A Work in Progress, Chapter 4

With the transaxle installed it was time to install the brake system. At the suggestion of my friends at B.C.E., I decided to put Type III brakes on the rear of the car, rather than the '67 style that came with the car. All the moving parts that had come with the car when I bought it were worn out anyway, so there was no reason not to start from scratch. The advantage of the Type III-style brakes is that the brake drums are substantially wider than the stock '67 drums, thus providing more surface area for the brake shoes to contact. More surface area means more friction which translates into more stopping ability. The disadvantage of changing to the Type III set-up was finding the parts. After some searching around, though, we got everything I would need to do the installation: backing plates, wheel cylinders, springs, shoes, drums and the emergency brake hardware.

I didn't trust anything that had come with the car, so I was replacing the whole system, including all the steel lines, the rubber lines, master cylinder, all four wheel cylinders and all the drums. It may not sound like much, but that's a lot of pieces: seven steel lines that have to be bent into the right shapes, four rubber lines, four wheel cylinders, four brake drums, four sets of brake shoes, four sets of hardware which includes springs and pins and retainers and adjusters, a brake fluid reservoir and a couple of pints of brake fluid. In addition, there are wheel bearings and seals and grease to deal with as well.

Getting the new brake lines installed was not too difficult. You just have to be careful not to bend the steel lines too sharply or you'll kink them, making them useless. The sequence is to bolt the new master cylinder in place and go from there. There is one long steel line that runs from the front to the back of the car where it attaches to a splitter that lets you hook up the right and left sides with shorter steel lines which attach to flexible rubber lines which, in turn, attach to another set of short steel lines. At the front there are two steel lines that attach to rubber lines on each side of the car. The objective is to end up with nice, clean, unobstructed lines that let you push the high pressure brake fluid from the master cylinder to the wheel cylinders. Pushing the brake pedal causes the master cylinder to pump the brake fluid to each of the four wheel cylinders which push on the brake shoes. The brake shoes rub on the inside of the brake drums and the resultant friction is what slows and stops the car. When all of the parts are adjusted correctly and working properly, you have a vehicle that slows and stops in a predictable manner. When you completely redo you own braking system, you gain an understanding of how the system works, and after that, it is very easy to figure out what is wrong when you encounter braking problems.

At the end of each of the four brake lines is a wheel cylinder, one for each wheel. These are mounted to a backing plate to which are also attached the brakes shoes and adjusters. The brake shoes are attached with pins and springs and fit into slots at the ends of the wheel cylinders and adjusters. The parts for the front of the car are different than the parts for the rear of the car, especially when you are mixing and matching years and models as I was. Mounting the front brake shoes and drums is rather straightforward. I installed new wheel bearing and seals in the new drums and had the front together in short order. Mounting the rear brake shoes is very similar, except you need to attach the actuating lever for the emergency brake to the rear brake shoe on each side and attach the emergency brake cable to the lever. That part is easy. Sealing up the rear axle turned into a series of errors and disasters which have continued until only a few days ago. It was another lesson that I wound up learning the hard way.

A Work In Progress, Chapter 3

Figuring out how to mount the wide, rear fenders turned out to be a bit easier than getting the front end lined up and latched down. When I looked at the fenders more closely, there appeared to be faint markings in the fiberglass that more or less corresponded to the mounting holes where the original VW fenders had been attached. I held each of the fenders to the body and carefully marked them at the spots where the holes needed to be drilled. Once I had the holes drilled, I attached the fenders temporarily to the body and started figuring out where I would cut off the back of the car. This was another situation where I didn't want to cut off too much, and since this area would be exposed, it would ruin the look of the car if I did it wrong. I knew where the top of the cut had to start, that much was obvious from where the fenders ended. I just had to decide where the cut on each side would end. I thought about it for awhile and then made the decision. I marked one side, made some measurements and then marked the other side. I got out my trusty Saws-All and made the cuts. It looked pretty good. I had the right shape for the body, now it was time to finish up the sanding and put the rest of the parts in place.

