Bug chronicles…

After being off the road for about three months now, I tried to start up my Beetle today.
The battery was obviously dead so had to recharge it using by connecting it to the Pajero’s battery for a good 30 minutes.

While the battery was being charged, I refitted the carburetor back on the bug as I had taken it out for cleaning. After fitting it, I noticed the nut that holds the accelerator cable to the accelerator lever was missing. I couldn’t find it in my ‘bag-o-goodies’. Will have to get another one from a carburetor guy. DAMN!

After the battery was charged, I connected it up, connected the LPG pipe to the carb, crossed my fingers and told my helper cousin, Hassan, to crank here up.

The engine turned and turned but wouldn’t fire. So, quite naturally, I took off one of the plug wires from a plug and put its tip against the metal fan shrouding. I asked Hassan to start her again. The engine turned but there was no spark at the end of the plug wires, which means that there is no current reaching the spark plugs. So problem must be with the coil or the distributor.

I took off the distributor cover and checked the gap on the point, it was perfect. I noticed a little bit of white carbon on the point’s contact area, so took it out for some cleaning with sand paper. Since I was out of sand paper too (arrggh!) I pocketed it, to be fitted the next day.

I also used a multimeter to check whether current was reaching the coil, and it was. The way to do this is to disconnect the thin, black wire from the coil and put one of the terminals of the multimeter against it and ground the other by touching some metal part of the engine/body.
This black wire is the one which comes from the battery and should show a voltage around 12v. Mine showed 11.8v. Good ’nuff.

Tomorrow I’m gonna refit the point, check the fuses, check the coil and if everything looks OK, hope that he starts up…