Absolutely nobody who didn't own one or one like it will get it or understand it. Kind of like America today. We were so close to gaining a real civilization back in 1968 and lost it all as the dumb and vicious overwhelmed the entire thinking class. I doubt most people can even grasp the idea of an air cooled internal combustion car engine.
On the gripping hand, they'll still wonder where the radiator is.
11 comments:
Many bait cooled engines have oil coolers that are, in fact radiators, just not water filled ones. Dig bugs have radiators, or did they rely entirely on fins. I have never driven one, nor done any work on one, just liquid cooled engines.
Air cooled, not bait cooled.
Another thing is that the bug has a rear engine - so even if it was water cooled - the steam would be coming from the back end. Another thing, the windshield washer fluid was powered by the air from the spare tire (which was in front unlike the engine).
I really loved my 77 bus with the pancake engine in the back. It was so damned easy to work on, fix it and maintain it. yeah, every 3000 miles or so I was under it with a feeler gauge running the rack and setting the spacing back to standard but it took me something like 20 minutes and the stupid valve cover seals were fully reusable. I drove it back and forth from San Francisco to San Diego about 40 times and it was just a wonderment. It would do the grapevine fully laden at 75 mph uphill.
I was out on the freeway today with that ones cousin, the v6 jetta and we really enjoyed the power and the ooomph it still delivers after 22 years.
Oh, and yeah, about the external oil coolers. We really didn't need them and didn't have them but of course that was decades before global warming warmed the whole earth to death one summer.
No radiator, but it did have a shroud that routed air from the cooling fan fairly well (on the Beetle--the Microbus did too, but not as effectively).
Not great cars, but pretty reliable. Ferdinand Porsche knew what he was doing (part of that being stealing a lot of the design from the Czechs). The car was never a success until after Adolf was dead & the war over.
--Tennessee Budd
Postscript: There's a book called "Small Wonder" that tells the whole VW story, from KdF-wagen up to the 1970s. May be out of print now; I got my copy when I was a kid, so it's 50 or so years old.
--TB
Yup, his left shoe is untied.......
On my 66 Bug, that was where the gas tank was... Something like this would have been bad news!
Oh sure take that vaunted VW into the American SW any month of the year. Dor that matter, into the high mountain passes. America is to large for der volksvagon.
It was like Charlie's charts. I bought the book and did my own maintenance on the bus for about 10 years. It finally died due to a vacuum leak I couldn't find.
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