Cruising the 2013 VW classics

June 10, 2013

Last week, the sightings of vintage VWs around southern California increased because of then impending 31^st annual classics scheduled at Irvine Meadows at the city of Irvine, California. Prior to the Classic event, there were also smaller events that many VW enthusiasts call “pre-classics”. One of these events is the DKP (Der Kleiner Panzer) cruise held at Nick’s burger in the city of Fullerton.

For the past few years, I have taken days off from work to enable me to attend the DKP gathering at Nick’s burger because it is always held on a Friday. This year is a bit different because the demands of my regular work plus supporting the needs of my academic driven daughter has kept my hands loaded with numerous tasks. (My daughter’s academic trait is not rooted to me because I was a beer loving party animal back in my youth. She mostly got the nerdy gene from her mother).

After work last Friday (June 7^th), I drove to Nick’s burger at around 5:30pm. When I arrived at the place, I saw that all parking spots at the Nick’s were occupied by VWs. There were lots of people checking out the VWs parked around the restaurant. For years now, the DKP members would park their cars on the left side of the parking lot while the rest parked their vehicles on the back and right side parking areas. For some reason, this year the DKP occupied the right side of the parking lot next to the VWs belong to the “German Folks” members.

While I was walking through the rows of VWs at the parking lot, I was a bit disappointed because most of them are the usual VWs in the area. Unlike the previous years where you have spectacular display of VWs that are worth $75k, $100k and more, this year’s show did not have the usual dazzling bling.  Yes, there were nice looking bugs and buses at the parking lot but what was absent were those ultra rare 1950s bugs/buses that had $20,000 paint jobs.

I heard of a story narrated to me by a witness who saw a terrible incident that happened during one of the VW shows where expensive VWs were parked on tight rows. During that show, some guys decided to do a dumb thing by dangerously throwing around a football at the parking lot where the showroom VWs were parked. These idiots thought that nothing wrong well happen. Well, something terribly wrong did happen! When one of the guys lost his balance while trying to catch the ball, he landed on the hood of an early 1950s VW that is allegedly worth more than $100,000 plus. When everyone heard the loud crash, everybody frost and a big hush came over the crowd. The witness who told me the story said that he does not know how the whole thing was settled. So, the moral of the story is—Don’t play with your balls around rare VeeDubs!

Back to my Nick’s story; I noticed that the parking lot next to Nick’s burger restaurant was opened to accommodate the overflow of VWs that were still arriving to join the show. I spotted two single cab pre-67 buses parked next to each other loaded with old parts for sale. One of them had several guys hanging around its gates. It is obvious that these guys were waiting for the owner of the parts to return so that they can start bidding for the parts. Most of them had been eyeing the bus bumpers that were sitting on top of the pile of parts. Since these guys pretty much placed their claim on the pre-67 bus bumpers, I decided to peek through the small spaces between the pile of rusted metal to check for rare parts that they missed. I spotted a light blue engine lid for a pre-67 bus underneath the parts with a price tag of $75. Hmmm…not today.

It is no secret that beer disguised as sodas was the drink of choice of the day. Across the street, a bunch of people setup chairs hoping to watch VWs doing tire burnouts when they leave the parking lot. During last year’s event, the police issued a number of tickets to VW owners who did burnouts and speed drive-bys. When I crossed the street, I saw at the end of the parking lot a partly hidden dark colored car with two guys inside talking on radios—Police spotters! These guys would call out patrol cars whenever someone drives erratically while leaving the parking lot. Pigs!

While I was in the parking lot, a private security officer was calling out on his radio for a tow truck to tow away an early white convertible that is double parked. The owner of the bug was nowhere to be found and so to save the bug from being towed, a bunch of us took matters into our hands. One guy jumped into the driver seat of the bug and we pushed the bug to a parking spot that was just vacated by another bug. We were a bit jubilant for saving the bug from being towed. Tow yards sometimes charge between $200 to $300 before they release a vehicle. I noticed that the bug we saved had an out-of-state plates. The owner would have panicked if he discovered his vehicle was missing. Well, at least this tiny episode at the parking lot had a happy ending.

The following day (June 8^th), different VW repair and part shops located around Orange County and nearby cities held their annual open house. Some of these shops offers free food and refreshments including the ever fun essential—BEER! Instead of visiting several VW parts and restoration shops, I decided to visit just one shop, Top Line Parts located at Anaheim, California. The owner’s name is Jon Chabot and he first opened his shop back in 1979 and had repaired countless VWs over the decades. I buy parts from him because he always gives me advice on how to attack a repair project whenever I purchase parts. One of the things that I like about Jon is he is a honest and hard working man who will try to save you money if he can while doing simple straight forward deals with you.

