february 2020 volume 29-02 · tech advisor al moore columbus [email protected] 740.415.8812 tech...

Saturday August 8, 2020watkins memorial high school

3Volksfest

FEBRUARY 2020FEBRUARY 2020VOLUME 29VOLUME 29--0202

Official Monthly Newsletter Of Official Monthly Newsletter Of The Central Ohio Vintage The Central Ohio Vintage Volkswagen ClubVolkswagen Club

2 Zundfolge Central Ohio Vintage Volkswagen Club www.COVVC.org

INFORMATION

ZUNDFOLGEZundfolge (translated ‘firing order’) is published monthly by the Central Ohio Vintage Volkswagen Club. Its purpose is to keep us informed and running smoothly, while providing knowledge and enthusiasm into the Classic VW Community. Members are encouraged to submit articles and photos for the newsletter. Please contact the Editor for more informa-tion. Brian Knoll @ [email protected]

To obtain VW factory information send your serial number to:

Pre 1955:VW Brezelffenstervereinigung e.v.Ernst Reter Hagen, Amselweg 4, D

3073 Liebenau, Germany

Post 1955:Customer Assistance, Volkswagen AGPostfach, 3180 Wolfsburg 1, Germany

FACTORY DATA

COVVC OFFICERS

In the Spring of 1991 our club was founded by 12 enthusiasts lookingfor a way to pool their parts and resources to maintain their vintage Volkswagen Cars. Now we are in our 30th year with about 200 members and the premiere Vintage Volkswa-gen club for Central Ohio. We Strive to share knowledge and resources while having plenty of fun. We welcome everyone interested in classic air-cooled as well as newer water-cooled VW products. Annually we host Ohio’s largest Volkswagen Car show & swap-meet ‘Volksfest’ to benefit Childhood Cancer Family Conection; an independent non-profit organization, devoted to the needs of children with cancer.

Board of Directors: Mark Garrett [email protected] 614.262.2881 Stark Hughes [email protected] 614.843.0751 Kathy Kern [email protected] 614.940.8047 Mike Roecker [email protected] 216.233.4456 Mike Williams [email protected] 937.390.3794 Linda C Brown [email protected] 614.253.4694 Richard Rambo [email protected] 614.551.6621

Secretary Debbie Garrett [email protected] 614.262.2881 Treasurer Todd Sichel [email protected] 614.252.1431 Membership Ryan Cisco [email protected] 740.709.0183 Historian Webmaster Ashley Cook [email protected] 419.681.0518 Zundfolge Ed. Brian Knoll [email protected] 937.206.9293

Tech Advisor Al Moore Columbus [email protected] 740.415.8812Tech Advisor Bruce Amacker Cleveland [email protected] 440.846.3885Tech Advisor Bill Huntsman Marion [email protected] 740.389.3187Tech Advisor Jim Meyer Circleville [email protected] 740.474.4410Water Cooled Jerry Ohara [email protected] 614.471.8786Social Media Ray Duane [email protected] 304.218.0401

Coming up in March...Coming up in March...Lead Article...... Mike WilliamsTheme......... ToysMeeting Date... March 12th 2020Location ...... TBAAddress .....

Officers

Contributors

Jan Mark Garrett Annual BanquetFeb Stark HughesMar Mike Williams Toy MeetingApr Stark Hughes Anniversary/T-shirt DesignMay Linda Brown Trophy DesignJun Ryan Cisco Club PicnicJul Debi Garrett Show Prep ReviewAug Mark Garrett VOLKSFEST 30Sept Mike RoecherOct Kathy Kern HalloweenNov Ryan Cisco ElectionsDec Todd Sichel Cookie Meeting

Keep up with the Keep up with the Central Ohio Vintage Central Ohio Vintage

Volkswagen ClubVolkswagen Club Online! Online!

www.COVVC.orgwww.COVVC.org

John V. DoeTreasurer

Member Name Badges:Only $6.00

Available with Pin or Magnet Back

Contact Brian Knoll to order.

www.COVVC.org Central Ohio Vintage Volkswagen Club Zundfolge 3

Hello COVVC members! Do you need to renew? How do you know your membership has expired? Your expiration date is beside your name on the back of this newsletter. Need to renew? You can now renew your membership online on our website, www.covvc.org. Or if you prefer, you can pay at the next meeting, or you can send in a check. Please make checks payable to COVVC and mail to: COVVC c/o Ryan Cisco, 5577 Mesa Falls Street, Dublin, OH 43016.