There was one piece of fiberglass that I had purchased that ended up being that last part I would attach to the car. I had bought this whale-tail spoiler that I thought would look great and would also protect the engine from the elements to some degree or another. I knew it had to be mounted on the back of the car, but no matter how many times I brought it out of the basement and set it against the body, it wouldn't line up in any logical place where that it could be mounted. It just didn't make sense and each time I would just put it away again in the basement where it would haunt me until after everything else was done.

As the engine parts had arrived, I assembled them on a table in the basement. I had decided to go with a 1776 cc engine for this car. When I built the Dune Buggy, the first engine I tried in that car was a 1500 cc motor with all stock Type I style parts attached. It was a low horse-power set-up and, like all Type I engines, it had an upright cooling shroud with a fan inside that turned via the generator which was driven by a belt from a pulley on the end of the crankshaft. It's a very simple and traditional set-up and worked great until I decided I needed more horsepower, plus I wanted to try a Type III motor in the Buggy to give the rear end a flatter profile. The Type III motor has the cooling fan and shroud at the rear of the motor which makes the engine very flat, which is why it's called a "pancake" engine. That engine came out of my 1966 VW Squareback when I sold it, sans engine, to a guy in Highland Park, California. The Type III motor has 1600 cc's and dual carburetors. I liked the dual carburetors and the added horsepower, but it wasn't enough. I found a 2000 cc engine from a VW bus and figured out a way to match it up to my existing transaxle and ran that for awhile. That was fun, but it was too big, too heavy and too long for that car. That's when I opted for the 1776 cc engine for the Dune Buggy. That engine has been perfect for that car, plenty of horsepower, good fuel economy, and very reliable. Since the 1776 cc engine worked so well in the Buggy, I chose it for my Baja Bug project as well.

I went with the Type I configuration for the Baja Bug for the simple reason that a Baja Bug is a Type I car. I bought a 1776 cc long-block through my friends at B.C.E. in Eagle Rock, California, along with all the other parts I would need to assemble a complete engine: dual carburetors, chrome shroud, alternator (an upgrade from the generator I was running on the Buggy), chrome cooling tin around the cylinders, a .009 Bosch distributor, a mechanical fuel pump, spark plug wires, oil pressure sending unit, spark plugs, nuts, bolts and screws. It looked very nice sitting there on the table in the basement. Before I could install the engine in the car, though, I needed to replace the transaxle.

Given the condition of the car when I bought it, though it had a transaxle attached, I decided to replace whatever it came with and put in a used long-axle '68-style unit instead. I chose a used transaxle to try to economize for this project. That proved to be a mistake. Again, this was the same style transaxle that I had used in the Dune Buggy and I not only liked the extra width at the rear of the car, but I like the gearing as well. It was a great stock transaxle that worked well both on and off the highway and seemed the right choice for the Baja Bug as well. Replacing a transaxle isn't an especially difficult task mechanically, but physically it can be a bit demanding. If you're doing the job in your backyard, it involves a lot of laying around on your back rolling a big heavy mass of gears around on top of a floor jack to get everything lined up and bolted in. It's especially tricky when the transaxle tries to slip off of the jack while you're under it. I replaced all the mounting hardware at the same time, since the original 1967 parts were a bit worn out. This was my first transaxle replacement, so I learned a few new techniques as I went along. It's a good thing I did, because this installation turned out to be a practice exercise. You see, after I got the whole car put together, that used transaxle proved to be worn out and would pop out of gear on both acceleration and deceleration, so I had to repeat the whole procedure. Of course, I didn't know it was worn out at the time, so I just continued with the assembly process. There was still quite a lot to do to get the car on the road.

A Work in Progress, Chapter 2

I had all the parts for my Baja Bug project lined up in the basement long before I was ready to use them. First, there was a lot of work to be done on the outside and inside of the body. The middle part of the body had a few dents and dings in it that would have to be repaired and the floor pan, which had rusted through in a couple of places, would also need some work before I was ready to install most of the parts I had received. I have to admit that I was more than a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project I had taken on and, for a moment, just didn't know where to start. I'd never done much body work, but I had seen enough of it done on television and in my repair manuals to have a rough idea of how to go about it. Sanding off the old paint was something I knew how to do, so I started there while I figured out where to start on the rest of the project.

