Back in the day I put Repco MetalMaster pads on the 83.5. Great braking once they were warm, but scary useless until then. Since I lived on a hill I learned to drag the brakes all the way down to build up heat, and by the time I got to the freeway everything was up to temp and working great.

The one pictured, if it was gasoline powered, would have had a 1.9l engine with 82 HP. The earler 2.0l engines were air-cooled and had 67 HP, but those didn’t have the lower grille. 1986-1991 models, with the rectangular headlights, had a 2.1l engine with 90 or 95 HP depending on the year. This data is just for the US…

I loved driving those things, especially without an aircraft attached. Like a long-haul truck there were so many gears to deal with; as I recall, lightly loaded I’d start out in 5th or something near there.

Agreed. The wheel and the shifter make the most out of the situation, and I wouldn’t hesitate to drive one again, just not a normally-aspirated Westfalia diesel; I may have become more patient with age, but I’m not that patient. I suspect that there are some out there, probably those that only know how to drive an…

The 911 conversion was slightly more popular back in the days of the air-cooled Vanagon, but much less common after water cooling took over. I worked parts at a VW dealer back in the ‘80s and actually rode in one with a 911 engine. It was hilarious, since neither the brakes nor suspension had been modified. Get on the…

My mother’s previous car was a ‘90 Carat, with 90 screaming horses. Much to everyone’s surprise, she had multiple speeding tickets in that thing, and received a letter from the DMV telling her to reconsider her driving habits. I got the same letter at the same time, but I was driving a Dinan modified BMW E34, so for…

My 1983.5 Vanagon could easily do 70 (and peg the speedo at 85 with patience), but it was bare-bones and had a whopping 82 HP. Lowering it and adding an air dam definitely helped with the top speed and acceleration. But take away 34 HP and add a ton of weight from that and the diesel Westfalia was in a class of its…

Well, the non-camper version could do 0-60 in 41.1 seconds and had a top speed of 67 MPH, so yeah, the Westfalia might have a bit of trouble achieving that speed.

How about 48 HP and 4,000 lbs with manual steering? Acceleration is dreadful, so you have to drive it flat out 100% of the time, meaning that you’re pressing down on the accelerator with every ounce of pressure you can muster, hoping to get to 60 MPH before you encounter that pebble in the road half a mile ahead...

At LAX we once had a fueler that serviced all of the propane-powered equipment, smoking the entire time. I don’t remember what became of him, but I don’t remember a smoking crater by the GSE parking area either...

Not only what can be sucked into engines, but also what can stick into tires. Just last week I stumbled across a picture of a piece of a suitcase that stabbed the nosegear tire of an A320, the replacement of which obviously delayed the flight. One airline told me that delays to a flight cost them about $6,000/minute…

A friend back in high school bought a Vega with a 350 under the hood. Except for the engine, the car was pretty much stock. This led to multiple differential explosions, since the factory Vega diff could barely contain the power of the stock engine. Rather than saving up for a Ford 9 inch, he’d go down to the junkyard…

Been there. Back in the pre-Internet days I was changing the shoes on the rear brakes on my VW Vanagon. Instead of reading the damn manual (I was 19 and knew everything) I decided that I had to pull the axle nut to get to the shoes and bought a special wrench that required pounding with a hammer to remove that nut;…

When I first read this I thought it was going to be about a vacuum leak. I don’t know if it’s true for all M10 engines, but the 1.8 in my 1981 320i (or ‘32 oy’ (oi) as a friend called it) was particularly susceptible to this. Just pulling the dipstick was enough to cause the engine to shut down, which could sometimes…

Have you tried to buy a VW lately? A couple of package options is about all the choice you get, so you're either buying a stripper (that you'll never see at a dealership) or loaded with stuff you don't want (can I please get a well-equipped vehicle with a manual and no sunroof? No? Bye.)

Maybe if it was coupe, then - nah, still too many problems and too many miles. At $1K it might be OK, but any more than that and you're really pushing the boundaries of sanity.

I have and use one of those, in that arrangement, on a regular basis. My main problem, just like a regular watch, is that I tend to smack it into things and break/crack the glass on the front. My favorite watch has this problem, as does my nano watch. Thankfully the damage on the nano is contained to the corner.

Malibu Grand Prix. Need I say more?

I know the feeling well. My day-to-day computer is an early-2008 MacBook Pro, and it does just about everything I could ask of it. Sure, a newer machine would be great, but I’ve spent so little on this one I can’t justify spending more than $100 on a replacement.

Speaking as someone that had one of those hateful things grab me by the neck and stuff my head into the dashboard, those dreadful contraptions can rot in hell along with the idiot politicians that thought that a hybrid automatic/manual seatbelts were a good idea. At least when VW had their passive belts in the ‘70s…