We had 21 renewals and 1 new members last month. Thank you for your continued support of the COVVC. Our current membership is at 166.

New members: Melodee Kornacker

Renewals: Ashley Cook, Leo Wilhelm, Mark Cross, Joel Dysart, Greg & Ann Gillman, Bill Simon, Bill Blake, Mark & Debi Garrett, Jim & Pat Meyer, Linda Brown, Mark Baranoski & Emily Eby, David Dieringer, David & Tracey Sheppard, Ted & Janet Bailey, Richard Rambo, Ryan Cisco, Brian Pigg, David & Kathy & Mike Roundhouse, Robert McClenaghan, Christopher Knight, Allen Milatovich, David Wenger, James Martin

Time To Renew youR membeRship? Ryan Cisco

BLAST from the

PAST!Mark and Debi relaxing with Gertrude at the Cincinnati show

Sue Smith and Ted Chaney at the Arthritis Show with their 6 foot trophy for the 1961 single cab.

Taken at the Cincinnati show, early 2000s left to right, Robin

and Dale Taylor, Laura Wilt, Tom And Judy Diley, Justin Wilt,

Tom and Kathy Kern, Mark and Debi Garrett.

Submitted by Mark Garrett


Vw Tech... Tips, Tricks, Tools & Repairs Bruce AmackerShifting Problems - Continued from last month...

This is probably the longest set of articles I’ve done so far and I think this is the finale!

I mentioned this in a post a few years ago, don’t go with a taller ring and pinion gear unless you know what you’re doing. This is commonly called a “Freeway Flier” trans. I spec’ed a taller 3.88 R&P in Bus 1 with Rancho which was a mistake with a stock 1600DP engine. The taller ratio makes the engine work much harder and the stock engine just didn’t like it. Power suffered, MPG dropped dramatically and it taught me a lot about what NOT to do. Type 1 cars are much less fussy about gear ratios because their power-to-weight ratio is much more forgiving. Big heavy underpowered split busses are much less tolerant if you gear them too tall. A taller ratio should only be mated with a stronger engine, my solution for the too-tall gear problem was to build a 1904 stroker with a mild cam which matched the 3.88 very nicely. Early split busses up until ’63ish usually have a “small nut” trans with a 4.12 R&P and 1.39 reduction gear boxes. ’64-67 splits have “big nut” trans with a 4.37 R&P with a 1.26 RGB. (VW changed ratios a LOT in their vehicles, these are the most common) This calculates to a 5.72 overall final drive ratio on early busses and a 5.50 final drive ratio on later splits. Even with a .89 or .82 O/D fourth gear this is still a crazy low gear! In my American V8 background a common final drive is about 2.73 to 3.50 with a direct high gear (1:1), a 4.11 or lower final drive is generally considered too low for going on the highway. With a big torquey iron V8 it’s hard (or impossible) to gear a car too tall, all you do is make it slower and get better MPG but never suffer from a too-tall gear. Many older V8 sedans had 2.73 differentials or even taller, sometimes with an overdrive trans. My current Toyota V8 truck has a low 4.30 axle ratio but two overdrives in the trans to offset this, a .72 5th gear and a whopping tall .58 6th gear. This gives it a super tall 2.49 overall ratio when in high gear compared to a 4.5 overall ratio in a stock ’66 bus (4.37x1.26x.82 4th). This means my Toyota turns exactly half the RPM on the highway (actually less because of tire diameter) than a bus does. Knowing these numbers is how I made my big mistake spec’ing the 3.88 in my bus, I “figured” going from a 4.37/4.12 to a 3.88 would be no big deal. Ha! Live and learn. Are you asleep yet from reading gear ratios?