The original color of the car was a VW blue-gray color, but over the years the car had been painted several times. Each new coat of paint had been laid down right over whatever color had been there previously, so on most of the body there was layer after layer of a variety of paint colors and types. In some places the paint was chipped and scratched, in others it was peeling. In the spots where the fenders had been bolted on and in the wheel wells, the car was a different color. As with everything about this car, this was turning out to be a bigger job that I had anticipated. As I sanded away a layer of paint, another layer would appear. I learned that the car had been painted pink at one time, and sky blue before that. It was no wonder that the paint was chipping, as it was quite thick and brittle, so any impact that caused the body to flex would crack the paint. I didn't want to gouge the sheet metal under the paint so I was using rather fine-grained sand paper and while that kept the sheet metal unharmed, it slowed down an already painfully slow and very dusty process. In addition, since I had to do this whole project outdoors, I needed to spray primer onto the bare metal I had exposed as I finished each section to keep the body from rusting. It seemed as if just the body work was going to take forever. This was certainly turning out to be a much bigger project than the Dune Buggy build. I had had to do quite a lot of sanding on the buggy's floor pan, both top and bottom, but having a whole body plus a floor pan to deal with greatly expanded the scope of the project for this car. I persevered, though, and every day I would go out and sand and prime another little section. I learned about hammering out dents and I acquired some of the basic body working tools to help me with that process. I straightened out the dents and dings as best I could.

On the inside of the car, the floor pan behind the seats had rusted through in spots. In one area it was so severe that I needed to replace that section of the floor pan. My parts guys at B.C.E. had just what I needed for that, a leftover piece of replacement pan material from a project they had done. It wasn't a perfect fit since it had been made to fit a different year car than mine, but, with a little trimming of both the new piece and the damaged area, I was able to make it work. The optimum way to do this sort of repair is to weld the new sheet metal into place and then grind the welds smooth so that you have a seamless looking final product. That's not how I did it. My welding skills, at that time, were not really up to that sort of delicate work, and my budget didn't allow for paying someone else to do the work. Instead I laid down some silicone caulking between the two sheet metal pieces and then riveted the replacement piece into place. With a little black paint, the end result was serviceable, even if it wasn't beautiful.

For awhile I would work on the car nearly every day, but sanding off all of that old paint in small sections in the evenings when I had time to work seemed like it would take forever. At one point, I lost my momentum on the project and the ugly unpainted, half-finished, fender-less hulk just sat there behind the garage while I ignored it and worked on other things. It was just too much to deal with.

Finally, the fiberglass parts arrived. What I unpacked the giant box that they were shipped in and laid them out near the car, I realized that I was in way, way over my head on this project. Here I had this huge one-piece front end that was supposed to attach to a hinged front bumper, two large fenders that were supposed to bolt to the back of the body somehow, and this big whale-tail spoiler that was supposed to attach who-knows-where or how. There were no instructions. I didn't know anyone who had ever built one of these things, so I had no one to ask. I was going to have to figure this out for myself.

I downloaded pictures of Baja Bugs from the internet. I read articles about how other people has gone about building their own cars. I would take the pictures out to the back yard and look at what I had and what they had and try to figure out how to get what I had to look like what I had envisioned. One of the major problems that held me back was that to get the end product I was looking for, I would have to cut off parts of the front and rear of the existing car. If you are going to cut parts off of your car, it's better to know exactly where to cut, because welding the parts back onto the car, if you make a mistake, is not at all my idea of a good time. I spent hours holding the fiberglass parts in place on the car and trying to figure out where to cut the body and how to attach the parts once the cuts were made. The one-piece front end didn't seem to fit right and it took a long time to figure out just where to drill the holes at the front so that it could be mounted to the hinged bumper.

