Volkswagen.

As many of you know, I have had a Volkswagen for a long time. I got it in 1999 after we sold the 56 Chevy. It’s a 1964 Type 1 25 HP bug, with a 6 volt system. I’m a little attached, because its the same vintage as me.
🙂

So, I was listening to Click and Clack the tappet brothers on NPR, and they were telling a story about a guy they knew that did not have a starter in their car.. He had to always park it on a hill.

And that made me consider telling/documenting my own story on this subject.

Around 2005, the starter on the Bug started getting flaky. Sometimes it would start, sometimes it wouldn’t. It wasn’t too bad, and I just put up with it. But around 2007, it just wouldn’t start anymore. But by this time I had gotten used to parking on inclines. So for 4 years, up to this fall, I always started my car by rolling it. 99% of the time I would remember to park it on an incline, and I have to tell you, this car started very well. I mean, I did not need much incline AT ALL to get it started. If it was enough incline to cause the car to roll in neutral, that car started! I figured out what the problem was early on, but by that time, it was sort of a challenge to see how long I could get away without having a starter! It was funny.. all three kids are going to have memories of push starting that car. They loved to do it! They would get mad if they were not the one that got to go out and push. I had specific parking spaces I would aim for. At work I had a space, and at home I backed in to the driveway. The drive had just enough of a slant to get the car rolling, and that is all I needed! At Kroger, There was a space out where people did not park that was perfect. Walmart was more of a challenge.. Sometimes I had to give it a shove to get it to start moving, But I did not go there that much.
It really was not that much of a hardship, but I figured I proved my point after 4 years, and cleaned the contacts on the power strip in the dash.. it was dirty, and too much voltage was being dropped to engage the solenoid. It works fine now. 🙂

Tags:

Posted on 20 January '13 by , under Activities.