Transport
from Jersey... |
2) See it being
picked clean... |
3) See it retaining its
backbone through
thick and thin... |
4) See the work on the
right
fenders... |
5) See the
work on the left
fenders |
6) See the recent work on the nose |
7) Rock (er) my
world |
8) The
underworld |
9) Keep
it to the
grindstone! It's only a matter of years now... |
10) The last
few weeks work... |
 11) I guess I'm a male stripper... |
12) Whoops! Time to put the clothes back
on... |
13) A lot of clothes... |
|
 Here's
a video taken the day I picked up this gem... (5 MB avi) |
Here's my '63 coupe idling in the cold last February.
It runs alot smoother after ignition replacement, carburator rebuild,
valve adjustment, tune up, choke disarmament.... (3MB avi) |
April 26, 2008
Spring '08 finds me taking longer rides with my "driver", the '63 coupe. The unnabreviated term for all you people that don't plow through thesamba.com's ads for holey VWs (where the misused apostrophe's abound and the prices are high ((I know that NOW)) ) anyway, the unnabreviated term is 'daily driver'. But the only thing daily about the experience is that something new goes wrong. Yesterday on my happy way home, the motor seemed to be working harder and harder. The brake pedal felt funny since the morning, and when I finally stopped at a light in Silver Spring (YES!! ALMOST HOME!!), a little, but significant, wisp of smoke wafted from the rear wheel area. I managed to drag on to the loal Crappy Variety Store in search on the outside chance that they wound have, ahem, a metric socket set for sale. Parking, I felt the wheels- all of them hot, but at least not on fire. I felt ridiculous clubbing the steering wheel on a car that wouldn't make it a half mile but in this neigborhood you never know. I went into the store: past the CDs, nose drops, greeting cards and rubber toys was the "Household Repair" section. Low and behold: the Gator Grip Universal Ratchet!!! This clever tool, Made in USA (go USA!!!), features a large socket fitted with tightly packed, spring-loaded needles that fit exactly around the bolt head of whatever sized nut you have. All for $19.99 plus tax.
You see, the brake pedal adjustment was not allowing the hot brake fluid to bypass, causing excess pressure to build on all four wheel drums. You see, I feel weirdly smug, but also stupid, for I have gained this sophistacation in VW brakes not by figuring it out the first, second or third time, but by tinkering with the new brakes again and again. Loosening the the brake adjustment bolt in the floor, I felt I was on the road to recovery. After sweating in the parking lot with my new miracle tool, cramped under the steering wheel in the rust and dust of the driver's floor in my preppy work clothes for ten minutes, I realized that though the pressure was off, the brakes were now in their "don't step on me harder than a feather or I will seize with no brakes" mood, well familiar. When driving, you manage to control your instinct as you approach the intersection, and slowly con the pedal into doing its job. It goes down far enough to make you wonder if you are ever going to stop. Of course, the answer is 'yes', but the issue is 'how'? To make a long story even longer, we got the 1700 pounds of rust, seats, etc. back home with only two low-mph near-misses and a small smudge on my yellow Izod. It was with an ironic juxtaposition of pride in my mechanic's wisdom and shame in my car that I pulled the $35 car cover over it, thinking, "Is there any way I would rather start the weekend?"
August '06
This was formerly the '61 Karmann Ghia Page, but as of last week I own TWO specimens of this fine German automobile- the '61 and the '63 Coupe I picked up in Georgia last week. Now the only question is: where and when? When to restore it and where!
Look here for pics of R.T.'s
1963 Coupe and my other rides
(the Toyota Corolla has since moved on to its next rightful owner...)
March '07
Welcome to the Home of Rust at AWBMUSIC. Things on the car restoration front have ground to a standstill, as they often do, because LIFE intervened. After all, you can't live in your Ghia (if you have, I want to see PICTURES!). I decided to live in a house instead. Funny how I chose one with my mate that was in about the same condition of my '61 when I got it.
July 25, 2006
This entry finds your host drinking beer and listening to the sound of the night insects. There are a few sites out there that show KG restoration in all its glory. My favorites are Lenny's site at West Coast Classic VW Restoration and Cristian's Type 14 (the German designation for our favorite waste of time) pages. I like Revolks, too. We're all in the same boat, though I can hardly hope to reach the expert results of those pros. My point is, the car and the problems that go with it remain the same.
Though I should be thinking about getting the job of my dreams and the house I plan to buy, my thoughts keep wandering to my NEXT GHIA PROJECT (heaven help us!!). If it ever happens, it will be a souped-up late model coupe, not an anemic but classy convertible. The lines of the coupe were always better anyway, at least when the top is up...
