New engine, who dis?
It's been a while since I've done a 411 update. LET'S GET IT.
I decided that this year is the Year of
My Garbage Son. The 411 earned a name now: The Dreaded Laramie.
Another Lemons team just had a 1.8-liter 914 engine sitting around. It'd been sitting around for 10 or so years, so they offered it to me a long time ago, after even the rebuilt version of this engine turned out to be hot garbage. The Lemons Shipping Service (a.k.a. the system of "Can you grab this while you're there?") got it to Florida, but that's as far as it'd gotten. Florida Man and a friend of his that knows aircooleds looked it over and said, yep, it's fine.
I hadn't had a real goal in mind with the car until they announced the Gambler 500 Mexico down in Big Bend/optionally Mexico. Oh, and there's a Lemons Rally two weekends before it? Then it was ON. Shipped the engine to Texas, rebuilt the crappy Holley 5200 on top of it, made sure the flex plate wasn't going to
flop into the engine case anymore (
oops), then attempted to SEND IT on the Lemons Rally.
At least we were properly warning traffic behind us with a slow triangle:
It still ran hot, couldn't cope with hills or sustaining full-throttle at all, and after a series of dumb fixes in an attempt to get out of Austin, it made it to a Love's in Sonora, TX, with me driving to the temp gauge. From there, it got a tow to the evening's meeting spot in Alpine, TX (at 6ish in the morning—I was a bit late, but at least found another person on the rally to convoy with), and then rolled into Sanderson after losing any ability to shift out of first gear. Cruising around north of Big Bend at 30 mph is the life, though, man. It's a Volkswagen! It belongs in the desert! This thing is fun just being loud and slow as hell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/COaBZ0nFuGF/ (yes, that's a real cow bone on the shifter of my hella boned car)
The transmission was toast and leaking like a sieve, and I think I figured out the reason: Somewhere along the way, we forgot to remove the blue tape that was covering the hole for the input shaft while the engine was out, and WELP. We kept finding bits and pieces of tape and metal chunks all over as we drained the fluid. Also, it was super runny, like the seal also failed between the diff oil and the transmission fluid—a common failure, but also one way to essentially wash out something that needs oil with a fancy automotive-grade detergent. GOOD JOB.
https://www.instagram.com/p/COrhsrvFRBR/
One 16-hour round trip to retrieve the car later...we swap in the spare gearbox that was just sitting in the passenger seat for years (I think it's out of a Karmann-Ghia, but it's the same crappy three-speed automatic). Swapped in new fluid, and it's ran like a dream. Er, not a dream. It's still a slow, crappy, three-speed Volkswagen automatic. We also rejetted the carbs in hopes that that would help. We can't keep the damn thing from running rich, still.
It finally passed inspection, though! Apparently every inspection guy in north Austin takes off whenever, shows up to work late and leaves hella early. I finally ended up eating part of my work day to take it to a dedicated inspection-and-lube place after running into about six other places that were open after work but whose inspection guy was MIA, ugh. They just sorta waved it on through, ha. The tough part was getting it through the idiots at the tax office. First off, I was told it'd be butt-expensive to get it registered, period, without getting an appraisal done. My free car (free for a reason!) was being valued for THOUSANDS more than it was worth—like one in running condition—so I was told that all I'd need would be for a dealership to certify its actual value for them to tax my free car like, well, the free rolling, leaking shell that it was when I got it. My other papers were fine, and I should be OK.
Woe is me for expecting anyone at the Travis County Tax Office to give me a straight, consistent answer. So, I got my inspection done, got it appraised and headed back with all the paperwork, including the
maintenance records I found in the door (!) that showed it exceeded the limits of its five-digit odometer in 2002. There was no odometer when I got it because race car, and also because it wouldn't even be accurate, anyway. This is why the previous owner in California didn't sign the line certifying the mileage of the car on the title when he signed everything else over to me: he ticked the box for "not actual miles" instead, which didn't require a signature.
Well, this time—with all the right paperwork—the idiots in the tax office push back on it, saying that I had to have this line signed. That wasn't what I was told, that wasn't what the previous owner knew from many other transactions involving California titles, and it was flat-out wrong. So, I ask for their supervisor. That person was also wrong, and told me I needed the damn mileage line signed. They then roped in their supervisor. That supervisor was also wrong. By this point, I'm beyond livid about someone either lying to me earlier (false) or THREE LEVELS OF IDIOTS BEING WRONG (correct!). This godforsaken office takes up hours of my time every time I have to deal with it. Appointments were booked weeks out as they were limiting capacity for COVID, and then you still have to wait in a stupid line outside just to get in. That wait was an extra hour after getting there on time for my actual appointment. I was getting this car registered today or else.