I did figure out how to weld on the front bumper, but I ended up cutting off too much of the front end and had to weld a section back on so that there was a way to mount the fuel tank. Once I had the bumper mounted, I spent hours with that front end using all the bungee cords I owned to get it positioned just right before I felt confident enough to mark the places where the front mounting holes needed to be drilled. With a little innovation and a short piece of 2X4 lumber I got the front end lined up, the holes marked and drilled and the huge thing bolted to the bumper. Now I had to figure out how to install the hood hold-downs so that it would stay in place when closed. All the recommended hood hardware was just too short to work for this front end, but I found what I needed at the local auto parts store. Again, the solution wasn't pretty, but it would work and, at this point, that was all that mattered. The headlight mounting kits I had bought weren't going to work with this front end, so I had to find some other way to mount the headlights. Once I had the right headlight hardware, I need to figure out exactly what size holes to make in the fiberglass so that they could be installed. I carefully made templates out of cardboard so that the holes I had to cut would be exactly the right size. If I screwed up at this stage, I'd ruin the whole front end. Luckily, I got it right and the headlights fit perfectly. Next I needed to figure out how to mount the rear fenders and where to cut the back of the car. And I still needed to finish the sanding and priming on the middle part of the car. There was a long, long way to go.

A Work in Progress, Chapter 1

You'll sometimes hear an artist describe one of his or her creations as "A Work in Progress." To me this means that, though the artist might know what the finished work should look like, he/she hasn't quite gotten the thing to that point yet. My cars fit this definition, both the dune buggy and my Baja bug are, if nothing else, Works in Progress. The Baja bug is the best example of that concept as far as my cars are concerned. The dune buggy could be consider finished, Though there are a number of things I still want to do with the buggy, it is quite useable in its present state of completion.

A few years after I got the dune buggy into the semi-completed condition in which it has existed ever since, I felt the need for another project. I must have forgotten how much time, effort, blood and sweat had gone into the dune buggy build to have even considered starting to build another car. It was either that or some unsatisfied creative need that resides deep inside my psyche which occasionally forces its way to the surface, there to dwell until a sufficient quantity of the aforementioned time, effort, blood and sweat have been invested to cause it to subside to a point where I can return to my otherwise rather sedate life. It's not that my life isn't interesting, it's not that at all. It's just that I have always been driven to be creative in some way or another, and there's nothing that challenges one's creative abilities more than taking an old rusted-out shell of a car and turning it into a safe, reliable vehicle.

In the case of the Baja bug, when I first saw the shell that would someday be restored to a car-like state of existence, I felt as if I was rescuing the poor abused thing just moments from its being send to the scrapheap to be cut up, crushed into a cube and melted down. It was what was left of a 1967 Beetle, after all, and legend has it that 1967 was one of the best years for the old air-cooled VW Beetles. It was also a perfect candidate for transformation into a Baja-style bug, since both the front and rear of the car were in rather poor shape, and the fenders all missing, while the middle of the body was in relatively good condition, or so it appeared. Having successfully built a dune buggy, I thought I knew was I was getting into when I hooked up the barely rolling hulk to the back of my pick-up truck. Of course, I was wrong, but then, I usually am when it comes to this sort of thing.

Once I got the hideous wreck installed in the parking space behind my basement door, I began to realize the magnitude of the project I had just begun. This thing needed everything: window glass, seats, a steering wheel, gauges, a hood, fenders, door handles, interior door panels, an engine, a transaxle, brake lines, electrical wiring, headlights, turn signals, windshield wipers, tail lights, bumpers, a gas tank, fuel lines, brake lines, brake shoes, brake backing plates, brake springs, a brake master cylinder, brake wheel cylinders, brake drums, wheel bearings, wheels, tires, a fuel pump, carburetors, an alternator, a battery, a battery box, battery cables, and a wide variety of other parts and hardware. When I bought the dune buggy, at least it had a body, fenders, a front windshield, a steering wheel, seats and front tires, wheels and brakes. For the dune buggy, I didn't have to worry about doors, side windows, rear windows or body parts. This project would need all those things, plus a bit of body work on the middle part of the car. It was all a bit overwhelming. I know how to handle "overwhelming," though, and I began making a list. If you make a list of what you need, you can begin to get the project organized. As you make your list, parts fall into categories and that lets you break the project down into sections and from there into individual tasks. Once you begin to understand what needs to be done, you can start to figure out when in the sequence of the build each step has to occur. The first parts that have to be installed are the transaxle and the engine. Before that can be done, the old transaxle must be removed. If you are going to install a new transaxle, you'll want to install new mounting hardware at the same time and while you're under there, after you've got the new transaxle installed, you might want to take care of replacing the rear brake lines, since it's a lot easier to work in that space without the engine in place. Since this is a Baja bug project, you'll want to do your cutting off of the rear part of the car before you install the engine, too. And here, once again, we run into the problem that there is no real instruction manual available for Baja bug building. Planning, it's all about planning.

