A Peek At My Week! #13

Tuesday:

Off My Rocker

Tuesday was a complete blur. On Monday I’d gone to bed too sore to stand, sit or lie down and woke up feeling marginally better. I jumped right into the job. A friend of mine had promised to come over to give me a hand, so until he arrived I opted to tackle the less noisy tasks, being the welding up of holes in the air ducting plates where missing captive nuts for articles that no longer existed had been. This would block up places where that all-important cooling air was leaking out! After degreasing the plates with good old dish soap and hot water, the welding up went fairly quickly and easily, and then I finished all the plates off with a nice coat of black engine enamel paint. Then it came to the exhaust, which came off the car unbelievably, in one piece, with J-tubes and all! I had to separate these from the muffler, which truth be told, didn’t go too well! I managed it, with a good deal of fancy language – only the muffler had been quite rusty and weakened in the center, and crumpled neatly between the Beetle’s unique two little exhaust pipes!

Faced with a choice between trying to weld the thing back together again in the middle – and getting the distance between the two head mountings wrong – I opted to just keep the two halves separate and made two separate mufflers, one for each side of the engine! I also appear to have inadvertently made a free-flow exhaust!

In the meantime, my friend who was coming round to help me out was having problems of his own – his bike wouldn’t start. He works from home and so it had been standing for a while and the battery was done. With this news in mind, I decided since I’d done most of the smaller tasks anyway, I would get on with removing the cylinder head and replacing it with the spare one on my own. This could’ve been easier, but perhaps predictably, wasn’t.

The sides of the engine bay itself were in the way, so even though the head was loose, I couldn’t move it past the studs holding it in place to drop clear of the engine. I had no choice but to lower it – or cut away half the side of the engine bay… which wasn’t an option… although dragging the car outside and setting it on fire was looking like a good option at this point! Nevertheless, I maintained a cool head and after about an hour of desperate fiddling and groping for hard to reach nuts and spanners falling from exhausted fingers, I managed to get the engine loose, jacked it down and swapped heads. Once this was done, I just jacked it up again and tightened the four bolts holding the engine onto the transmission. Then I bolted on the head and pushrod tubes, and went through both phases of torqueing the head. After that, I decided I was going to just refit the rocker arm assembly and call it quits for the day… only then to discover that the rockers from the old head did not quite fit the replacement head! What a catastrophe! Bear in mind by this point I was dirty, greasy and unrecognizably so – not to mention in so much pain from all the labor that I was at my wits end! It was at this point, just as I was setting my rear end down on the car’s rear bumper to sit in a heap and cry, that my friend Morne’ Condon arrived. He’d overcome his transport hurdle by borrowing his neighbor’s car to get there.

“What still has to be done?” He asked whimsically. “Is the head still not off yet?”

“It’s off!” I chuckled tiredly. “The spare’s on already!”

He looked at me disbelievingly. “Then why did I even come?” He joked.

Levity aside, he had a look at the rocker problem and spotted something I hadn’t yet – the chamfer at the base of the rocker mounting studs… the old head didn’t have those – and so neither did the rockers have matching spaces to fit… which meant they wouldn’t. I decided I’d have to drill the base of the holes wider to fit, and he was against the idea… so we compromised – I sent the fella who sold me the head a message asking if he had matching rockers, and while we waited for a reply, we fitted the exhaust instead! After that, I had a good soak in the tub, and after that, the three of us sat and chatted for a good while before he went home again. Feeling the worse for wear, I dosed myself with gen-payne before bed.

Wednesday:

That morning I woke up, limped into the kitchen and made coffee and breakfast. After that, I got right back into the job of ensuring I had transportation for the next day! I started with the rockers. Having received no reply from the gent who’d sold me the head, I took the rockers into my workshop and drilled the bases of the holes wider to fit the chamfers in the head. I’d basically just finished fitting and torqueing them in when he arrived and delivered a set of rockers, said I didn’t owe him anything, and waved me a cheery goodbye! That was very kind of him, I thought, and put them in my spares rack for another day. Then I continued with the reassembly of the other stuff that makes the car go – the cooling duct plates, inlet manifold, and wiring in the engine bay that needed to be replaced or repaired – a lot can go wrong with wiring that’s almost 60 years old! I replaced the entire rear end fuel hose with a good quality item. I found another issue though – while I was at it, as the old saying goes – the source of all the soot-like crap that had built up over the cooling vanes of the cylinder barrels! It’s vital that these are kept clear because the cooling air from the fan has to blow between them – and blockages cause overheating! The powder had come from the decaying original tar-impregnated cardboard soundproofing pad on the firewall! As it decayed, small bits of it were being sucked into the ducting by the fan! My solution to the problem was to remove the soundproofing pad altogether and to replace it with tar-coated silver roof sealing tape. I had the broadest one available, and used it to cover the entire firewall. While I was at it – again – I treated some rust above the firewall and cover that with another strip of the roof sealer.

