Beetlemania

12-4-2 What follows was pulled together from an e-mail conversation between myself and a friend that took place over the span of several days. I've tried to pull the various threads together to form a more linear conversation. I'm always amazed at how we so often have three or four sub-plots going on at once within a string of e-mails. For the most part I've only included the bits regarding our cars in this post.

Jeff drives a Honda Civic DelSol . Although it's not as cool as my Beetles (in my humble opinion) it's still a neat little car. Jeff had an ‘incident’ a few weeks ago while out for a ride in his DelSol. Details are on his web site. I'd put a link here, but I'm running a family oriented web site.

To the mail bag:

Herr B.Gone - {regarding a phone call from the night before} Mostly I was calling to say ‘hi’.

So “Hi, Jeff, “

I keep seeing DelSol’s on the road and when I do I say to the driver (who can’t hear me since we’re in separate cars) ‘I know someone who wants your hood!’ How’s it going finding the parts to fix it?

Jeff - {i know a guy} that has a del sol, and he’s tall so he keeps hitting the hood release. he’s also a honda tweaker dude, so he wants to get a new, side- or back-opening hood. he’s just getting up the money to get the one he wants, then ordering it. when it’s installed, i’m getting his old one - cheap.

if i get impatient i might just get a new (non-aftermarket) one, which is ~$300.

either way, i have someone lined up to paint it for non-body shop prices. (yay color codes!) :)

H.B.G. - Good news about the car. I hope he doesn’t take too long, though I would like to see it pre-repair. I’m not sure the picture really shows what happened.

Oh, one last thing fer now – I’ve moved up in the rankings at Yahoo! My Punch Buggy page at the Beetlemania location is now (11-22-2) #5 in the list when you search for ‘punch buggy’. :-)

Jeff - i'm sure your mom is proud of you. :)

H.B.G. - She says she is, though I wonder about her tone of voice… ;-)

{I've since percolated back down some. You know how those things go. At this point in another thread I mentioned trying to save up so we can buy a house.}

Jeff - a particular house?

Yesterday we looked at this place:

[snip huge URL]

Turns out it needs more work than we can do right now. It has great potential though for someone who has the time/money to put into it. Right now we need something we can move right into. Cosmetics are not that important. Things like having a stove that works are. The search goes on...

Jeff - i’m not even going to fight with the URL unless you have a signed P&S. :)
{P&S: Purchase and Sale agreement}

H.B.G. - I can’t say I blame you there. Though you won’t get to see the cute pix of the horse poking his head out the side window of the stable…

Jeff - so when (for bul go gi?) {my standard payment fer Jeff's web hosting services}

H.B.G. - Well, this may not be the best week fer it money wise. On Turkey Day I’m taking Mom and {some friends} to diner at The Bull Run. They have an all you can eat Thanksgiving buffet. And they clean up afterwards! ;-)

Also, at some point in the very near future I need to get winter tires for Galileo. It would be nice to get a second set of wheels to mount them on but that will have to wait for another year.

And on top of all of that last night after working fine when we loaded all of the groceries into the way-back the hatch latch wouldn’t release when we got home. I had to fold the back seat down, climb in and hand the stuff out the side door to Mom. That’ll have to be fixed. If I should need the spare the hatch must be opened to get at it. I think the cars money detector went off to trigger that one. What the car doesn’t realize is that what little we have is allocated. We’ve been trying to get at least closing costs put away in the bank so when we do find a house we’ll be able to move on it.

BTW: Do you know anything about New Beetle electric hatch latches?

Jeff - nope, other than it’s more than likely your standard, electrically-triggered hatch latch. therefore, there’s only a few things it could be:
1) is the latch getting power? (do you hear the click?)
2) if so, is the latch triggering?
3) if so, is the hatch frozen for a non-latch-related reason?

1) is the latch getting power? (do you hear the click?)

H.B.G. - Yes

2) if so, is the latch triggering?

H.B.G. - It usually goes “Zzzuuump-thuD”. The “Zzzuuump” being the electrical triggering device (I would presume) and the “thuD” being the hatch opening. It’s going “Zzzuuump- (nothing) ” at the moment.

Jeff - everytime i had that problem with previous cars, it resulted in a cop beating on the latch area with his Mag-lite.

H.B.G. - And the town paying for body work and paint thereafter I should expect!