While I’m talking about tranny stuff I might as well veer off into double clutching, which is a talent usually mastered by heavy truck drivers. Because I’m a diesel mechanic by trade driving heavy truck/OTR/semi is second nature to me, even though I never drove for a living I had to test drive the vehicles we repaired when I owned the truck shop. That means driving triaxle dump trucks and semi tractors was a daily gig for me and I still carry a class A CDL license. Heavy trucks usually had Fuller transmissions which are all non-synchro. The majority of automotive trannies are “synchronized”, which is a function that became common in the 1950’s. Synchronizers are just what they sound like- usually a brass ring with a cone built into it that synchronizes the speed of the two gears (drive and driven) that are being selected. This synchronization allows the gears to engage without gear clash, which is the big ugly grinding noise you hear when you do stuff wrong. Gear clash can also occur when the brass cone wears out and the synchro no longer functions properly. Double clutching will dramatically prolong the life of the synchros and gears in your tranny if done properly. If your synchros are trashed it will also prevent the ugly noise I mentioned.

Let me describe how to double clutch as best as I can, this is one of those things that’s easier to demonstrate than explain. The most common time you might want to double clutch is downshifting, coming into a corner, probably from 3rd gear into 2nd gear. The traffic light is green and you don’t need to stop, just slow from a cruising speed to select 2nd gear. This is when a synchro is worked the hardest, but if you double clutch and get the speeds right, the synchro isn’t worked at all. This procedure will take several sentences to explain but takes place in less than 1-2 seconds when performed properly. OK, you’re slowing down, on the brake, in 3rd at about 20mph or so, the intersection is about 100

...Article continued on page 6


Chuck Forge was a brilliant electrical and mechanical engineer, and a friend of mine until his death several years ago. At his home in northern California just north of San Jose, he had his large car garage, an electronics lab to one side of the garage, and a separate computer lab upstairs. I met Chuck when I was in graduate school at Stanford, which was a few years after he had gotten an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford.

Chuck had a number of Porsches during his lifetime including several 356 Speedsters and a rare 1949 Porsche Gmund coupe (from which the top had been cut off in the early 1950’s to turn it into a roadster). Chuck loved speed and racing. He bought an old beat-up black oval window beetle, and modified it for racing. He built a very strong Porsche engine using an early 1500 two-piece case unit as a basis. He installed a Porsche transmission with close ratio gears and a limited slip differential. He lowered the front, de-cambered the rear, put Porsche wheels and brakes on it, and installed a roll bar. He ran it in many SCCA sedan races which were held in the 1970’s, and the car won many races. Back in the 60’s there were wonderful two-lane roads that wound up into the foothills which at the time had few houses and little traffic. They were great for going fast, and I had several very fast rides with Chuck on those roads in his VW.

Chuck was always making new modifications to his cars including his beetle. To check out his work, he used to road test his cars by going up Highway 9 outside of Palo Alto to one road, following it for five or six miles, and then coming down a different road to go home. His testing was then completed. One night he went charging up the road and, for some reason, turned around and started back down the same road. He was driving his black VW beetle rocket ship. When he got to a small town, a cop at the side of the road flagged Chuck over. He said they had received a radio report to look for a small black car that had gone tearing up into the foothills. Chuck showed him the VW’s engine, pointed out how small it was, and just about had the

cop convinced that it couldn’t have been him going as fast as had been reported. Suddenly the Highway Patrolman who had called in the speedster came screeching to a halt, jumped out of his car, and cuffed Chuck. Chuck had met him going the opposite way when Chuck was going up the road. When Chuck turned around and started back down, he met the patrolman going up the road with his lights and siren on. Chuck figured he was going to some emergency, not realizing that Chuck himself was the emergency. Chuck called friends in the wee hours of the morning to raise the money to bail him out of jail!