Before you can even start buying parts for your Baja bug project, it might be a good idea to have some idea what the final product should look like, what performance level you are trying to achieve, and, perhaps, how much money you are willing to spend. I knew I wanted a one-piece fiberglass front end and some rather wide rear fenders, all of which were offered for sale at one of my favorite on-line suppliers, J.C. Whitney. Not only did they offer the parts I wanted, but their price was about what I wanted to pay. So, I placed my order. In the meantime, I started sanding and repairing the middle part of the car's body. At about the same time, I ordered the engine and transaxle and most of the other parts I would need to move forward once I had the fiberglass parts in hand. For the first time in a great many years of buying and receiving parts from J.C. Whitney, they let me down. The fiberglass parts that they offered were not going to be available for months, if ever, so I was forced to cancel my order and find another source for what I needed. After a bit of on-line research, I found Mark V Fiberglass. They had what I needed, or at least would have it a whole lot sooner than J.C. Whitney, so I placed my order and went back to sanding and pounding out dents in the body while I waited.

Diagnosis and Repair

It's not only important to have the data you need to diagnose and solve a problem, you must also be able to evaluate and apply that data with regard to its relevance and its magnitude of importance in achieving the desired end result. Yeah, right.

Okay, so you've got a mechanical malfunction of some sort, say your engine sometimes won't idle. How do you fix that? The first thing you need to do is gather data. Why doesn't it always idle correctly? What is the variable that causes the problem to only occur "sometimes?" What systems are involved in regulating the idle speed? What moving parts are involved? Once you have gathered your data, you can then proceed to identify and fix the problem . . . or, you can do it the way I do.

What I usually do is to simply cope with the problem for as long as possible until it becomes so annoying, or the car becomes so completely undriveable, that I am forced to do something about it. For most problems, this method works quite well. It forces me to think about the problem every time I drive the car, since I am constantly working around it, or having to overcome it in some way just to operate the vehicle. Take the idle problem I mentioned above. Sure I could have spent a morning figuring out why the car wouldn't hold its idle speed, and then fixed it so that it would. Instead, I've been driving around for a couple of years mostly ignoring the problem, or at most, cursing the carburetor for its inability to function properly. I reached my annoyance threshold the other day and was finally forced to figure it out.

Turned out it was a pretty simple fix. I had suspected for some time that the problem had something to do with the automatic choke. This made sense to me because the choke and its linkage is designed to kick the idle up when the engine is cold and then let the idle drop back down once it gets warmed up. On my old Ford truck, the automatic choke used the heat from the coolant inside a heater hose to regulate how much choke to apply and when to open itself back up. On my VW carburetor, there is an electric coil that starts heating up as soon as you turn the ignition key to the "on" position. Once that coil reaches a certain temperature it causes the choke to open and allows the idle to return to a nice, moderate speed, unless, of course, it's not working properly, or is not adjusted correctly.

I had an errand I was running over on the west side of Hollywood when I finally decided to solve the problem. I always carry a multi-tool on my belt, just in case I might need to perform some sort of MacGyver style repair whilst on the road. Every time I stopped and parked, I would attempt to adjust the carburetor to get the consistent idle speed which I was seeking. Eventually, after a number of stops, I got the choke adjustment right and the idle speed dialed in so that it works pretty much like it should at this point.

It's not as if I don't know how to diagnose a problem, or how to repair it once I know what is causing it. It's just that sometimes the problem is so minor, that I put off fixing it until I just can't put up with it anymore. I suppose that if I was in a situation where I was not the only driver of this car, I would be more motivated to fix the minor rattles and squeaks and such that crop up from time to time, but since it's just me, I tend to let them go for as long as possible. Major stuff, safety stuff, I always fix right away, but minor tweaks always seem to get put down at the bottom of my to-do list, right down there with gauges and interior amenities. Someday I'm going to install a working fuel gauge. Someday. But after not having one for the last ten years or so, it's just not much of a priority.

