Meet Lily

So, after the mandatory two hour stint at the keyboard proofreading my work, I decided to spend the rest of the morning cleaning out the inside of the beetle and to use the opportunity to learn more about the car. First things first, who is Lily?

Lily is a 1971 Beetle from Nuremberg. She belonged to an electrical engineer and was later passed on to his son. The original owner was Kurt, not Hans like I said yesterday, and from evidence found in the car he liked chocolate cake, soap, bicycle puncture repair kits, hipster sunglasses, and he was a smoker. And he liked to keep things very nice and tidy in his Beetle.

The car came with its original registration, but the users manual was not in the car. :(


Letter of registration


Description of the car. German class paid off! Strangely enough, I started learning German because of my first VW, ended up majoring in it, getting a PhD in German studies, and finally, buying another air-cooled VW. I could have saved a lot of time by skipping steps 2 and 3...


Information about the origins of the car.



De-registration. Luckily, endgültig (irrevokably, finally) does not actually mean that the car cannot be registered again. Phew!

Lily was built in Wolfsburg in 1971, but first registered in 1972. She must have been a year-end special! I wonder how many of the other cars sold at the same time are still on the roads...She's a standard 1302 model Beetle. The 1302s were first produced in 1971 and featured major improvements in the front-end technology over previous models. The engines were slightly bigger than older models (1.6L, up from 1.3L) and Luxury and Sparsam (economical) models were also available, but Lily is just a plain old Beetle.

The interior is is remarkably good shape for a 40 year old car. I figured out this morning that the springs in the drivers seat were not actually destroyed, but rather that the seat was configured to what seems to be gangster style setting where the driver is leaned back so far that it is doubtful that they can actually see over the hood. There are only two ways to have the seat in this Beetle - either straight up or this gangster setting. Since I'm pretty small and can't imagine I'll need room in front of me for making silly hand gestures in rap videos, I've opted to adjust the seat so that it keeps me sitting upright. Speaking of seats, I managed to get the passenger seat moving again and closed off the heating ducts on the floor.

Here's a picture of the interior.


The upholstery seems to be the original and since I'm quite fond of that shade of blue I think I just want to get it steam cleaned instead of buying new seat covers.

There are a few small holes in the headliner, but that's to be expected in a car that old. Eventually I'll patch that or replace it. I'm reluctant to rip the headliner out, but I'm not sure if it'd be patchable...Everything is original - the old radio is still there, the steering wheel is in excellent condition, all of the buttons and knobs work...except for one.


(Steering wheel, radio, sound system with one tinny little speaker behind the steering wheel...the original radio is staying, but something more modern will be installed in the glove box!)

One of the points that caused the car to fail its roadworthiness inspection was the lack of functional windshield wipers. They're there, but the switch was until now pretty useless. In an effort to get my windshield wipers working, I started moving fuses around. Luckily, the blown fuse was the only thing preventing the wipers from working, but the cover to the fuse panel was misleading so I thought that the blown fuse was for something else. Now, I can drive in the rain!

Like I said yesterday, the previous owner left a lot of interesting stuff in the car. The front of the car was full of tools and useful things. Behind the seats were more things of varying levels of utility. My favorites include the little fold up stool that is the perfect height for looking into the engine compartment, the nice set of sockets, and the required warning triangle and first aid kit.



(The complete haul included two bars of old man soap, three puncture repair kits for a bicycle, sunglasses, and many much more useful objects!)


View in the back: This guy was prepared for *everything*! He had a tow cable, countless cleaning cloths, gloves, rain gear, the lovely little stool, and so much more hiding in the little compartment behind the back seat!


Once I sorted through everything, I put most of it back in its place. Sure, that place was the trash can for some of the things (old soap, most of the collection of shopping bags kept in the back), but I kept a lot of the other things because they just seem to go with the car.


Tomorrow I'll get my new tires and put that rusted old hubcap back on.

Lily's First Day at Home

I traveled picked Lily up in Fürth last night and drove it back to the town where we live. I'm not sure this was technically legal since I don't know how roadworthy the car is (or even what the German standards of roadworthiness are since I got my license in Ireland). According to the guy who I bought it from, it hadn't been driven more than about 5 miles in the last 3 years, so I didn't know what to expect but I also didn't want to pay for towing so I decided to chance my arm and see how far we could make it.

Surprisingly, we made it all the way back to the house without incident. Lily had its first Autobahn drive when the GPS sent us in an unexpected direction (!!) and I got to change a very flat tire this morning, but otherwise no complaints. I was delighted to discover that I still remembered how to change a tire (thanks to my dad for drilling that into my head!) and that I was able to stomp on the tire iron hard enough to break through who knows how many years of rust on the bolts to get the old tire off and replace it with an even older but more air-tight one. Marathon training paid off!

While I was looking for the spare and all the goodies I need to change the tire, I also found a nice cache of tools that the previous owner, dear (probably deceased) Hans (and yes, that is the original owner's real name...) had left in the car for me. He left a spare generator belt, a full-size spare, a first aid kit that appears to be older than I am, and a very wide selection of random cloths - hopefully not cut from old underwear. I had it inspected this morning and for what it's been through it's in good shape. It has no rust whatsoever on the undercarriage, which means that the other cars will be sleeping outside from now on, and solid brakes so my biggest worries are resolved. Driving is good, being able to stop is better!

It needs three things repaired in order to pass the next inspection:

1) The windshield wipers don't work. At all. A fuse is blown, but it doesn't seem to be the one for the wipers. I'm going to try to find some ceramic fuses somewhere though and see if this fixed the problem. Otherwise, it'll just have to wait until I get my repair manuals in from amazon.

2) The ball joints in the front "have air in them". That's what the German guy doing the inspection said anyways. I'm not sure if this is a do-it-yourself-er or a pay someone else to deal with it problem. I also wonder if its just a consequence of the car being 40 years old and not having any major work done on it or if it means I should look at the front end more closely.

3) The exhaust pipes are rusted through. This shouldn't be as difficult of a fix, and it certainly goes some of the way towards explaining the headache I had after doing this morning's errands with the car.

Haynes and Bentley manuals are on their way and I've asked my folks back in America to look for my copy of Muir's How to Keep Your VW. I had a green one and a blue one, but I think I gave my dad the blue one...or maybe it was the other way around...either way...I need one and I know that I've had two so hopefully one will emerge from the vortex of my parents' basement.

I have access to tools and other things that I'll need for the project, so I'm going to try to DIY as much as I can. Since I have access to a second car it won't be a problem if the bug is off the road for a few days at a time while I wait for parts/healing of bloody knuckles/reduced blood pressure. I'm thinking mechanical-body-interior should be the order of things. Other than a few annoying rust patches, the only body parts that might need to be replaced are the engine shelf and one of the front fenders. It seems to run well, but considering that it probably never had any major work done, I'm considering overhauling the engine completely, but at the same time I find myself thinking that that would be overkill and that there's no need to mess up a good engine. Then again, I'm concerned about the integrity of the engine seals...after 40s years I can't expect too much from them!

A considerable amount of time was spent at a gas station near where I got the car thinking about whether or not the car needs a lead additive. My '71 bus in America didn't need it, but Germany, German cars, and German fuel are all different. This morning, while sifting through Han's tool collection, I found a half empty bottle of lead additive in the front of the car, so my question has been answered and the weird shaking from the engine has been (partially) explained. I am concerned about my car's lead addiction though...Is it time for an intervention?

It's nice to have a VW again - so much more fun than the Micra!