Jon served everybody hamburger, hotdogs, salad and home made cup cakes and brownies. In front of the shop, there were a few VWs parked and one of them is a 67(?) bug whose looks seemed to suggest that it is on its way to becoming a rat rod.

While sinking my teeth on a freshly grilled burger, my cell phone received a text message from my VWCP buddy, Tox. He said that he won’t be able to make it to the Classics tomorrow because he will be cruising with the guys from Herrkooled Inland Impire, which is VW club located east of Orange County.

The evening before the classics, my daughter was stressing out quite a bit because of her upcoming high school finals. Since a number of my VW buddies and Tox won’t be able to make it to the Classics, I decided to just stay home and be with my daughter.

The following day, I received a text message from Tox that read, “Hi, I’m here now at the Classics. Where are you at?”

Oh man, why do people do this to me? Hey Tox, after you told me that you won’t be able to make it to the Classics, I had to cancel the Las Vegas dancing girls that were suppose to perform before us, freeze up the barbecue ribs and return the kegs of ice cold beer!

My Honda Headache

I took Thursday and Friday off this week from my work so that I will have some free time to do some repairs on my VW and also do some spring cleaning around the house. I was expecting to just have some peaceful time to myself working on my hobby… but it did not turned out the way I planned.

A Filipino guy named Bong called me and introduced himself as a friend of the owner of the Nissan Altima that I recently repaired. He told me that he just bought a Honda Accord 1994 model and its engine is not functioning well. When I heard the word “Honda”, I immediately felt that this will be a difficult job because the spaces around the engine is so cramp that it is hard to work on it. I hesitantly agreed to check his car hoping that the problem will be a quick fix.

While I was doing some errands last Thursday, Bong called me and told me that he is parked in front of my house waiting for me. I can’t believe this guy would just showed up at my doorstep without at least texting me in advance.

I test drove the car and discovered that on idle it is doing fine but when I accelerate, the engine struggles and skips. Oh boy, this could be anything. I told the guy that I don’t mind doing repairs on Hondas as long as the repair does not involve me working around its engine. When I saw that the ignition switch was missing, I concluded that this car must have been stolen before and was recovered with missing parts. The mechanic that tried to work on it just gave up trying to put a new ignition switch and so he just installed two flip switches to turn on the ignition power and a red button to start the engine. Some of the things around the engine does not seem to be original.

When Bong asked me to fix the radio of the Honda, I immediately told him that I will not touch the wiring of this car because it had been altered and who knows what will happen if I start messing with it.

After Bong left the car with me, I sadly looked at the car that is full of gremlins living in it. I then asked myself, “Why did I accept this job?”.

I worked on the Honda on and off during Thursday and Friday but it does not seem to be getting better. It sounds that it is getting worse even though I have not done much to alter its current state. Since the engine behaves on idle speed and only struggles whenever I accelerate on driving, I felt that there might be a problem on either the fuel pressure or there is a clog in the exhaust, possibly the catalytic converter. Since the wiring of this car had been tampered , I don’t know if I can get an error code from the computer

I am currently trying to replace the fuel filter but the nut behind the filter is as stubborn as a mule. The master cylinder and other mechanism is partly blocking my reach to the fuel filter and so I can only reach it with one arm. I had to buy a set of larger flare tools (tool used for brakes, fuel, transmission & cooling lines) to try to loosen the nut. So far the progress is slow.

This Honda is just eating up a lot of my time. While I was working on the Honda, another Filipino called me and asked me if I can replace a few things behind the dashboard controls of his van.

Though I am able to earn extra income from repairing cars, the amount of earnings I receive does not seem to compensate the amount of time I spend fixing the cars the right way. You see, almost all of my customers during my free time are people who want to spend as little as possible on their cars. They always expect to save around 70% to 80% on the repair cost. They basically want to pay a few pennies on a few dollars worth of repairs. At the end, they also expect to have a world class quality repair done on their cars!

I actually prefer working at the auto shop than working on cars in my garage because at the shop, the service charges are reasonable and you actually earn a decent income. Working on other people's cars at the garage of my house is terrible because of the mentality that customers bring with them when they drop their cars at my house is that they will only pay dirt cheap prices.

Oh boy, What did I get myself into? I sure miss the time when I was actually able to enjoy my weekends and vacations.