Big Bear Bash 2010

It was Friday morning when we packed our camping gear into and onto our old dune buggy and hit the road for Big Bear Lake, California. On the way out of town we stopped to fill the gas tank and then it was a non-stop drive to Camp Tanda where we unpacked the buggy, set up our new tent, unfolded the chairs, walked over to the registration table and signed in for the 2010 Manx Dune Buggy Club's Big Bear Bash. There we collected our information packet, our event t-shirts and our Saturday night catered-dinner wrist bands. The weather was perfect, we were in our preferred campsite near the bathrooms, and we anticipated a weekend of fun playing and talking with old and new friends during the off-road runs and around camp. At the end, it proved to be all that and more.

When I think about it now, sitting at my desk in front of a computer monitor, I feel a sense of accomplishment, of satisfaction, for a task well performed. Neither my wife, nor I could be considered young people, and the dune buggy we drive is based on a 1957 Volkswagen chassis. The previous owner of the car began his dune buggy project back in the early 70s and never finished. I acquired the car somewhere around the year 2000, took six months to turn it into a safe, reliable vehicle, and have been driving it nearly every day since. So, here you have two old people loading up their old car and heading off into the mountains for a weekend of banging around on bumpy, rocky, dusty, narrow trails, fully expecting to have a great time with no mechanical or physical difficulties. Seem like a rather lofty goal, doesn't it? But, that's just what we did.

I attribute our success in equal parts to a positive attitude, good vehicle maintenance, and sheer luck. We've been attending this event for eleven years now, and have never had a bad experience. We've driven the trails in rain, hail, sleet, blazing heat, and deep, deep dust. I've put four different engines in the car over the years, not because they wore out or broke down, but because I was seeking the perfect combination of reliability and performance. The current set-up is probably about as close as I'm ever going to get, given my budget and my level of expertise. But, hey, it works, I know how to fix it when it breaks, and I'm usually able to anticipate problems and do what it takes to prevent them from manifesting while we're out in the middle of nowhere sliding down a steep, rocky road. Of course, there is always something new to learn, and this year's run had its very own teachable moment.

As learning experiences go, this one was inexpensive, easily figured out and only moderately inconvenient. The problem started when I changed the intake air-filtering system on the car. I had always admired and envied those cars that made use of foam pre-filters. These are porous foam wraps that fit around the conventional air filters on the carburetors. It looked to me as if these were a great way to keep a lot more of the fine dust that the tires churn up out of the engine. On Sunday, I discovered for myself that these filters are very good at what they do, but that they are not at all self-cleaning. I had finally gotten around to getting the proper sized pre-filter for my car a week before the Big Bear weekend. I installed it immediately and gave it no more thought, confident that it was doing its job.

The day starts at 6:00 a.m. in Camp Tanda, for us at least. It starts much earlier for the heroic folks who rise much earlier, make the coffee and set out the doughnuts. After brief morning ablutions, I walked down to the meeting area, poured two cups of coffee, one black for me, and one with cream for my wife, Carol, took them back to our campsite and got the car ready for the day's adventure while I waited for her to complete her morning routine. Once she arrived back at the camp site, we grabbed our cameras and our coffee cups and walked the short distance down the camp road to where most of the cars were lining up for the Show and Shine. The first few times we went to the Big Bear Bash, I would dutifully shine up my car and park it in the row with all the others, hoping to bask in the admiration I felt certain I would receive for my efforts at building and maintaining such a unique, beautiful car. Eventually, I came to realize that most dune buggy owners spend a lot more money on paint, and interior amenities, and a lot more time cleaning and polishing their cars than I do, and that, if I was ever going to win any prizes in the Show and Shine, I would have to do the same. Being a guy who favors function and reliability over sheer physical beauty, I chose to devote my limited financial resources to keeping the car running well instead of making it look good. Of course, it's possible to have both a great looking car and one that runs well, too, but my priority is always for the latter. So, while I don't have the best looking car in the club, I have always managed to make it back to camp after the day's run with only minor problems. Having made my choice and, thus, realized that I'll never win "Best of Show" at the Show and Shine, I just leave my car parked in front of our tent and enjoy everyone else's magnificent dune buggies, all the while keeping my eyes open for ideas that I can use to make my car better.

