Aircooled VW South Africa

This is the story of Her Oberst:

After years of searching for a SP beetle, without luck, I bought a 1975 1600S. mainly because an army buddy, JP Perold got one just before our 2-year national service ended.. and I also loved the S.

I bought it in Stilfontein from a gentleman who claimed to have spent thousands on it to get it road worthy for his son to drive to Potch and back...

The trip to bring the car back home started with a fill-up and suddenly the car was leaking fuel in front... it turned out that the breather pipe was cut of.... well, that was little worries.. the 200Km trip to Centurion started OK, but 30Km other side of Potch, the power suddenly dropped... and we could manage 80Km/h... OK, still little worries.. bring him home... that was all that counted.

So far I have:
fixed the screw that keeps the points fixed - the old one was stripped and caused the points to closed... power loss problem found..
replaced dissy cap
new spark plug leads
new spark plugs
drained the oil... awesome that the car could run on that black tar mix though...
cleaned carburetor
there was a chafing noise from the fan... that took a Saturday to strip inlet, dissy, carb and fuel pump off to take out the fan and alternator.
I replaced brake switch on the master cylinder and the brake lights started to work again.
funny noise when engaging the brakes, turned out to be a missing brake shoe retention spring right front - brake pads looks new though...
checked left front brakes and it turned out that the inner bearing is not seating on the stub-axle the inner hole is 4 to 5 mm to big... current bearing 30602 should be 30505C... waiting for bearing man to open..

Some pics as I go along at:
Edit - I loaded pics in my gallery - I will number them as it will be easy to view them when sorting on file name. (Descending will show the latest pics first.)

Cheers
CS

Sounds like a good score!

but only your friends can see your pics....

Awesome..
Please post pics on the forum..

Thanks all

I will number them as it will be easy to view them when sorting on file name. (Descending will show the latest pics first.)

Cheers
CS

After washing the engine bay I had a problem with the Alt-light on the speedo gauge - it stayed off when the ignition is turned on -
Yes, the other way round from all the "normal faults" - it also stayed off when the car engine was running and obviously not charging.
A bulb test showed the bulb is in good order.
With the blue wire removed from the bulb - +12 V on the "ground" spade of the instrument cluster and +12 Volt on the blue wire to ground.

Then, after weeks of search I stumbled upon this thread ( from http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=406702 )

I have done some tests and now understand how the Alternator works for the first time... I think...

From the ignition, power is supplied to the "ground" of the Oil and Alt lights in the instrument panel. From there +12 Volt runs via the blue wire straight to the Alternator D+ terminal - and should ground when the alternator is not spinning - thus lighting the Alt light. When the Alternator is spinning there should be a 13.8 to 14.2 Volt feeding back to ignition thus cancelling the voltage and turns off the Alt light. This explained by Rob and Daves Pages at http://www.vw-resource.com/alternator_wiring.html#alt - the last part "Necessity for the Alternator Warning Light".

Now, when one or more of the diodes in the Regulator are shot, it causes the D+ to supply voltage directly from B+ back to ignition - and the Alt light stays off. (this is without the alternator spinning).

I hope this explains some better as all the faults on alternators found only explains when the Alt light stays on when the Alternator is spinning - unlike this problem.