Jeff - the net value of a 1977 Plymouth Volare station wagon (in the earliest of cases) that’s blue with primer gray polka dots is less than the Mag-lite. i’m lucky they didn’t bill/sue me for any scratches i put in the Mag-lite housing. :)

H.B.G. - ’77 Volare wagon? Why was a cop banging on your bungee chords with his flashlight? :-)

3) if so, is the hatch frozen for a non-latch-related reason?

H.B.G. - I tried pulling and pushing and using heated conversation on it none of which worked. (If the mirrors were ears they would have melted off the car…)

Jeff - you prolly know more about them than i do. i’ll also bet that it’s an intermittent problem, and if you parked it some place warm for awhile, it’d work without issue.

H.B.G. - Could be, though it’s worked on colder days than this in the past and the cabin had been plenty warm.

Jeff - i’ll still go for the “intermittent” thing.

H.B.G. - I’m planning to run the heat* set at “unbearable” on the way home and see if that loosens anything.. I did a visual check last night and didn’t see any evidence of having been ‘tapped’ (ie: backed into) which might have misaligned the latch when it was closed.

* good thing this ain’t Fritz! (Though I can fix almost anything on Fritz myself. (A parenthetical comment in a footnote. Is that allowed?))

Jeff - isn’t there an actual key for this? does that not work? i thought the external VW emblem rotated upward to reveal a pull-handle with a keyhole in it?

H.B.G. - It does. Unfortunately the key is a switch. It activates the electrical unlocking mechanism. I’ve tried the switch on the driver’s door, the remote, the key in the lock, pulling up on the handle with both the remote and/or the key, pushing down with same, pushing up from inside with the remote, swearing…

Nothing worked.

Jeff - so you’ll be using that little plastic tool? the one with the 16 numbers printed on it?

H.B.G. - Looks that way. Hugh. I’ll have to card the door to get in. Hadn’t thought of it that way till just now.

Jeff - the car knows that your warranty has expired. :)

On the way home from work last night I stopped at the garage to get some windshield washer fluid and mentioned the hatch latch to the mechanic there. He listened to my story and to the latch (over the din of a diesel pickup that was idling next to us). He examined the outside of the latch and looked at the hatch. I mentioned the panel inside that you probably have to remove to get at the mechanism. He said I should take the car to Volkswagen. :-(

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3/5/2010 - Eight years since my last update. Yikes! A lot has happened in the interim.

The hatch latch has been fixed. That was moderately annoying. And expensive. I was told that it was a known design flaw, but since it’s not a safety issue Volkswagen wasn’t going to issue a recall for it and I would have to pay for the repair out of pocket. Or live with it…

Thank you very much.

There is a solenoid that actuates the actual latch mechanism. It connects with a rod that attaches to and pulls on the shaft that in turn unlatches the hatch. That rod connection popped off uncoupling the solenoid from the latch making it not work. Access to the mechanism requires having a technician climb in the ‘way-back’ with the rear seat folded down and removing the inner panel from the hatch. It is not designed to be removed with the hatch closed and the hatch cannot be opened without accessing the mechanism if the solenoid is not working. Buy the way, the key lock on the outside of the hatch is actually an electrical switch that fires the solenoid. It is NOT a manual actuator for the mechanism. That would have made this a non issue that could have been fixed ‘whenever’ instead of being the major pain that it turned out to be.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

So I had it repaired at my local Volkswagen dealership.

Then about a year later it failed again. Just a few weeks after the warranty on the repair ran out. No. They wouldn’t honor the warranty anyway. I asked.

So we went through the whole rigmarole all over again, with one difference. This time I insisted they allow me to go out into the shop and eyeball the mechanism myself before they put the panel back on the door. Oddly enough it has worked fine now for seven years.

The gas flap, on the other hand… When I got out to the bay Galileo was in one of the first things I noticed was that the gas flap was opened. I commented on it, but assumed the tech just hit the wrong button when testing the hatch latch. The button is in the same switch panel on the driver’s door about an inch away from the hatch latch switch.

Well, the gas flap has not worked since. I can’t prove they applied the ‘golden screwdriver’ to my gas flap – but in my opinion its not working from that day on is too convenient to be mere coincidence.