July 7, 2006
Well, it looks like it may only be a matter of weeks until this jalopy is on the road. It has been a long way from the E-Bay auction until now. My lungs have suffered on account of the flux-core welding wire, my joints and muscles have ached, my step-mother has complained about the dust and noise, my brain has been teased at 4:00 in the morning with new solutions, people have laughed at the project, thinking it never feasible. All I can say is, with a vision and drive, you can reach wherever your passion lies. Find your passion and the rest is easy!
P.S. May I please, PLEASE go on to the next project now! Please?
December 2005
The shots of
my family's 1974 coupe, around 1987...
The story of my relationship with this classic automobile is, I suppose, like that of many other suburban American kids. We were all really "different" in our Ghias- an exclusive club that definitely preferred the more than occasional turn of heads than the creature comforts of vehicles more modern in the production date as well as in concept itself. After all, the other fellows driving to school in the eighties showed up in K-cars, Ford Fairmounts and Dodge Aspens. The butt of the jokes was Rich's Country Squire station wagon, apparently the furthest thing from a high school student's auto dreams, but often the nearest to reality. And don't forget, AMC cars were still on the road in those days.
My dear step-father bought a new Ghia in 1974 in Baltimore, on Belair Road I think. He only kept it a couple of years until he opted for the much speedier Datsun 280Z, which was soon inundated in cigarette ash. I guess the Ghia was too when it passed oddly on to my Dad after my parent's split. It was a good alternative to the used '71 Coronet wagon that he and Mom bought to take a trip to Florida a couple of years before. He was naturally going through his second adolescence and now had the appropriate chick-magnet. While my brother struggled with his early, oil-spewing vehicles, I had the luck of receiving half of the Ghia for a Christmas present in about 1986, and I promptly paid off Dan's half with $500.
I had a long drive to high school every day. But switching from the bus to my own car decreased the commute from an hour to about a half-hour to get from Upper Marlboro to Greenbelt. I suppose I felt majorly cool pulling into the parking lot at Roosevelt, which is confirmed by my friends of the time, but I don't remember any detailed incidents of coolness. Now when Clemens, my exchange student from Germany arrived, the car did cause a sensation with him. And since we got along so well he was the envy of his fellow visitors, some of whom wound up with an exchange student that didn't even HAVE a car. Those German students were really nice. Looking at the pictures, I was in a really pretentious loafer phase. There must be only a few of us that aren't ashamed of how we looked or acted as teenagers. EEEeeewww...
The car was not without its problems. One day I hit a pothole, about half as big as the car itself, on the Beltway at the 450 bridge. The front end started to shimmy like a giant, demonic Rockin' Christmas Santa Claus doll, only it was faster and even more life-threatening. This led me to seek out a nearby VW specialist who happened to be located in the nastiest industrial park of Clinton, MD (this says ALOT). Had I known then what I know now it would have cost $20 to replace the steering damper, but I'm sure it was much more expensive. I had a habit in those days shared by many young drivers: getting into accidents. The first one was caused by backing out of a Dunkirk strip mall very fast without looking at all. The Country Squire I broadsided in reverse was piloted by none other than Dr. K, my ex-dentist. He was a forgetable tooth doctor but he was a perfectly nice man to ram. It's certainly better to crash into your dentist after you stop going to him for fillings than beforehand. When I think of all the aggressive rednecks I could of run into, my nose owes its unaltered profile to Dr. K. The bright side was that the car was fully insured and it actually looked alot better after the repair, but of course this was the type of filler-paste job that true Ghia fans frown upon. The inevitable nose dent came some time later by rear-ending another really nice guy. Once I ran over a pneumatic sheetmetal cutting tool (wow) on South Dakota Avenue. The tire was not only flat, but ceremonially massacred. Volkswagons are so cute. The cuteness of the little tools they supply, though, wears off in a hurry by the side of the road: those lug nuts were not coming off without professional help. I removed the spear from my Uniroyal radial and limped on the rim to the next service station in N.W. The black dudes at the station didn't react abnormally to a white suburban kid coming in to have his tire changed. I, on the other hand, was well aware that I was far from home. I'm ashamed to admit that that was the only time I rode a Metro bus, albeit to my white girfriend at the white CUA campus for the night. The fellows at the shop did a great job and didn't even charge me, so it was blow to see the shop closed down just one week later. The offending spear is still in the workshop of my stepfather. My Chilean mechanic repaired the gas tank at some point, reminding me to "keep de tahnk aht leest wan quarter fool" to avoid further problems. He did something wrong, though, because the fuel line was immediately blocked again. I remember having the gas tank out on the front lawn, the gas in an open black tub next to it, digging some silcone sealant out of the nipple. It was only years later that I learned through a harmless but scary experience with charcoal that this was very, very dangerous. Plus I got grass clippings in the tub. This innocuous event was the start of my mechanic hobby, during which I've changed several bicycle tires, examined a spark plug wire and done other stuff.
