dune buggies and hotVWs December 2021

Ican’t believe how time flies. Here we are, delivering the December 2021 issue of hotVWs magazine. As I am writing this column, this is the last day of September, but I’m also finishing this issue’s Holiday Gift Guide special section. So, based on the magazine production, we are already in the middle of the holiday s ea s on , a nd the year 2022 is around the corner. We will have only two months remaining this year, by the time you get this issue. Our next one will therefore start in 2022, meaning that Dune Buggies and hotVWs magazine will be celebrating its 55th anniversary. Since 1967, Dune Buggies and hotVWs (known as Dune Buggies and the Fun Car Journal from June 1968 until March 1970) never stopped being printed. Since…

I live on a corner lot with a driveway and plenty of parking, so I tend to have a few VWs out front, and naturally all my neighbors know that we are the “VW house”. Recently, one of my neighbors was walking by and noticed my Volkswagens. She told me that she and her husband had toured Europe for three months in the summer of 1963 in a Westfalia camper. “It was the same color as the one you have,” she said, pointing to the Dove Blue tourist delivery Westy that has been parked in my driveway for the last decade or so. Now I have a lot of people see my VWs and tell me their Volkswagen story, and I totally enjoy hearing them. I always ask the folks…

Being a member of Der Kleiner Panzers involved a lot of activities or some would call events. When I became a member, DKP was more or less a social car club – I’ve talked about this in past columns. But I along with a few others brought a keen interest in drag racing and performance. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Panzers would put on a VW drag race. As we became the number one VW club in terms of performance, we were connected and knew all the VW gasser drivers. Because of this, we put on VW drag events, and all the I/Gas and H/Gas racers came. Guys like Darrell Vittone, Dean Lowry, The Schley Brothers, Anderson Brothers and many more. We had a personal relationship with Larry…

Proper Timing Advance I was told that my 36hp Okrasa 1300 motor needs 28-30º advance at 3000rpm, but my current Bosch 009 distributor gets only 20º at 3000 rpm. I heard that the Bosch 010 provides more advance, but I’m not sure if I should change it or try other ways to get the proper timing advance and curve. Any suggestions as far as good performance distributors? Thanks Peter Collins Tampa, FL Peter, the Bosch 010 and 009 can both be set up to achieve your desired 30º advance. It’s just a matter of setting up your initial advance (at idle) to achieve it. If you have for example set your 009 initial timing to 10 degrees BTDC, then if it’s working properly, you should be getting about 28 degrees total. Bump the…

Recently, I had the opportunity to get out of the comfy chair and go on a little adventure. My brother and his wife (and their VW Bus) have relocated to Colorado, where he is finally living out his childhood dream of building his own house. He and his wife are both super creative artist folks and this certainly is evident in the home they are building. There is nothing traditional or normal about the “Cosmic Nest” as they call it. In the end, I think it will be their largest collaborative art piece… One they can actually live in. They have been making incredible progress on the project and I have been following along online at the daily photos (follow @roycenita on Instagram if you are curious), but there is…

I know, I know, my older friends will laugh out loud when I write: “We had nothing back then,” but that’s how it was in Germany back in the late-’80s and early-’90s. Or at least how I experienced it. I never really thought about it until recently, when I worked together with my oldest son on his first car, a 1969 sunroof Beetle. He wanted to lower his Volkswagen with an adjustable beam and asked me if I could support him with my experience and manpower. Sure, I could. Janik made a purchase list, starting with adjusters and new shocks. “Can your write down all the other little parts we need? You know better than me.” I added caster shims, longer bolts for the beam, torsion arm seals, upper and lower…