Our long planned car project didn't exactly start auspiciously.
The ancient Volkswagen bus sure didn't look like much when we first saw it, in the backyard of a ranch some ways to the east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, two thousand miles from home. Behind the guy's out-building, with scrubby weeds growing up around the front end, the heap's better days were far in the past.
It was a two-tone 1966 model, 6 volts, ("666" I said to myself) white on top, faded red below, with eleven windows, and no engine. Best news was the arid climate in this part of the country meant zero rust, except for a little under the battery, which was something we could deal with later. But if the important parts of the bus checked out, the asking price would work, and my buddy Roger and I would have ourselves a nice little project. I'd found the VW through an online ad and had exchanged emails with the seller, answering my multi-faceted queries.
As Roger stood there, hands on hips, looking at the beaten up bus, I knew he was wondering just how nuts I was to contemplate this "restoration." His working-man's clothes were always rumpled, but I enjoyed his rugged good looks, those short strong legs and rounded northern European bones that were part of his heritage. Our last car project had come out fine, and one of the special extra benefits of our current adventure was just the plain exuberance of life on the road.
We'd made the two-day drive down, long ones at that, from Massachusetts in my F-150, the truckbed filled with a jack, a VW engine I'd plucked from my favorite junkyard in Pittsfield, and a pile of tools and spare parts. With the slow, possibly decrepit but hopefully serviceable project bus, I'd figured on at least a three-day drive on the way back.
We'd each taken a week off work, hoping that would be enough time to complete the task with a little time to spare. We'd driven from green leafy New England, across the mountains, through hundreds of miles of cornfields in the heartlands of the US, until things had gotten serious brown, dry and dusty past Oklahoma.
I'd forgotten just how much of America there is out here away from the East Coast and cities. Roger and I had had a grand time on the way, chatting and listening to music, the Grateful Dead always the best road music ever. And of course, the sex had been free, easy and phenomenal, a worthy secondary benefit of the trip.
No wives around to dodge, no need to sneak a quick suck on an illicit afternoon tryst. We even got to sleep in the same bed in motels and make lovely penis music together at night, and then have some hard morning wood right at hand the next morning.
On the first day out, late afternoon, I think we were well past the New York border, farther west than Roger had ever been, of course we had been taking sex for miles, and what we would do with each other when we called it a day and found a motel later in the evening.
Roger's prick had gotten so aroused with our talk that he'd pulled it free from his jeans, and at 70 mph I looked over at its handsome engorged head, waving there free in the cab. I salivated.
"Better put your gun away there pal, before I get distracted and run us off the road."
We passed a big rig, and I wondered if the trucker had gotten an eyeful.
"Not sure you got a concealed permit there, Rog."
His gap toothed grin was wide as the Ohio river. "It's not concealed Clay, we're in an open-carry state. Aren't we?"
We both laughed but I convinced him to save himself for later.
The rancher's son had bought the VW, technically a kombi, as a teenager, and like a lot of these sorts of "project" endeavors, the fellow gave up midway through the work, or perhaps found he had better things to do now that he'd gone off to college. Maybe his enthusiasm had dropped off the charts after he'd pulled the engine and started a rebuild. Roger and I were here to pick up the carcass and wrestle it back to Massachusetts, hoping to expend as little money and effort as possible in the process.
Roger examined the front of the thing, a good dent on the right side, with some trepidation.
"You sure about this, Clay?"
"We'll find out." I was most worried about the front end as I could pretty much guarantee the kingpins were worn, and if they were too far gone to safely drive it, that meant we'd have to rent a trailer and tow it with the truck, which I really didn't want to do.
The seller, or more accurately the father of the owner, was genial and patient, and amused at our diagnosis procedures as we crawled around underneath the car and reviewed its condition.
The front end checked out barely, with worn king pins, which I had expected, and loose link pins and sway-arm bushings, but I was able to tighten up stuff enough that I figured we would make it home, although highway cross-winds would be an exciting proposition.
We dumped the old fuel and filled the tank with the five gallons of fresh gas we'd brought along, got the spare engine installed, which I had prepped back home, and fired the thing up.
A couple miles of a test drive satisfied me that things would be okay, so we paid the guy, gathered what extra spare parts there were and stuffed them in the back of the truck. We were on the road by late morning, me in front, Roger behind in the truck. I'd made an appointment with the local Big-O tire folks, so we'd start the trip with fresh rubber installed. I'd figured I'd thought of everything, and of course was wrong. Usually on these sorts of adventures, what ends up going wrong is the one thing you didn't prepare for.
It was the third stop for gas, barely out of Texas, when the VW didn't start after fueling up. The starter engaged, then bogged down and didn't turn the engine over fast enough to catch. Roger gave me an ominous look.
"It's a brand new battery," I muttered.
I had been peeved to have bought a new one, figuring, correctly, that what we'd find with the car would be junk. The peevishness came since my plan all along had been to covert the thing to 12 volts anyway, and so buying a new 6-volt battery was money down the drain. Yet when compared to the cost of towing, it seemed like a good bit of insurance at the time.
Roger push started me with the front bumper of the truck, and when running I whipped out my voltmeter to check the system out. Barely six volts, it wasn't charging enough. The belt was tight so it would either be the generator or the voltage regulator.
Seeing the disgusted look on my face, Roger asked me what our options were.
"Finding either a replacement 6-volt generator or voltage regulator? Around here? Or anywhere on our route for that matter, for a car this old? Long odds."
I thought quickly.
"Battery's new, the starter was fine this morning, we're just low on juice. We could buy a trickle charger and charge the battery each night in our motel. It should run on battery voltage alone all day. Long as we don't have lights on, or hit rain and have to use the wipers, the draw from just running the car will be low."
For safety reasons I had been driving with the lights on, which certainly had contributed to the drain on the battery. But no longer. I wouldn't even be using the radio, not even sure if it worked.