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3/5/2010 – Another car game that I’ve occasionally played is Padiddle. Much like Punch Buggy in some versions of Padiddle you get to punch the other person you’re riding with every time you see a Padiddle. That is, a car with only one headlight. When I’m riding around with Mum in the car we play the non-contact version of Punch Buggy during the day and the non-contact version of Padiddle at night. It was actually Mum who introduced me to Padiddle.

Galileo has occasionally been a padiddle himself. Specifically a Padiddlebug. Neither Galileo nor I like that, so I make a point of correcting the problem as soon as it comes up.

I used to take him to that same dealership that fixed his hatch latch twice to have them change out the bulb. I brought him in for something else not long after adopting him when they pointed out his padiddlehood. I thought I was just going blind… I agreed to have them put in a new bulb and then they told me how expensive it was going to be.

“Well, you see since it’s the driver’s side bulb that is out we have to take out the battery and the battery box to get access to the headlight. That means we have to put the car on the booster box so the radio doesn’t loose its security code. We don’t want that to happen because then we’d have to charge you for reprogramming your radio. There’s a booster box charge to do that. And there’s the technician’s time for removing and reinstalling the battery and all. It’s really very involved…”

That’s insane! Why on earth would anyone design a car that way?

Well, it turns out they didn’t! The Volkswagen Authorized Dealership was lying through their teeth to me! After I finally broke down (figuratively this time…) and bought both the Haynes/Clymer and the Chilton repair manuals I discovered that you don’t have to do ANY of that! You don’t even need any tools! I have changed out quite a few headlight bulbs on Galileo and a couple of other New Beetles of my acquaintance and it takes less than five minutes!

To change the bulbs on the driver’s side, you reach in between the battery box and the fender. You will feel a wire over-latch lock on the end of a strap. Flip the lever and unhook the bail. Then you will need to find, just forward of the strap/latch if memory serves, a plastic latch button in the side of the headlight bucket. Press that in with your finger to disengage and push down on the plastic leaver that ejects the headlight bucket out the front of the fender. Be ready to catch the headlight bucket so it doesn’t wind up dangling from the wires.

You now have access to the back of the headlight shell and can easily swap out the bulbs. Consult your copy of the repair manual for the specifics of changing the bulb you need to replace. And let me reiterate: You don’t need any tools or special knowledge to do this.

And it certainly shouldn’t cost hundreds of dollars at the dealership either! I don’t care what kind of boat they’re making payments on!

Frankly, this kind of repair fraud is actionable. I just wish I’d found out they were ripping me off like this before they lost their Volkswagen franchise. I wonder if there might have been a reason…

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3/5/2010 – Now that Galileo is approaching his twelfth birthday I’m finding out all sorts of things about him. Like how bad some of the design decisions that went into his construction really were. Granted, he is a first year New Beetle. But still…

We won’t even go into the design of the cup holders with that switch panel right above that makes it almost impossible for a medium soda from the drive-through to fit. That has been redesigned in subsequent years. But it doesn’t help my poor Galileo.

I also won’t mention how about the only thing that will fit in the glove box is the nearly useless owners manual. “If you need to add brake fluid take your car in to your nearest authorized Volkswagen dealership.” They don’t even tell you where the brake fluid reservoir is! Get the repair manual. Even if you don’t want to do the work yourself, at least you will be able to tell if your mechanic is telling you the truth about the repair.

What I do want to mention is one of the things that truly amazes me about how Galileo was put together. I’m still finding out just how much of my Galileo was assembled using double-sided tape! The way I find out is when yet another part falls off because the tape has exceeded its useful life. This stuff only lasts for so long, guys! Then it fails. So far only trim pieces, the VW emblems on the hubcaps and the shift pattern insert on the shift lever have come off. Oh, and the shroud around the instrument cluster. And his nose. (The VW emblem on his hood.) Poor guy got bopped in the nose and it fell off! Must have been painful!

So far nothing critical has been affected. Galileo says his nose was pretty critical, but I pointed out to him that as vital as he feels it is, not having his nose is not a safety issue. I got him a new nose. His original got run over after it landed in the road. So he’s OK there, at least.

But I have to wonder – and worry. Just what else is going to fall off when the tape fails? Will it be anything important?

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3/5/2010 – So the hatch latch seems to be working – for the moment… The same can’t be said for the door locks.

