I’m going to keep this stuff until Monday the 25th.  Unless somebody wants it by then, it’s going to the garbage heap.

“ASVE” simply means “assembled vehicle”.  That’s the way Nevada chose to title my car.  The title from Utah that I received when I bought the car referred to the make as “SPCN” — special construction, maybe?

Amazing workmanship and creativity — but the shape just doesn’t appeal to me.

We lived in Wellington (West Palm Beach) for seven years 2000-2007.  We loved it.  The whole area is beautiful and there are lots of great places to drive, ride bikes, or walk, not to mention having a beach nearby.  No state income tax and we had coconuts, papayas, and bananas growing in the postage-stamp yard.  Makes me sick to this day to thi…[Read more]

Took the car out today for 30 or 45 minutes for a followup test.  Utter silence except for minor squeaks two times, and they were more like an emasculated mouse than a Screamin’ Eagle.  At the end of my test, I repeated the 50-0 panic stop exercise several more times, then drove a little further and the mouse remained silent again.  I’ll do ano…[Read more]

That looks just fantastic!  What a nice finish on the wood, and the chrome really makes the center “pop.”  Very professional looking.  I’m curious, though, what chrome you used.  It turned out great even with the corner joints … apparently you have both a sharp eye and a sharp knife.

I took some of Ed’s advice today:  “Take the car out and speed it up to 50 or 60 and jam on the brakes for a panic stop. Do it 5 or 6 times. Then drive slowly home braking as normal.”  I also did Royal’s test:  “Do the brakes squeal when you apply the parking/emergency brake?”

First the parking brake.  I used only the parking brake to slow me …[Read more]

According to my research — and what my mechanic told me — the brake light switches in old VWs are pressure-operated.  When they get old, they tend to go bad and either fail or require an inordinate amount of pressure to operate.  If you were able to get yours to work with a reasonable amount of pressure, that’s fantastic.  If they work but yo…[Read more]

Royal is absolutely correct about “equivalency” and the consequences of the wrong profile.  I was only trying to address the OP’s question about determining the width of the rim that the 205/60s are mounted on.  The OP said he was assuming that because the 205/60s were wider than the 165/15s, they must be on a different (i.e., wider) rim.  Th…[Read more]

Some OEM VW wheels have the wheel size stamped on them in letters about 1/8″ high.  “4Jx15” as I recall.  There’s no guarantee with this.  All of my own wheels look alike but some of them have the stamping and some don’t.

Also, according to Tire Rack, your 205/60s are actually equivalent to the 165R15s, so I’d bet the wheels are the same fro…[Read more]