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My vintage Beetle is running really well. The carb is performing consistently, and the electronic timing has been completely trouble-free. Now I'm just waiting out the winter and building up a supply of spare parts before I take it out on the road.
So in addition to the one in the car, I want to have a spare carburetor to take along, just in case. When I'm making a thousand-mile trip, I don't have to stop in the middle somewhere and have to rebuild a carb. I have a spare distributor, and fuel pump, and some other stuff, but I only have one carburetor at the moment that runs well.
I have a 34PICT-4 carburetor, which I had re-bushed but when I put it on the car last it didn't idle right. I suspect there's something crusty down inside somewhere. I bought a can of carburetor dip, so I'm goingo dip the chassis to see if I can dissolve whatever's in there and get the passages cleaned out. It's an original German one, which I'm told are very good quality and shouldn't have manufacturing defects.
First the carb all together.
The major pieces, dis-assembled.
All the bits that came off.
The jets and stuff in a bowl ready to be soaked in carb cleaner.
The main hull again.
I'll grab one of the other carbs first and dip them, just in case the dipping compound attacks the material of the carburetor body.
The juxtaposition of these two (of our) cars in a resteraunt parking
lot amused me greatly, so I snapped a photo. When my wife and I are
out of the house in different places, we're usually each in a car.
When we go somewhere together, we usually ride in the same car (no
surprises here). So it's very unusual for us to be driving two of our
cars and have them parked next to each other somewhere other than the
house. This was us having dinner at the local mexican resteraunt; and
she had a meeting to go to afterwards.
So I took a (business) trip in January flying my club's Cessna 182...and I got stranded nad had to play the I-hope-the-mechanic-can-fix-it waiting game. The club reimbursed me for the repairs, but it ended up being a long weekend nonetheless.
On the flight up, it amused me greatly that my heading for the flight
was 315 degrees; I had echoes of The Hunt For Red October goin
through my head.
Flightstar at Willard Aiport
treated me very very well--they had a red carpet on the ground when I
landed:
The weather got snowy while I was there, so I had them put my plane
inside (for an extra charge). Here it is, in good company. The plane
I flew is the closer one.
I had been there during the week riding the bus. When I went to take
off Saturday morning, I had a bad magneto check. So I ended up
staying over. Since it was basically going to be a three-day weekend
(MLK day), I rented a car to make it easier to get around. I once
again ended up not getting the car that I thought I wanted. I ended
up driving a Chevy Cruze. A nice little car, not as quiet as the
Malibou. Here's the dashboard at startup for the lights test:
And once it's running:
The center console had an aux jack for a radio and a USB jack (for
power--don't know if that would connect to the radio too):
The mag got replaced, then a weather delay, but Wednesday morning I
was finally on my way. It seems like most of the time when I'm
flying, I end up with a head wind, so I fly around 6 or 7 thousand fee
to maximize forward airpseed to fight the wind. On this trip I had
something like a 20 knot TAILwind, so I flew higher to take advantage
of it. I don't think I've ever cruised at 9000 feet before.
Here I am, with Louisville passing off to the left. Notice the
manifold pressure gauge on the right is only indicating 21 1/2 inches
of pressure (it's about 30 on the ground) because the air's getting
thin. That's with the throttle
wide open. At lower altitudes, you try to cruise at the top of the
green arc at 23 inches.
6 more hours of cross-country time, and 6 more hours of high-performance time. Despite the annoyances, a nice trip. Many playoffs watched.