i picked my username years ago when i first got an e.mail account. it fitted at the stage of life i was in at the time. both as i had no direction and was just making it up as i went along and  i could also be a little grumpy. well i'm still somewhat directionless. i have an idea of the basics aka i'll be in my house with my kids and working to pay the bills. plus the way i view time has grown up with me. i'm also far grumpier and really don't like being disturbed when i'm focusing on something.

all that aside, the reason behind the title is as follows: edit: the following is rambling and prob unclear but it gets there eventually and sort of made sense as i was typing it. i haven't re read it to see if it still does)

over the weekend the family and i went down to sydney to find a new family car. it was a damn expensive exercise and my wife and i are complete idiots (we forgot about a little thing called stamp duty and now have to pull $900 extra out of our backsides...) aka we ended up spending our entire budget on the car without keeping a little aside. still while it is booring and modern, it is kind of exciting. it is a 2006 torago... yeah i can hear you asking "how is that exciting?" well as the previous newest car i have ever owned myself was built in 1971, having something close to new is a real change. even our daily driver "the pig" pajero is early 90's (and not in my name obvuiosly). it is kind of scary when the "little car" in the family is a full sized 4wd.

right, back to vw's. we stayed with my parients, so i had a poke around in my car shed "the shed o' death". an 8 by 8' garden shed FILLED with greasy crappy car bits. to be honest it isn't as bad as it used to be. it is no longer chest deep in the middle. you only have to pull out 2 panels to be able to climb in and get access to (some of) the stuff in the shelving across the back wall. btw anyone want to make me a reasonable offer on a 68 beetle engine lid or a early shape squareback rear hatch so i don't have to keep pulling them out when ever i want to get in there?  

i had got a formula vee guy to hold a 36hp longblock he wanted to get rid of. it was cheap and i like 36hp's. in the end i swapped him a pr of "373" 1200 heads for the motor and 2 early distributers. i'm happy with what i got and i hope he is as well. (the heads looked really crusty but i think they will clean up really nicely. i certainly hope so.) i still haven't carried the engine into the shed it is sitting in the back of the pig. my shed here is in the back yard and motors are heavy. plus my shed needs some more organisation. it's a mess again.

for any distributor pervs. one wis a stock 36hp dist... nothing that interesting, i've got several spares. but the other is a cast iron early 40hp bigcap dist (with a fairly good data plate too), which i didn't have one of. nfi if i will ever use it, but i love the look of cast iron dist's and they are really nice to pull apart and put back together.

while in my shed i also pulled out my other "373" 1200 heads. these ones are really nice, having only spent a matter of months on an engine. i got the engine along with a heap of other stuff way back when i first ot into vw's. i gave the pistons and cylinders  to a friend when he shattered a piston. pity as they were 82 or 83mm 40hp bigbore ones and i think they were also fairly fresh. i wish i had them now. they came up in a milk crate with a pr of bastard heads. i'd love to build a hot "bastard" motor. anything to be different.i'm in two minds re the "373" heads, keep them stock for future historic vee use or build a 40hp vintage speed style motor. i'm so indecicive.

i also grabbed a 1200 "D" manifold that i think is the one with a larger throat from the factory. there was a box of rods (i think) in the shed o' death so i grabbed them. i'm hoping to find a set of "100" 1200 rods as i believe that these are the rods to use in a historic formula vee motor. i don't intend to build it up the vee as a historic racer straight off, but it would be nice to have a pile of bits put aside for if/when the time comes.

another box i grabed was a box full of rocker gear. from 36hp through to 1600. damn that box is heavy.  while i was at it i snuck out 5 camshafts, 2 jars of lifters and various other trinkets. there is an early bastard/40hp generator pedistal (how do you spell that?) that looks so lovely woth it's lack of outside bracing. it is the little touches like that that make or break an early vintage speed motor as far as looks go.

the cams and liferes ane so i can find a suitable set to put aside for the vee's future and so i can also eventually get a cam and liters reground through stan pobjoy.

i'm sure with the right bits i could even make a 1600dp look like a vintage thing. add a cast iron dist with a brown cap (VJ4 BR25 or 019 etc), a blue coil perhaps, an early generator stand and rewound 6V size generator with the early pressed backing plate. a stock rebuildable style fuel pump. run a stock pulley. run something like kadrons with thier aircleaners painted silver and the perforated screens replaced with ones made from fine mesh to emulate the knecht aircleaner look. either run a non fresh air style fanshroud or a later shroud with all the paper airhoses and stock hoseclamps. fabricate some suitable looking hard fuel lines and maybe a more "vintage" linkage and you're ready to show off. all in all it would be rather cheap too bar having an early generator rewound for 12V (assuming you were running 12V).

all in all what this rambling post is about is, i now have so many new things to play with as well as all the on going bits and peices, i have absolutely no idea what to tinker with next.