Then there’s the story of what happened on a sports car club tour that we used to make up into the California foothills twice a month on Tuesday evenings, as remembered by my friend Dick Osgood. To give you an idea of what kind of driving was involved on these tours, I used to give my Porsche Speedster a complete tech inspection before starting out including adjusting the tire pressures, topping up the oil, checking the lug nuts, and removing any loose items from the cockpit.

To keep his VW beetle light, Chuck had some kind of flimsy, very light, ‘seat’ on the passenger side. It had once been a small wicker chair for a porch or patio. Chuck commented to Dick that the car turned just fine to the right, but was acting a little strange when he was turning left. They were on a Tuesday night tour, and stopped and looked under the car, but couldn’t find anything wrong. They resumed the tour, on a two-lane road up outside of San Jose. There was a right and then left section that they came into, with the mountain on one side of them. The car made it through the right turn OK, but wouldn’t turn

chuck FoRge and his oVal window beeTle Jim Perrin

...Article continued on page 6


feet ahead. Very quickly, you push in the clutch, pull the shift lever into neutral, let out the clutch, rev the engine hard (to the approximate RPM it will be once 2nd is engaged) push the clutch back in quickly, and engage 2nd gear. What this does is get the drive gearset spinning about the same speed as the driven gearset so the two mesh without grinding. This is also where the synchro works the hardest, downshifting a gear, because as you’re upshifting through the gears the natural tendency of the gear is to slow down, which is what you want to mesh while upshifting. Downshifting is backward- the gear must get spinning faster to mesh properly. Double clutching can be also done going from 4th to 3rd, or 2nd to 1st, but for some reason it’s most beneficial coming into a turn from 3rd to 2nd. It’s hard to explain why.

In the road racing world this is also where the term “heel and toe” comes into play. Your left foot is on the clutch and your right foot is on both the gas and the brake- “heel and toe”. This allows you to do many more things and double clutching is one of them.

In my quest for power and a result of having too much time on my hands, I’m now putting a 2180 together for Bus 1. I’ll talk about that in detail next month. Talk to you then!

Shifting Problems - Continued

enough to the left even though Chuck had the wheel turned way to the left. They went off the road into a ditch, where the car went up on its left side. Dick was looking to his left and was amazed to see asphalt going by as he was looking out the window of the left door! The car then suddenly went back on its four wheels with a big whoomp noise. Several others in the tour stopped and helped them manhandle the car up out of the ditch. The two front tires were pointing in opposite directions as if a tie rod had broken. What actually happened was that a crack was developing in a steering arm. On right hand turns the crack closed up. However, on left hand turns, the crack was opening up and causing the turning problem. The steering arm had finally broken off!

Long time COVVC member Scott (Scotty) McKitrick passed away on January 9th. Here is the obituary: Scott L. McKitrick, age 65 of Columbus, passed away on January 9, 2020. Born on March 9, 1954 in New Albany, OH to the late Lawrence and Eunice Murphy. He is preceded in death by his brother Doug McKitrick. He is survived by his siblings Sandy Andromeda and Cathy Haymore. A Graveside Service will be held to honor the life of Scott on Thursday, January 30th, 2020 beginning at 2:00pm at Fancher Cemetery in Westerville on Francher Road. Family and friends will gather on Thursday, January 30th, 2020 following the Graveside, at The Church of The Living Word - 3533 Westerville Road.

Scotty was a fixture at the monthly club meetings, gatherings at the Garrett’s and of course Volksfest.

The COVVC family sends prayers to Scotts family during this difficult time.

Chuck Forge - Continued

In Memoriam - Scott (Scotty) McKitric


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5577 MESA FALLS ST. DUBLIN, OH 43016

AUGUST 8, 2020

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Painting by Makayla Peacock, 17 year old Houston High School Student in Houston, Ohio. Given to Dana Gehman at the Ohio

Airstream Headquarters.

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february 2020 volume 29-02 · tech advisor al moore columbus [email protected] 740.415.8812 tech...

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