So, I get told I can try to do a bonded title and that I could cut in line if I could pull it off, but by now it was getting super close to the end of the day and I'd have to get a form from the DMV across town. So, I finally get to talk to someone about this problem, and they ask why I'm trying to get a bonded title—typically what you have to do with a lost title—when I have a title signed over into my name on hand. I explain the situation, break down in tears over the whole ordeal (I was lied to by someone and I've now wasted multiple hours of my life on this over multiple days) and SWEET VINDICATION: I was right. The first person I spoke with at the tax office gave me good info—three of her coworkers are just absolute morons. That freaking saint at the DMV called the highest-level idiot I dealt with at the tax office, explained the situation, and sent me back over to register my dang car.
I swear, if the tax office fired 99% of its staff, it might actually work better. It's an absolute disaster every time I have to deal with it. Do they want me to form a Montana LLC for the world's cheapest cars to ever be put under a Montana LLC? I'd rather keep my cash here to fund crap that we need, but the fact that our tax office is the deepest circle of hell is a damn good argument to find a loophole to register a car in literally any other place.
BACK TO THE CAR! For the Gambler, I ended up requesting a Tundra to test to tow it there and back given its last escapade out in Big Bend. That was a good call. It still doesn't go great with hills or highway speeds.
We were still messing around with the carbs when it got there...even in the rain. Of course it freakin' rains in the middle of the desert on me, too. Great. But then! It sort of got sorted. Sort of. It'd run. I was still driving to the temp gauge in places (it REALLY hates uphill climbs), and since the base camp in Terlingua alone was about 2,000 feet higher in elevation than Austin, we could not lean it up enough at altitude to keep it from fouling plugs. Hell, we can't even get it lean enough in Austin to keep it from fouling plugs. But running rich doesn't do the overheating/warping damage of running lean, so we sent it. You know what's a damn fine car to fart around in the desert in? The 411.
The highlight of the Gambler 500 was Old Ore Road, a rocky trail that runs north-south through Big Bend National Park. PEAK 411 territory, clearly. A Gambler 500 is all about taking vehicles that probably shouldn't even be on the road and taking them off-road anyway. It rules, and you should do it. Anyway, the 411 did its thing and fouled plugs to the point where we couldn't let it drop in revs as it would stall out, which meant that careful, slow-speed crawling was out. That actually ended up being pretty fun? It's like SPEED OFF-ROADING. It fouled 'em up enough mid-way that we had to wait for the engine to sorta-cool, hop out, and clean off a couple spark plugs with sandstone. I wanted my aircooled desert experience and got it, I guess.
I missed the Mexico sections, but alas, next year, maybe. I have to sort that cursed carb, and by sort, I mean yeet it into the nearest dumpster never to be spoken of again.
It then did a local June Bug Rally that goes around some landmarks around town. The thermocouple for the temp gauge finally went kaput from us fiddling with spark plugs so much (and had been
more of a C than a loop since after the Lemons Rally), and was actually breaking the seal around the third-cylinder spark plug it slipped over and letting some soot out. It was running rough at the end of the June Bug Rally and still struggled up hills, so that's a thing. So, I have no idea what the temperature is back there aside from, eh, it's probably fine. Turns out, we were going by a much lower number than we should've been, and a lot of Type 4 folks seemed to think 380 F was normal back there. I still back off around 400, though.
It sucks, and it's perfect. I still think I'd prefer to have a manual transmission in it, and definitely want dual-carbs. Oh, and there's a dead bushing that causes it to wobble at about 45-55 mph. I don't mind it because my speedometer at the moment is Waze on my phone. Also, I probably want to do an actual rebuild of the brake caliper that was
sticking and fix the leaky fitting that's now leaking again.
One theory is that maybe it leans out under a lot of revs, like the progressively-opening carb doesn't open up all the way to deliver all the fuel it needs? Either way, I think the best option is to yeet the Holley 5200 straight in the dumpster.
Also, it definitely has "CAMERO" plates since that's what the previous owner had on it in California, and the 411 will always secretly be a camero since no one knows what it is anyway.
Anyway, after 2 Swaps 1 Month, I think it's time for a Lemons Party. The bigger goal is to get it back on track for MSR-Houston in November.
ETA: Verify my crapcan ownership, as a Puffalump around an engine hose should easily beat a note around a gearshift:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNOE_onFwS1/