After the Show and Shine, there is a driver's meeting where we learn what C.B. channel we should monitor for the group we are in, plus instructions, cautions and advice needed for the days off-roading. Then it's time for one last stop at the restroom before we line up with our group for Saturday's run. We had signed up for the Holcomb Valley run. Advertised as a "no skid plate required" trail, I decided it would be just the thing for us, since there was little chance of tearing up the car but lots of potential for a some good off-road fun. Of course, I always install a skid plate before taking the car off the road, but I don't mind if we don't really need it. Our group set off toward the trail at a little after 9:00 a.m. After we got off the highway, a couple of the cars started having trouble, one of them just wasn't running right (turned out the ignition coil was mounted incorrectly), another discovered a broken transaxle mounting. Both cars turned back quite early in the run and made it safely back to camp. A bit further along the trail, the car in front of us pulled off to the side of the road and stopped. We were at the tail end of the group, so the rest of us pulled up behind them to see what the problem was. They had broken the clutch cable on the car and didn't have a replacement. Lucky for them, I did. Being that this was our tenth year at the Big Bear Bash, I had learned the weak points on these mostly Volkswagen-based cars and always packed spares of the most likely parts to break or wear out. In just a few minutes, a new clutch cable installed, we were back on the road. There were other problems with other cars as we drove along, so from time to time the group would stop and wait for everyone to catch up. When we were all back together, we would set off again until the next car broke down. In this way, we made our way to an abandoned mine, high above Baldwin Lake which is mostly dry this time of year. This spot turned out to be a decision point for the run. Duran, our group leader, offered those drivers who would feel uncomfortable crawling over some medium sized rocks where a skid-plate would be necessary an alternate route down the mountain. All but seven of the cars opted for the easier way down to the paved road which would take them home. I decided not to let a few rocks scare me off from what sounded like some good bumpy fun, so I opted to take the hard way down. It was great!! I was sure glad I had the skid plate on the car, though, as we slid across a goodly number of fair sized rocks on our way down the road. When the Intrepid Seven reached the bottom we stopped, got out of our cars and congratulated each other on making it through the gauntlet relatively unscathed. Everyone was smiling and, though most of the cars had bounced a few rocks off their skid plates, all of them were undamaged. It was the perfect ending to the run. We all made our way back to Camp Tanda where our catered dinner was being set up.

After a delicious dinner, Carol and I drove into Big Bear Village and topped off the gas tank. After all that driving around all day, it only took two and a half gallons of gas. I looked over and under the car and could find nothing to worry about. We parked the car and walked around the village for awhile, bought a couple of souvenirs, a cup of coffee for Carol, took a few photos and drove back to camp. I fell right to sleep after we climbed into our sleeping bags, tired out from all the fun we had that day.

At 6:00 a.m. Sunday, our alarm went off and we went through the same routine as the day before, except on this day, the run started a 7:00 a.m. We were scheduled to drive up on Skyline Drive which features a great scenic overlook at the top of the run as well as some beautiful scenery on the way up and down. We were so taken with one of the views across the valley where there was still snow left on the north side of the mountains that at one point I stopped the car so that Carol could get a better photo. As I slowed to a stop and disengaged the clutch the engine idled down and died. When I went to restart it, the engine would crank and crank but it just wouldn't start. I used the starter to move the car off the road and proceeded to open up the engine cover to see what I need to do to get us back on the road. Meanwhile, the cars behind us pulled up and the drivers got out to see if they could help. One of the guys said, "Knock the dust out of your air filter." I did that and discovered that my pre-filter was so clogged that it was keeping the carburetor from getting enough air for the engine to run properly. I removed the distributor cap to see if dust had invaded the ignition points, blew out the cap and reinstalled it. I got back in the car, turned the ignition key and the car started right up. Problem solved. I closed the engine cover, restarted the car and we were off again with a lesson learned: Always knock the dust out of your air filter after driving all day on extremely dusty roads. That's my kind of lesson, cheap, quick and easy. The rest of the run was without incident and we made it back to camp in time for the awards presentations and raffle.