A few months ago the driver’s side door lock failed. It went through a phase where it didn’t feel quite right. Then it got progressively scratchier. Then crunchy. Then it stopped working altogether. I had to crawl head first across the car from the passenger side and unlock the door from the inside using the plunger.

“So why don’t you just use the remote?” I hear you say. Because both of them died years ago. And the electric letter inner wasn’t working from the passenger side lock switch any more either.

Well, this crawling across the shifter so I could unlock my door, crawl back out and walk around to get in got real old real fast. So off to the new Authorized Volkswagen Dealership that we’ve been going to after all of the problems we had with the old one that isn’t any more.

The verdict was that the lock can’t be fixed. It has to be replaced. That means that Volkswagen has to make a new one and key it up special for my Galileo.

Like every other repair (except headlights now that I’m doing those myself) it was expensive. Well, I bit the bullet, so to speak, and had the lock replaced.

While we were waiting for the new lock to be shipped over from Germany the passenger side door lock stated to feel crunchy too. Right after the new lock was installed and we got Galileo back from the dealership the passenger door lock failed just like the driver’s side had. I haven’t had that fixed yet. I’m still recovering from paying for the driver’s side! I don’t think there was any ‘golden screwdriver’ activity going on in this case. Both locks had been used about equally since the remotes died and if one was ready to fail I expect the other was also.

Now Fritz’ locks are still working fine and he was built in 1971. So I’m really not that impressed with these new-fangled contraptions they are using nowadays.

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3/5/2010 – Galileo has a 5-speed stick. While it is missing its shift pattern inlay I can usually find the right slot while driving. Usually. I’ve never been impressed with Galileo’s vague shifting pattern. Shifting from second to third feels almost identical to shifting from forth to fifth. Once in a while when reaching for fifth I find myself dropping into third instead. Not good!

The biggest problem I’ve been having lately with shifting is that, at least when he’s cold, he doesn’t want to shift into first. I suspect that the syncros are pretty much worn out. So far I have been able to force him to take first, but I have to really push hard on the shifter to get it to go into gear. This is most problematic first thing in the morning when Galileo’s not really awake yet and it’s cold out. And New England winters can be pretty cold.

Another issue that is gradually rearing its ugly head is that his clutch is starting to feel a bit sketchy. I can’t complain there since there are something like 185,000 miles on the clock and this is his original clutch. But replacing that is an expense that I’m really not looking forward to.

I really need to replicate Cherif’s triple-net cashout deal to get some money to do all the little repairs that are pilling up!

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As of 3/5/2010:

Muffler incident
Window elevator mechanism
Design of original windshield wiper arm
-– if not already written about
Mirror augmentation
-– if not already written about
Antenna replacement
Check engine light
Radio/CD player
Last headlight change by a mechanic
Failed Inspection
Steering box/peeing on everything
--Resulting in Horn not working

And more as I think of it...

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3/5/2010 – With all of the problems I’ve had with Galileo (not to mention how disgusted I am with what the corporation that built him has become) you’d think I would declare him a lemon and buy a Ford. Well, I may very well buy a Ford pickup truck one of these days. After all this I doubt I’ll buy another ‘new’ Volkswagen… But I still love Galileo. And Thunder (who you haven’t met yet unless you clicked on the link to a picture of him over on the Rules page) and Fritz too.

“…and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
– The Declaration of Independence

Or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment!

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3/6/2010 - I can tell you exactly what the next part to fall off is: One of Galileo’s hubcaps!

I can also be fairly confident in saying that it fell off on its own and wasn’t stolen. There was only one hubcap left with a VW logo taped to the center. (With double-sided tape at the factory.) That one is still there. So it was one of the three that already had the logo fall off that just had the rest of it fall off this very afternoon. Oddly enough this part isn’t (wasn't might be more accurate...) held on with tape.

I know it was still there when we left the tire place. We stopped in to get a spot of air in a tire that was a little soft. That very tire as a matter of fact. While there we also checked the other three for pressure and they were “spot on” as the technician said. I try to keep them that way. It makes a huge difference in handling, tire wear and gas mileage.

I LOLed at a bumper sticker I recently saw on a Jaguar:

The parts that fall off this car
Are of the highest British quality!

Change that to Mexican and the same could be said for a lot of Volkswagens!

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