Can't drive stick

[windhound]

Urg.  So my '70 Beetle is almost drivable
Sorta dreading dealing with other drivers while I learn how to drive stick with it.

CafePress has car magnets on sale for $2.50 or so, made this

Probably won't help much, but 's fair warning to other drivers.  She's slow and for the love of all things good plz don't stop inches from my bumper on a hill

[Shadow]

If you're anything like me, there will come a moment where you will suddenly get it and you will be perfectly competent all of a sudden. I had the hardest time learning, and then it just clicked and became really easy. Though it was pretty frustrating up until that point.

Now I actually prefer standard over automatic.

Also, pics? It's pretty cool that you have such a thing. Did you refurbish it yourself?

[windhound]

Thought I posted it here before, maybe not

I got it for free.
Someone long ago did an electric conversion and a friend of the family bought it; it started having issues (shocking) and he didn't want to deal with it anymore so he asked if I wanted it.
The final straw was when someone he had poking it did something very, very dumb with the batteries and basically destroyed them. 

The system was rather simple (too simple), two sets of 4 12v deep-cycle lead-acid batteries each hooked to their own relay.  The relays were activated when you pushed on the gas pedal and dumped the entire force of the battery pack to the electric motor.
Normally this would be bad, but the car was so heavy at this point it didn't really matter. 
What nuked the batteries was somehow the two sets of batteries got mixed up, one got 5 batteries the other got 3.  When the relays were activated the packs were put in parallel to drive the motor.  It is really, really, exceptionally bad to do that when the pack voltages don't match.

I took a hard look at fixing the electrical setup, but in the end it was going to run me probably $4 - 6k.  Not much of the system was salvageable in a meaningful way and batteries are _expensive_.  With that $4 - 6k I'd get maaaybe 15 miles out of a charge.  Just not workable, my current commute is 10 miles and I may be expanding that.

So I went and found a '71 Beetle engine on craigslist.
Then I had to go through and revert some of the changes and put back things like the gas tank.  Been poking it on and off for a year now.
To give you an idea of the sort of ducttape fixes, the brake master cylinder failed so someone just tied the brake pedal back and disabled the ratchet on the hand brake so they could use that instead.  Just...  urg.
Probably the worst bit was the caulk.  The rear floorpans are pretty toast, I can stick my hand through to the ground.  There was no attempt to slow down the rust, even a layer of primer would have helped, but no; just layer on layer of caulk and metal plating.  Occasionally they attempted to screw something down, but mostly caulk.  Caulk everywhere.
New master cylinder installed, brakes work lovely now.  Floor pans are on the short list after I get it running good, the driver and passenger seat are both solid so atm I'm not worried.  Just makes for a lot of road noise.

Anyways.  Its close, ordered a few more parts last night -- forgot the cable clamps necessary to have heat in the car.

Some pics:

As I brought it home


The motor


There was a small Generac under the hood for a sort of limp-mode.


The batteries


Clean!


Shiney.


Bumper before


Bumper after.
Tinfoil is a bizarre cleaning method for chome, but can't argue with the results. 


The engine as I got it


The engine bay now, just about ready to go

[windhound]

But yeah, I can drive a motorcycle and a tractor, but the car just feels so different clutch-wise.
If I could put motorcycle style hand-controls in the bug I'd be good to go.

Ah well.
I'll figure it out
Hill stops have me the most nervous...

[Holby]

darn windy, you are too cool.

When you're not making fish tank Macs and driving tractors, you're oh-so-casually building a Beetle.

I would just spend an hour starting and stopping in a carkpark. Better if you can find one on a slope! Was the biggest help when I was learning.

[Krowdon]

What the heck is a carpark.

Is that where you take your cars and let them loose to play with each other to make friends?

[Holby]

A place to park your car!  It's very literal.

[Shadow]

What the heck is a carpark.

we know them as parking lots

[Durza]

very cool windy, very cool

[Krowdon]

PFFT WOW. I dont know why I didnt think of that, haha.

[Pippin]

STICK IT TO MANUALS

huh

[windhound]

Oh dear god it finally left the driveway
Peppier than I thought it'd be, only mildly terrifying.