I didn't receive any awards and we didn't win anything in the raffle, but we had another great weekend with a wonderful group of caring, helpful people and that, in itself, is more than enough to make us determined to come back next year. Maybe, we'll even try to do the Mammoth Lake run in September. Why not? We're not getting any younger, you know.

The Annual Dune Buggy Vacation

Every year for the past 11 years, we have loaded up the Dune Buggy with our camping gear, luggage and a few spare parts and driven to Big Bear Lake, California for the Manx Dune Buggy Club's "Big Bear Bash." This is not only our favorite event of the year, it is also, usually, our only vacation of the year. The Big Bear Bash is a three day event, starting Friday at 2:00 p.m. and ending the following Sunday at around noon. In those few hours, we set up camp, go out to dinner, take in a movie, do some shopping, drive around on the back roads above Big Bear Lake, talk to other buggy enthusiasts, have an awards presentation and raffle, go for a walk, enjoy the mountains, breathe the fresh air, breathe the dusty air (when we're on the back roads), tear down camp, repack the buggy and drive back down the hill. We always have fun.

Part of what makes this a fun weekend, is that I have almost always succeeded in making the car mechanically reliable for the trip. To do that, I change the oil, check the wheel bearings, give it a tune-up, install the skid plate, replace the fuel filter, clean out the crankcase breather system, and try to anticipate whatever else might become a problem and fix it before that can happen. As I said, I almost always succeed. One year, the rear brake shoes where too thin and I ended up doing some serious damage to the brake drums before I got back home. Another year, as we were driving up a washboard road, the muffler fell off of the car. I quickly stopped, ran back and grabbed it, threw it into the car and kept going. During the lunch stop that day, I reinstalled the muffler. Most years, though, we've not had any mechanical problems at all.

We also have to get our camping gear ready for the trip. For the first 9 years of this annual event, we took along an old tent that has been in my family for 40 years or more. It was a great tent in its time and served us well, but by now it has seen its better days. So, for the last two years we've been trying out some new tents. Last year's purchase, an inexpensive dome-shaped model proved to be too small for the air mattresses we bought at the same time. Oh, they fit inside the tent alright, but that's all that would fit inside. We had wall-to-wall air mattresses last year with no room inside for anything else, which meant that all our other gear had to be stored inside the car for the night. Since we don't trailer the dune buggy, but instead load all our gear onto the car and drive it up to Big Bear, this meant lots of transferring back of forth of all our stuff. This year, we found a bigger tent at just about the right price and we're going to give that a try. I set it up in the yard the other day and it looks like it'll be just the right size.

We always take lots of pictures at dune buggy events, so we pack cameras, too. Two years ago, we learned that the trail dust can somehow find its way inside of the expensive camera lenses, so we use the good camera for shots around camp and when we're not moving, and a less expensive camera for shots on the trail. My wife, Carol, takes action shots from the passenger seat while I drive. We've gotten some really great shots in years past. Those years where there had been recent rains gave us especially good shots of the cars splashing through puddles and shallow creeks. We don't mind getting the car muddy, but we do try to keep the photography equipment dry if we can. Last year, we got some nice, if short, videos from the trail with our FlipVideo camera. Unfortunately, the batteries went dead on the trail. This year I will be sure to pack lots of extra batteries for the video camera so that we don't have a repeat of that problem.

The weather for the Big Bear weekend this year is predicted to be sunny and mild with no rain in the forecast, but you never know when it might rain in the mountains. Sometimes an afternoon shower shows up and wets down the dust. We always pack a couple of fold-up plastic rain ponchos, just in case. They've come in handy a couple of times and we were glad we had them when they did. So far, the upcoming weekend is shaping up to be one of the best ever. We're looking forward to seeing old friends, making some new ones, getting the car dirty, and having lots of fun in the mountains. I'll let you know how it went when we get back.