Having done nothing to my VW last year other than change the oil, I decided that this year I would try to catch up to the maintenance curve a bit. So I ordered some parts.
When I refurbished my 1963 Beetle around 10 years ago, most parts were advertised in three levels of quality: Cheap Brazilian, Good Brazilian, and German. I tried to use mostly German quality parts from Wolfsburg West, however buying from them is expensive in Canada because the shipping and import duty can be quite substantial. Many items subsequently were bought from CIP1, which has both a USA and Canada website. Shipping is free so long as I spend more than $100, which is usually not hard.
I needed $10 to put me over the $100 threshold, so I selected a license light seal. When my package arrived I removed the old seal, and found a respectable amount of dirt under it. My VW lives under a maple tree during the summer and accumulates tree dirt rapidly.
To my surprise the old seal and the new seal were identical.
Made in Taiwan, they even came from the exact same mold cavity. I find these details interesting since I briefly worked in a plastic moldmaking shop during my student days.
Here’s the new seal installed, as you can see it doesn’t fit very well in the spaces between the bolt holes. I kind of miss Brazilian parts, maybe I should have held out for a German unit. As I recall the original one did that too, and eventually shrank into a better fit. Being exactly the same part I at least know it’ll last for 7-10 years.
The other blue car I worked on this week is our 2013 Ford Focus. It’s had a rattle in the passenger door since we bought it. I took it to the dealer once and they charged me $100 to not fix it, so this week I pulled the door apart to try and find it. I have a roll of FatMat lying around leftover from the VW project, so I cut some pieces and pasted them wherever I could while I was in there.
The rattle is most pronounced during cold weather, but I found that banging the top of the door frame still made the rattle. I’d been banging away for about half an hour with my left arm up the speaker hole, just about ready to give up when I finally found it:
There’s a bracket that supports the front glass channel, but it’s not fastened to it. I got a rubber band from a head of broccoli and slipped it over the end of the bracket. I could only see this with my fingers, so stuck my phone up in the door and took this photo after I was done. I think that’s my first use of broccoli in a vehicle repair.
So there’s two down. I still have battery cables, jack points, and throttle cable extender to do on the VW in the next few weeks. On the Focus I will try and tackle the smell this summer. When we bought it the car it had been cleaned and detailed, and did not smell funny. I now speculate that it was previously owned by a family of chain smoking, incontinent sheepdogs.
Anyway, classic car maintenance never ends, and daily driver maintenance never ends as well. Further updates as the situation warrants.
We have both been doing similar tasks lately although your repairs have been much tidier. You are a true trailblazer when it comes to using broccoli in repairs.
Some smells are tough to eradicate. At work I was once assigned an ’03 or ’04 Impala. It had quite a few miles on it by the time I got it and the prior user was a great guy who smoked those skinny cigars non-stop when not in the office. A lot of work had been done for clean-up but the smell still lingered some days.
Try an ozone generator. It is a device which you place inside the car for 30 minutes. It completely removes any odors from the vehicle.
..” I now speculate that it was previously owned by a family of chain smoking, incontinent sheepdogs.” LOL Nice summary of the problem.
After all these years finally a logical explanation for the aroma emanating from an Explorer we once owned. It was purchased used, in the late fall as I recall, and we didn’t notice any peculiar odors. Next spring, once the weather warmed up, there was definitely a hint of urinary incontinence inside the vehicle. We scrubbed the seats and carpets and got rid of most of the smells. Either that or we just got used to it as time went on. A good reminder that purchasing a used vehicle can be a crap shoot, no pun intended.
That’s it, no blue cars for me. 🙂
I must admit that you have pointed out the first legitimate reason for purchasing broccoli that I have ever heard.
The smell is a problem. When I was trying to find another Gen1 Oddysey after mine got totalled, I located one at a Honda dealer in a nearby city. We drove up to check it out and there was something that smelled despite all of the used car dealer magic that could be thrown at it. Nope, nope, nope.