Once all that had been sorted, neatened and tidied away, it was time to sort out the issues I had with the alternator and it’s pulley, which as it turned out, was a bit schmangled. The front part of the pulley had jammed onto the hub, and once I got that loose, I found that the back of the pulley had also come loose from the hub as well! I welded the back of the pulley back onto the hub. The little key that keeps the hub in place on the alternator shaft had disintegrated and try as I might, I couldn’t make a workable replacement – so to save time and tears, I just drilled through the pulley and the shaft and fitted a pin to keep it in place. This seemed to work alright and looked promising. Then I had to close up some holes in the fan shroud/housing, which I did using large washers and pop rivets. A nice coat of shiny black engine enamel gave it a nice finish, and then I refitted the fan to the housing, and then the whole thing back to the engine. After that, I fitted the carburetor and distributor, plug leads and set the valve timing and closed up the valve cover. It was the moment of truth – had my three day torture session paid off?

It did! The car fired up without too much fuss. I took it for a quick spin down the road just to make sure, and then parked it in the garage again to refit the rear engine cover before the crappy weather rolled in. Easier said than done! Fitting the engine cover was easy – fitting the spring to hold it open, not so much! Even with a vice-grip, it was an Amazonian struggle to get that horrid thing back in place – but I succeeded. I was ready to collapse by this point, I could barely stand and kept falling over, but I kept on until I’d finished. The motor still needed a few final adjustments and tweaks, but I was too tired for that – or even to clean the grease marks off the paint, so I contented myself by simply packing away all the tools and closing the door as the first rain began to fall. The car worked – I would have transport the next day. That was enough.

That night, after a thorough degreasing bath, my skin scrubbed raw, I dozed on the sofa, in all kinds of aches and pains, listening to the rain – which was steady and became heavier and heavier. Then hail came into the mix as well, and the temperature inside began to drop. I knew the next morning’s trip to work would be challenging – part of the road to work always floods out in heavy rain.

Thursday:

First Rioting, Now Flooding

Thursday morning dawned and as I struggled to get dressed without falling over, I realized that it had rained heavily the whole night – and I was in for an interesting morning. Would the car even start in the cold? I went to make sure before even putting the kettle on to make coffee. After a few tries, it started. I revved it a little just to warm it up so it would start easier when I left. Kay also got up and we sat together, waking up. It rained solidly throughout breakfast too, and when I left home, it was in a downpour. The old bug got me to work in one piece, though I had to navigate some deep pools of water in the uneven roads on the way to work. The door seals aren’t what they’re supposed to be – but then Dolly is a 59 year old car – and I didn’t want to do anything that would result in long-term harm.

As the day wore on though, it became apparent that the rain was causing a flooding problem across Port Elizabeth – and the road to work was flooding out as well. At 12 we were sent home to avoid being stranded by impassable roads.

Just as I arrived at home, the power went off, and the house was on UPS power. More and more substations around the city tripped due to rain and flooding, with up to five in PE alone being affected. Heavy rain continued. The city’s technicians were apparently inundated with repairs. By the time darkness fell, we were using candles for lighting to try and save the UPS power to run the house alarm and emergency lights in case this took the whole night. It did.

A Little Publishing News

With relative normality restored in KZN after last week’s riots, Hally Park Publishing has been continuing with the edits on my Dad’s two books “African Assignment” and “A Way Of Life“. Clair also told me that Hally Park had also gained access to a book shop in Cape Town, which would mean that books on their listing would be supplied there as well. Also, one of their books is in line to be made into a movie, which is very encouraging and gives me more tangible hope for the future!

Friday:

On Friday morning at 5:45, we awoke to stygian winter darkness. After 18 hours just running itself and a few essentials, my UPS had been depleted. The loss of power had cost Kay several hours of work on Thursday, and without any notice of when power would be restored, likely the whole of Friday as well. My phone down to 38% battery, I went to work and put it and the laptop on charge as soon as I got into the office. We left work at one sharp, and I went directly home to set up the generator. This didn’t need too much work as it was already in place, but had been unused for over a year, since I’d replaced our previous UPS in February 2020. All it took was to plug the lead in and refill the gas tank and start it. It ran for most of the afternoon, until a neighbor asked us to turn it off because the noise was bothering her. Oh well, that just gives me another thing to do – another item on my list of shit to do – to figure out a better exhaust muffler for the generator! I’ll get to that another time. I need to recuperate from the week’s work on Dolly first!

As it happened, our power woes continued until about 6PM, when the mains power finally came on and stayed on. What a relief that was! We settled back to enjoy some proper coffee, some movies and popcorn for the first time in several days!

We got up around nine on Saturday morning, and having thought about Dolly’s remaining motor issues, after a leisurely breakfast and coffee, I went back to the garage to carry out a few final adjustments on the valve rockers and carburetor. That went surprisingly easily, and then I spent about twenty minutes cleaning the greasy fingerprints off the paint. The end result was Dolly looked all ship-shape again. After a quick change, I took her out for a spin to the nearby Spar to get  a few supplies and am happy to report she went very nicely indeed, and I only felt compelled to make one minor adjustment on the carb in the Spar parking lot before coming back home again.

The next item on my list of shit to do happened to be to repair the garage door, and I started mentally preparing myself for that project while Kay and I ambled casually across the road to our neighbor’s restaurant in Stanley Street to enjoy some lovely homemade soups for lunch! In the afternoon, after returning home, I set about dismantling the garage door motor assembly, only to discover that it was quite bad. Not wanting to risk damaging it further beyond repair, I put it back together again and decided to call a service provider on Monday morning for a quote. As long as it’s not “don’t walk under ladders” and doesn’t cost me the price of a whole new unit, I don’t care anymore.