I would be remiss to ignore the ventilation in the old coupe. There is a nice description of the concept of heat in a Ghia at Tracey's Ghiagirl site (you guys had me rollin'!!). The heat in these cars was never much good. Apparently some Ghias were equiped with gas-burning heaters... The poor heating wouldn't be much of a problem if the darn windows wouldn't fog. But as they do, and you kind of need to see at least where you are going, this required opening the front vents to defrost the windshield. Imagine cruising at your top speed of 60 mph (well, it was a bit more, as I tested, he, he...) with the fresh air of the morning flowing in through the vent, over your fingertips on the steering wheel. In Washington it can get down to 20°F during the time school is in session. Since the "heater" channels of my Ghia were long since rusted through (I didn't know how it was supposed to work back then) the only active heat vent was a little hole 1 3/4" in diameter directly in back of the seats. I drove many a mile with one ski-gloved hand on the steering wheel and three bare fingers of the other stuck behind my back in this hole. Shifting? Can't remember. You only had four gears anyway.
See some shots of my family's 1974 coupe...
The commuting continued as I started my music studies at CUA in NW DC. The only difference was that I now had my new cross for both of us (Ghia & me) to bear: a double bass. I managed for at least a year to transport the old doghouse through the rain and snow with its neck sticking out the window (as if it wasn't a cold enough drive for the both of us as it was). It's ironic that Ghia owners of that time scorned the comforts of more practical cars and modern cars, yet they gave up their rides unsentimentally when push really came to shove. In my case it wasn't the convertible top leaking or necessarily the rusted floor pans, but the unsuitability of the little car for a bass player. At some point I did read of an enthusiastic bug driver who simply removed his passenger seat to make room, but I knew that would be a lonesome and only temporary solution. At last, in about 1988, I passed a Toyota Tercel hatchback for sale on the road back to Marlboro. I will never forget how the "rustic Prince George's County" family sealed the deal by at once inviting me to join their Baptist church AND offering to sell me an illegal blank inspection ticket from "a friend of theirs". Two cars were out of the question. I took the Ghia to my Chilean mechanic in Clinton and after a while of showing it around, he offered $500 for it. He pointed to the significant rust damage under the back seat and said, "Peepol see dees an walk ayway". What could I say? I was even less of a businessman in those days than I am now, so I took the offer.
Since then, every sighting of a Ghia's unique curves gave me a pang of regret. $500? For $500 you could let it sit in your backyard till doomsday rather than sell. As it happens, my family's capacity for storing automobiles took off when I left the country in 1991. I realized how cheap storage space is in this country compared to old Europe. There having a car like this requires a lot of organizing and money, and this well-loved and rare model is very expensive in Europe. $500? Arriving back here last year, the Karmann market seemed glutted with decent vehicles at dumping prices. There was even one under a car cover on my home street that had been there since I was in grammar school. I thought it was only going to be a matter of time before I aquired another Karmann and that it would be easy. There were also two rust buckets at a little junkyard by the Solomon's Island bridge that I found while passing by one day. I tried to talk to the owner but it was 3:00 o'clock on Friday and he said he just leaving and that I should call again. I imagined buying the two together and making one out of both, all for- yes- $500. I imagined introducing myself to the neighbor and making an offer on his 1969. About a week later, it disappeared! Then, the next time I was in Solomon's Island I stopped by the forgotten VWs: gone! All this made me start to think that they aren't quite as common or easy to aquire as I thought. I started shopping on the internet. It was still early in the search that the EBay auction I eventually "won" appeared- with only 18 hours left at $1800. Though a coupe definitely has better lines, I always wanted a convertible of some type- why not of my dream car? And the form of a 1961 was irresistable compared to the relatively clunky rear and front ends of the last models like I had.
I bought what was left of this convertible by being the highest bidder on an EBAY auction on September 20, 2005. The price was on the high side, but I wanted this car. "What was left" sounds a bit extreme, but once you've scratched below the surface of an old car, especially one designed to throw away after too much use and abuse, you learn to seperate good looks from real integrity. This old car has integrity of a sort (how could it not after all these years), but to straighten out the rusted shell of a body will take more than a month of Sundays.
Last update 05/Oct/08
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