Broccoli? It’s one of my favourite foods! But then again, my blood pressure is 110/60, too.
The worst is vomit. I once had a beautiful 1978 Buick LeSabre as my cab. It had only been on the road a week when drunk lady projectile vomited all over the dash of the car.
I never got the smell out in four years.
When I had my last Beetle, the ’66, I loved Wolfsburg West. Good parts, good quality. I lived on The Samba for tips, advice and the aircooled camaraderie and I learned a lot there. The license light holder seal and all the fender seals I got from WW fit very well
For me, the worst smelling cars, and the ones where the odor is never, ever gone are cars that have been smoked in. Incontinent dogs are a distant second. I’ve been lucky in that all the used cars I’ve bought that smelled okay stayed that way even in the summer heat.
Just a tip to you guys. The comments about smells made me think of this.
With all the flooding these past months, there’s going to be a lot of cars on the used lots that have been ‘reconditioned’. Steam cleaned, detailed, fluids changed. Beware, as the smell may be gone, but the damage to CPUs, wiring and sensors will remain. They may run right now, but unsolvable, cascading maladies will set in.
Gotta love those incontinent sheepdogs.
How did you manage to have a 1973-era license plate for your beautiful VW? Have you had it since then? What a great car. My 62 was about the same colour.
I love the photo of the VW in front of the Focus. What an epic display of the evolution of automotive design.
I was all of six years old in 1973, it was my Dad’s plate and I got it transferred to me when I put the bug on the road. It took some arguing at the MoT though:
“I’d like to transfer this plate..”
“You can’t do that”
“Yes I can, see here’s the form and it’s signed by my father”
“You can’t do that”
“I didn’t make up this form on my own”
“I’ll call my manager”
“Yes, he can do that” (big frown from MoT lady)
I still have the plate from my 1974 (just one, regrettably, the front was all bent up from years of automatic car washes), but I will keep it as a souvenir. I recently saw a 1965 car with a 1973 plate on it, and the original dealer sticker. I feel like that is one I need to write up.
Nice work Doug!
I have done the gifting of cars and plates numerous times with family. It’s normally less painful than Doug’s story, or at least it has been for me. The MTO (its not called MoT in Ontario) allows to transfer plates between spouses, and parents and kids (step and in-laws included). Gifting cars avoids having to pay sales tax and includes a broader definition of family including siblings.
Here is the form you need to fill out for plates:
http://www.forms.ssb.gov.on.ca/mbs/ssb/forms/ssbforms.nsf/FormDetail?OpenForm&ACT=RDR&TAB=PROFILE&SRCH=&ENV=WWE&TIT=plate&NO=023-SR-LV-139E
Here is the gifting vehicle process:
https://www.ontario.ca/faq/how-do-i-transfer-ownership-vehicle-family-member
I also have my Dad’s old 1973 issued plates on my Torino. They have been on the car since 1973 and so when I got the car from my dad I was adamant about keeping the original plates. I had the plates restored by a guy in Ottawa several years ago. They had more than 1/4″ thick of val tags on it at that time. The old steel plates were much better quality than the aluminum screen printed ones we have now. They may not rust but the ones from the last decade delaminate pretty badly.
Love how you noticed how the mold cavity is the same. What a journey that mold set has taken! I too am catching up on neglected maintenance and finding odd fixes. Power window on the rear passenger side wasn’t going up all the way. First time I ‘ve ever how to remove the outside door skin to get to the guts! Very ingenious those Saturn engineers. Only had to pull the motor drive crank out to sit with more force in the track. Door was lined with a sound deadening mat that turned to dust though…
My Vanagon is sitting in the driveway waiting for a fresh cash infusion.
My friend bought a BMW cheap because a stink bomb had been detonated in it. He bought a sauce pan and a hot plate from Goodwill and boiled urinal cakes inside the car for several days. The smell was gone, but driving it required frequent comfort stops.
“Ongoing regular maintenance” does scare me away from old-car ownership a bit. I think I might have time for that when I’m in my 70s, some 20 years from now.
