I have had the Beetle since 1990, which I guess is longer than most marriages last these days, and have done between six and eight trials a year since. I can’t say that it’s exactly as I bought it as it’s on its 3rd engine and about the fourth of fifth gearbox. There are a few original bits, like the top half of the body, the steering wheel and the back brakes, which I shall return to later.
During all that time have always driven it home, even on the two occasions that I have retired. The first occasion I had any real trouble on an event was my second Exeter, which I think was in 1993. Brother in law Simon was passengering, it was the first event he had done where we were staying over and he was particularly looking forward to an evening with the lads out of site of “she who must be obeyed”. At that time, the car still had the engine it came with, a well-worn and completely standard 1600 twin port. We were running along with Fred Gregory in the days when he had his Skoda. I can’t recollect how we were doing, but we were certainly enjoying ourselves when we hit problems on Stretes. The car seemed to be going pretty well, but the engine was starting to sound a bit fruity.
On the road down to Honiton we realised something was wrong as it was making a horrible noise. We stopped but couldn’t find anything wrong. We had a good look at all the machinery in the car park at Exeter Services but could find nothing amiss. The exhaust was in one piece, the timing was OK, we even took the valve covers off and checked the tappets. We found one at 22 thou instead of six, closed it up a bit, and pressed on. The long dual carriageway stretch down to Tillerton revealed that something was very wrong. I was all for retiring but the disappointed look on Simon’s face when I mentioned it made me press on. We finished by driving on a very light throttle on the road and only opening it up on the hills, to the accompaniment of the most horrible noise.
We had a great evening and limped home the next day to more and more noise, and less and less power. I had already decided to fit a new engine that was waiting in Murray MacDonald’s lock-up, but was still interested to know what was wrong. It turned out that one of the studs securing the exhaust to the head had sheered and the exhaust gasket had blown completely away!
It wasn’t that much later that I had my first trials retirement since I broke the diff on my Mini at a PCT in the early seventies. It was on the Edinburgh that finished so late, I think it was the first Laurie Knight event. I had spent some time prettying the car up before the event, even painting the wheels, and it looked very nice. Everything was fine on the run up to Derbyshire but on the descent down to Putwell I heard a distinct knocking from the rear on the over run. A ra-a-tat-tat, just like a CV joint on its way out in my Mini days. There was a big queue for Putwell and I slipped underneath to peer intelligently at the drive-shafts, nothing appeared amiss so we pressed on. The noise got worse and worse as the day went on and the trial got later and later. It was gone six in the evening when we came down the exit road from Haggside, the weather wasn’t very good and we had a couple of sections to go, including Litton Slack. The noise was really loud now, we had failed a couple of sections, so there was going to be no medal and we retired rather than risk being stuck with a broken drive shaft at he bottom of Litton late at night.
In those days, the Edinburgh finished at The Haddon Hall. We were staying there and got in for dinner at about eight, quite late but not as bad as the last competitor, David Alderson, who arrived just before midnight!
The following morning we thought about calling the RAC, but decided to try and limp home under out own steam. I was convinced one of the UJ’s had gone and was already planning a quick change as soon as I got home, for we were entered in The Ebworth Chase the following Saturday. We made it back to Bedfordshire to the sound of really loud knocking as soon as the car was off load. The Beetle was promptly up on the axle stands to change the drive shafts. Damn, forgot to undo the wheel nuts, not much hope but lets see if they will come off with the wheels in the air. Oh dear, all the wheel nuts are loose!
What had happened of course is I has painted the wheels with Hammerite, did the nuts up over the paint and they slackened off after a hundred miles or so. A hard lesson.
The only other time I have retired the Beetle was at a Brickhill PCT. If memory serves me, right this was the first event after the big changes in Falcon when all the disgruntled “SODS” joined us. Anyway, Mike Furse was Clerk of the Course and he had a special test, which involved driving forward down hill, stopping and reversing back up. I had the family in the car and wanted to put on a show. We went flying down, I dipped the clutch, slammed it in reverse and it immediately jumped out of gear. Nothing would persuade it to stay in reverse and as something had clearly broken inside, I decided to call it a day. We stayed to take some pictures and drove gingerly home. I hadn’t had this box very long, it was a 1300 with a low ratio and I had recently had it rebuilt because it wouldn’t stay in reverse! Anyway, I had apparently bent some selector fork or other. Rather than repair it I got another box part exchange, but I never took the old one back and it’s still in my garage as a spare at the cost of a lost deposit.
Apart from punctures, I then had a long trouble free period while out on events. Not that there was no work on the car. Another new engine came along, again curtsy of Murray MacDonald. This was a 1300, putting the beetle in class four, escaping many of the dreaded re-starts that organisers had introduced to subdue the performance of the type 4 monsters. I had fitted yet another gearbox, not because there was anything the matter with the other one, but I wanted an ultra low final drive and a 4-planet diff. Then of course there was the endless work on the body, doing battle with the tin worm and straightening out the inevitable dents. Things became a bit more serious when the body started to crease at the back over the wheel arches, necessitating a lot of work to pull it out and brace it to keep it in place as best I could. The bracing bars ran under the engine so I could no longer use the Trekker “bootscraper” skid plate that was bolted direct to the crankcase. A large sheet of upturned chequer plate replaced this. All this reduced the ground clearance so I had to raise the suspension even more to compensate. I had to grind a bit off the bottom of the spring plate’s to give some suspension movement which means the CV joints bind upon full droop!
All of this of course took place in the garage rather than on the road. All the more surprising then when we had a very strange problem on the 2000 Allen Trial. It started on a road section quite early in the event. There was a funny pulling feeling at the back, as if one of the brakes had come on. It only lasted a second. I tried all the brakes, everything seemed OK and we pressed on. A little later, after Guys Hill, it happened again, in a more pronounced fashion. This time I thought we had a puncture so we stopped and hopped out but there didn’t appear to be a problem. The truth came after Burledge. We had an honourable attempt at the hill but bellied out when we ran out of ground clearance at the top. We were about to reverse down but we were only a few yards from the summit so a Land Rover backed down to haul us out. I hauled on the handbrake to stop us rolling back and it just kept coming!
We stopped and had a good think. Clearly something had broken but it was out of site inside the drum and at a couple of hundred ft-lbs of torque I couldn’t take it off to have a look inside. We knew there weren’t any horrid reverse back down hills ahead so we pressed on with the handbrake working only on one wheel. The footbrake seemed to work OK and all seemed well apart from the occasional horrible graunching noise from the back when whatever it was got stuck between the linings and the drum!
We finished the event and drove carefully home. When I took the brakes apart, the following weekend I saw that the clip holding the handbrake arm pivot pin had fallen out, as had the pin itself. With the arm detached from the shoe, the handbrake didn’t work although the hydraulic footbrake did. The offending components were still inside the drum, but in a bit of a mess, as were the lining and the drum itself. A quick telephone discussion with Murray MacDonald explained the problem. I had always thought the clip securing the pin was just pushed on and held in place by its springiness, although it never appeared to have very much spring! Not surprising really, as you are supposed to clinch the clip shut and it’s made out of a nice soft material to help you!
I suppose I had been lucky really, as I had been driving around with those clips holding on with a wing and a prayer for the last ten years and although I have religiously stripped and cleaned the brakes every summer I had only ever pushed the clips back on!
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