On a beautiful wednesday, I was cruising in my beetle since 6am from Raymondville, TX and after passing Houston, the car started to complain a little bit of overuse in the last days. It actually started failing in Mexico, right before getting to the border. I had to stop and ajust the carburation to be able to start the engine and go on to cross the border. Starting the car was getting harder by the day.
So when I decided I could have dinner in Beautiful Beaumont (what a nice french name!!), I also realized I should be checking why the car was going to die if it was not running fast enough. So at that Shell gas station where I stopped, it just never started again... that day! After changing all 4 spark plugs with a local mecanic passing by, I had to call a towing to get the car to a garage where the would be able to check my problem the next day. Result : they dont have time to work on my car and they dont really do that kind of car. I found another shop willing to work on my sweet little mexican beetle : Scotts Import, a Mexican owned mecanic shop. Great, my ride will feel at home with spanish speaking people all around.
Even Scotts Import neighbor, Jason, came to see my car. He personally own 2 beetles, a 56 split window and a 65 with a very juicy powerfull engine (lots of inspiration for my baby). He showed me his babies while mine was getting special attention.
Jason's 65 beetle.
So yeah, she felt at home, so she decided that she needed full service! First of all, there was no compression, so the valves had to be ajusted. After that, the spark was still week, so we changed the coil and the electronic ignition module and then she started for a little while, but was very hard to start. Even ajusting the time and the carburation, she would almost not start. Now what? Well, there's the distributor left; parts inside seems to be quite loose, making the time not fixed and moving and if the magnet system inside the distributor doesnt work well, the signal leading to the spark will be week. The problem now is that a replacement part would be very hard to find and being already friday morning, good luck finding a part before monday.
Thanks to Jason, who setted up a VW Club of Southeast Texas, he got some guy to get a used distributor that fits for electronic ignition! But the distributor doesnt fit my car, it's slightly different, since it comes from a Karmann Ghia VW car. Ok, lets have fun, open the distributor and rebuilt it with the new parts!!! One day of pure fun, and with some help from every mecanic in the shop I finally re-builted the distributor and started the car!!! But...
But when you take off some part (like spark plugs wires) you should always mark them and do not disconnect things that do not have to be disconnected. It didnt work that well, cuz I had mixed up the order of the spark plugs... surprisingly it did started, but once everything at the right place (thank you again Elias) the car was good and running. A slight time ajust, road test and I was good to go.
I am right now in Baton Rouge in Louisiana at a fair 300km from Beaumont. I will get closer to Atlanta tomorrow, getting there or not will depend on my rides feelings and my ability to drive all day. For that reason, I will now go to sleep, but I wanted to thank specially the whole staff from Scott's Import, otra vez muchissimas gracias a todos, and to Jason without who I wouldnt have found the part to get the car running.
Good nite and I'll keep some news posted about my ascent up north!
For more pics : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=98867&l=2e40f&id=623425696
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire
Merci de laisser un commentaire!