By then, you won’t be able to do the work
You might have some luck refitting your license light seal by leaving it in the sun on a hot afternoon to soften the rubber and quickly massaging it to where it needs to go.
“I think that’s my first use of broccoli in a vehicle repair.”
and the late George H.W. Bush turned over in his grave…
“Vile weed” — Newman
https://youtu.be/X1snxhEdchY
Those broccoli bands are great problem solvers, but they usually dry out after about 2 years. Maybe you’ll be on to your next blue car by then.
Are you trying to tempt me into buying a Beetle of my own? You’re sure doing a good job of it. Nice car!
I have had the same experience with old vw parts. I get excited when I find a new old stock Bosch or vw part. The quality now days can be a real crap shoot. I just picked up a pair of new window crank handles for a new to me eurovan. They were from China although not as robust as the original ones the knob it still attached and I can now easily roll up the window. For $10 for the pair I can’t really complain. I had a set of Mexican Bosch breaker points break in 1/2 on the old 74 van one time. After that I only went with the German ones. I got lucky and found a vw supplier that speacializes in eurovans here on Vancouver island and he has mostly German parts. I just picked up a windshield washer pump for $22 which seemed like a pretty good deal compared to $29 Canadian tire wanted for a Chinese one. We will see once I get it installed. It is great when you can get some small snags fixed. I am working on the list for the new van.
Nice Bug – my dad’s ‘61 was identical down to the blue colour. We used to have a ‘77 Buick Century that my dad bought used in 1980. It was the stereotypical car driven by a little old lady, and it only had 21,000 miles on the clock. Three months after he bought it, my mom T-boned someone coming out of a side street. Neither car was going very fast, and the Century was fixed and back on the road in a few weeks. The only hitch, though, was that there was a flat of eggs on the front seat that my mom had bought on the way home, and all but one shattered with the impact. After the accident, she threw the last one at the car. They did a good job of cleaning it out, but for the rest of the time we had it (until 1986) you could still smell eggs on a hot day.
I’ve had two used cars that were apparently driven by chain smokers who weren’t into ventilation. Both times I rented a “steam” carpet cleaner from the supermarket or hardware store with the upholstery attachment and cleaned the crap out of any fabric or carpet surfaces. If the headliner is even the molded foam with the fuzzy fabric or something glued to it do that also. There are versions of the detergent stuff you can get with extra pet smell fixers in it. You will be sucking the cleaning solution out of wherever you spray it so you can put pretty much anything in it that you think will help other than bleach.
Oh in both cases the waste water came out black, gallon after gallon. I hope the previous owners had their lungs power washed.
I quit smoking in early 1988 and when the weather warmed up I gave my old ‘81 Datsun a good clean-out. The seats were vinyl, so they were easy to clean up, as was the rest of the interior. I took the fabric seat covers off and threw them in the wash, and the water draining out had a nasty brown colour. Needless to say, the car’s interior smelled much better, and I shuddered to think of the crud that I was no longer putting into my lungs.
For the smell I recommend Pure Ayre http://www.pureayre.com/ the stuff works well. I recommend just buying the gallon and using a tank sprayer. You’ll probably want to pull the seats out to get all of the carpet. Don’t forget the headliner.
My friend once took possession of a 6-month-old company car that had previously been in the ‘care’ of another employee. By the smell in the car, it seemed as if they’d had cigarette-smoking Old English sheepdogs living in it. No matter what he did and how many times the car was professionally valeted, it smelt of wet dog. His company agreed after a few months to replace it as it was still pretty offensive.
Blue car repairs, had the head off my Hillman it started foaming the coolant suspected head gasket failure cant see anything obviously wrong with the old gasket but replaced it anyway, ended up pulling the short block to replace a leaking frost plug its all back together now and running fine new thermostat too because that turned out to be frozen open, forgot to fit and measure whether the side draft manifold will fit yet again so that can stay in the spares pile for another few years untill i feel energetic again..