VW Beetle Owner's Manual (1970) | Hacker News Reader

VW Beetle Owner's Manual (1970)

thesamba.com

40 pointsHooke26 comments

A related artifact from that era, the very popular DIY repair manual:

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot by John Muir and Peter Aschwanden.

I see it's still in print. This video shows some of the wonderful artwork:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjeth7lhHSk

I had that book and used it extensively. I think I went through three copies of it due to use and me destroying it with my filthy hands.

I had a 70.5 baja bug from age 14 until 21. I lived 8 miles from a town of 3,000 in Arkansas, and later moved even further out until it was 16 miles to town.

I drove myself, two brothers, and a sister to school in that thing for 4 years. (93-97) Well, I say 4 years, but anyone who has owned an air cooled VW knows how often we had to take the bus. Walking ~2 miles down a dirt road to the highway bus stop isn't much fun.

I'd probably do it all over again, too. Specifically because of that air cooled monstrosity I can fix anything, or at least I think I can. Fearless, if you will.

I'd do it again for my kids if it wasn't for the fact that there are teenagers driving 400 HP Mustang 5.0s and Ford Excursions can be had used for $5,000. An air cooled VW is a death wish on today's roads.

That book is such a masterpiece of technical writing I've recommended it to people who don't even own VWs. It deserves to be recognized in the same discussions as The C Programming Language, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, and the 1st ed. of Tcl and the Tk Toolkit.

99.5% necessary accessory for any bug/bus owner. They need non-trivial tuning about every 3k-5k to keep them running well order compared to what we have today. The lifters need adjusting, fuel filter replacement, etc. about as often as most people get an oil change.

They don't have A/C. The heat carries with it exhaust stink and is nearly useless anywhere northeast or midwest. They rust easy, are very unsafe by today's standards, hydroplane like mad (though rear-wheel-drive is fun), and the motors on the wipers either creep slowly or sweep slowly. They are light and tall, so they are like sails when you have cross winds. They can barely maintain speed up long ascents...

But that book is an amazing piece of craft.

My dad's VW bus was a challenge to drive in the Midwest in a crosswind. Going in and out of cuts meant the bus would veer from side to side. Had to be very careful not to wind up in oncoming traffic, or in the ditch.

I see a lot of nostalgia for those machines, but I was glad to be rid of it. They're noisy, uncomfortable, the heater is a joke, windshield defroster never works, and dangerous.

Truly amazing craft. If you're 15 - you can use that book + rec.autos.makers.vw.aircooled and drop the engine yourself; replace the clutch yourself; find the distributor drive shaft that was installed backwards and got you the car for $600 in the first place ... At least that's my story.

Aircooled VWs are so simple. That book was such a good companion, down to the first part which explains "front is front, up is up, back is back..." complete with a diagram. When upside-down & greasy, knowing exactly what the author means by "reach to the upper left of the engine" is important.

Yeah. My first car was a bug @ 16 and that book was my gateway to greasy wrenching.

Clicked random page and was truly rewarded.

  3 - Spare wheel

  It also provides the air supply for the windshield washer 
  container.  Therefore the spare tire pressure should 
  occasionally be checked and increased to 42 psi.

We had a VW something when I was growing up. I remember a heater that would run even when the engine was off. But I don't remember this. Fahrvergnügen!

This reminded me of the Commodore 64 User's Guide ( http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_users_guide/c64-users_gu...) in that they both assume the user is very knowledgable of what's going on under the hood.

Both are phenomenally successful products. I wonder if this openness was a part of that success.

The Apple II reference manual beats that (https://archive.org/details/applerefjan78). It includes the disassembly of the monitor program and contains full schematics and timing diagrams.

I remember as a kid reading the simulated dice roll chapter in the C64 manual. I thought that if I copied the code I would actually get an animated dice rolling. I felt let down when it turned out to be a table of numbers.

My mom had a purple VW bug. I'll never forget the sound of the engine and how hot it got in that thing (I heard somewhere it was sealed so tight it the passenger compartment wouldn't flood if it drove into water).

It got rear-ended while parked in front of our house in the mid-1970s. My mother cried; she loved that bug.

I crashed my girlfriend's VW back in the mid 90s. I hit a parked car that had stopped on a blind corner to observe a previous accident that happened minutes before. It was raining. I came around the corner and applied the brakes. 1975 VW's don't stop too well on wet roads.

The 'funny' part was that the damage was confined to the front headlight and panel. Not too bad. But the quoted cost of repair was more than the car was worth.

Elon, please buy the production rights to this and put it back into production, exactly as it was, no changes, bolt-compatible with the original. Interestingly, they had prototyped an add-on electric powerplant back then, too, which, sadly, never made it into production.

I don't think it would pass emissions.

Interestingly (?), Dr. Porsche 'borrowed' the design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_97

It wouldn't pass the crash testing, either. Bugs fared poorly in crashes. The idea was that it was nimbler, and better able to avoid accidents to make up for that.

Bugs also were relatively high maintenance. Few would care for that these days.

The first Porsche was basically a clone of the Type III fastback: http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/957632.jpg

The first Porsche predates the Type III by quite a few years. Also, Ferdinand Porsche designed the original Beetle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Relationship_with_Volk...

James may did an interesting show about classic cars recently and drove one the surviving beetle protypes.

The Tesla Beetle, if they made that it might beat out the Model T sales count!

There is the New Beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_New_Beetle

Compare to the Fiat Doblo Owner's Manual, which happens to be "Doblo eLEARN technical manual" because the effing thing breaks every 2 minutes...

I long for a simple vehicle again.

If the reader had a dollar for every mention of an Authorized VW Dealer, they could readily afford said dealer's service for every mentioned scenario in the manual.

My mom had one of these 1970 bugs, navy blue, and I spent much of my childhood years in the back seat. Good memories.

Memories ... it was my grandfathers favourite car ... the one I would see in his garage when we would stay with him for summer holidays ... the one he would take us on summer day trips in ...

These things don't run on petrol or service history ... they run on memory and nostalgia.

Gold.

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