Ownership Verified: It's Weird Under-Appreciated Aircooled Time! 1971 Volkswagen 411

I've added...a catch can! No more oil splattered out of the breather onto the top of a hot engine. We also fixed the bracket in the steering that was slipping back out, and it's still got a death wobble from the other dead bushings, but overall, it's in much better shape! Hooray!
 
I hadn't driven the 411 in a while, and I was starting to worry about bad gas. So, what the heck—I figured I'd drive it to F1 weekend.


View: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj9FGaEpl_0/

The bushings were already bad and into "death wobble" territory. Now I think a gnarly bump on Burleson Road en route to the track must've knocked one even more loose, as it's now doing the death wobble thing harder than before and dragging going in and out of stupid driveway when it used to not do that.

There's a new clunk off-throttle as the weight shifts back, plus more play in the steering than before. I gotta fix this death wobble.

The brake light switch is totally gone now. Oops.

It fouled two plugs, one of which definitely happened while waiting in the media lot. They had one entrance/exit hole to the media pen, and it wasn't moving when someone crashed on COTA Blvd. We ended up just parking the car to wait about 30 minutesish for traffic to start crawling again, but yeah: two plugs down, two left. I gotta fix this stupid carb.


View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkD8Zj6rKvr/

Oh, and somehow the horn ground wire came loose? I didn't even use it THAT much. People hear this thing coming!


View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkD7mW_rafE/

It does get priority parking when I try to valet it downtown, though. (Mostly because anything with a startup procedure is, ah, "you can just park it here.")
 
The best anti-theft device is a fuel pump that has to be turned on. They may get the car started, but they won't get far. lol
 

View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpWRA5eMdk4/

Haven't had a 411 update in a while, but it's still limping around with bad bushings. There's an Espressos and Exotics thing at the Porsche dealership this morning, so since it needs its monthlyish drive, I decided to replace the brake light switch and fart over there.

These dumb switches are all but consumable on the 411. They're not made for the manual brake line and the plastic part pops out, which means they no longer make contact and set off the lights.


View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpWSB7bpYt2/

The good news is, I think it peed out the extra brake fluid that's been peeing out of the system. I accidentally overfilled it a little while ago, and welp. We'll see if this fixed it.
 
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