I owned a 72 VW Westfalia for a few hundred thousand miles. The styling combined the nice front bumper from previous years that included a rubber covered step with the rectangular air intakes to the engine compartment versus the crescent moon shaped ones of previous models. I had dropped a 1.7 liter Type IV engine from a Porsche 914 including electronic fuel injection when VW wanted $800 apiece for two new carbs shortly after I bought it in 1975.
The only real problem was when a driver I had hired to drive it across the country decided it needed oil when he checked it with the engine running. Had to dump two more quarts in, he did. When he reached the top of the pass before dropping down to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, he immediately shut it off. 20 seconds later, the oil soaked cooking engine burst into flame. Took my two and three trucker's fire extinquishers to knock it down. Happens all the time. Wish the truckers had HALON like I did though. It took me and a VW mechanic friend 4 months to replace my beautiful homemade harness that converted the old wiring to 914 harness figured out. No colors to go by, and now the VW main harness was cut too short to hook into a 914 harness. Bitch of a dirty messy job. Got it eventually, repainted vehicle white with L32K waist racing stripe (to match the two 914s when we towed them to the track. Engine was installed after a good pressure wash then fresh primer and paint on the sheet metal. On Sep 9, 2012, at 13:33 , P. J. Alling wrote: > I owned a 72 which brings back memories, some of them horror filled. It was > a fun car to drive, mostly. > > On 9/9/2012 4:27 PM, Ann Sanfedele wrote: >> well I only report what I saw on the form on the windshield. >> It's possible I misread it but I think I took a photo of that, too >> >> a >> >> On 9/9/2012 16:05, P. J. Alling wrote: >>> Actually I think it's a 72. The 73s sold in America were equipped with >>> a federally mandated shock absorber on the front bumper which seems to >>> not be in evidence. The 72 had a simple iron bar support which was much >>> simpler and cleaner looking that was probably just as effective. >>> >>> On 9/9/2012 2:43 PM, Ann Sanfedele wrote: -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
