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Old 12-11-2018, 10:45 AM
barry12345 barry12345 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by oldsinner111 View Post
Read in the news where VW's mexican plant rebuilt a 66 bug for a lady that works with cancer victims.
Does the air cooled engine,rings,and cylinders last that long?
Not a hope in my mind. It is common to replace all the individual cylinders though. Actually if the crankcase where still in usable condition makes it not that big of a deal. Done at the factory they just would pull everything off the shelf if still in inventory. New engine and transaxle etc. There should be no chassis rust down there.

I never kept my air cooled bugs more than 50k so have no ideal of what milage could be accumulated on their engines on average. It really was not that great an issue back then though as repairs in general where relatively cheap. Actually in comparison to today unbelievably cheap. I remember on one trip an intermittent engine shut off developed. I dropped by a dealer. They diagnosed the problem that took a test drive to find. Repaired in and out the door for three dollars. As the block got hot the pushrod on the fuel pump stuck. As the block cooled down the pushrod started moving again.

You have to bear in mind that my last new bug was a 1965 though. Over time cheap repairs probably ended even on the bugs.

Looking back things have changed somewhat. I traded in my 1962 model with about fifty K in on a 1965 new one. It took a six hundred dollar cheque to do that. Think a depreciation rate of 200.00 a year. New cost was about 1,600.00 in Canada for them. An average years depreciation on a newer vehicle today is more than what a new bug cost when I was using them. Wolfsburg Wailers was an appropriate name given them as they were built in Wolfsburg Germany. The quality of build was excellent. They were also the easiest cars on tires I have ever owned. Partially perhaps because they came on high quality Continental tires usually right from the factory.
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