Bill C.-

Nat, our Vdubber this month, is of a younger generation in our club; not one of us old stinkers. I hear, from sources, that he was the high school mascot at Houston HS(?), inheriting that position from Karl L., also a member. Where his predecessor went off to UT on a mascot scholarship, Nat is trying something a little different… maybe even extreme. He wanted something other than college. So Nat is… tah dah!… joining the U.S. Marines!

Nat ships out to boot camp at Parris Island in January, where he will enjoy 3 months of excellent cooking, public showers, dormitory conditions (yeh.. it will be like… uh COLLEGE…uh … yeh), a personal trainer, a brand new ward robe of fashion designer clothes, and probably a lot of sand.. like on a tropical beach. Wow. That will be SO cool. After he gets all tan and buff, then he is going to Florida for a year. No, it won’t be Disney World or South Beach; Pensacola instead. He will be trained to become an aircraft mechanic. When you read the rest of this, it will definitely come in handy.  But before he can use his new skills on VWs, he will head out for some free ocean cruises on really big cruise liners… I mean… aircraft carriers. He’ll be keeping the jets flying that protect us every day. Way cool, Nat… AIR cool!

Brings me to the point of his air-cooled ride, a ’71 (Halloween) Orange Type-3 Squareback, that he calls “Cassandra.” He has owned it for about 2 years. Nat needed something to replace his orange Super Beetle which t-boned a Honda. Since he needed a VW and a member needed to buy a wedding ring, it was like sweet poetry.

But it hasn’t quite been a love song. There has been a cycle of repairs. But maybe that helped Nat gain some valuable maintenance experience. First he had to plug up some holes in the pans (kind of like machine gun holes from the Red Baron). He had to keep Cassandra flying, so 2-part epoxy (a.k.a. Bondo) solved the problem for now. The replacement will wait until he gets some Marine time behind him.

Then, 6-months later, he tried his hand at the clutch. It took about 3 clutch assemblies to get it right, but only lasted for 4 months (what luck). Another 3-4 months and the engine started bleeding oil, massively, from every spot imaginable. Tom Taylor (aka Da’ Back) came to the rescue. I think you call this the 4-month installment plan. Next, came the muffler; then the brake line that runs up the tunnel blew. So, he also treated it to a master cylinder. And now, he needs a pair of carbs; almost a rebuild. If you can hook him up with a pair of Weber ICT single barrels, he would appreciate it.

But there have been worse times; like the time he took Cassandra fishing. He was leaving the old fishing hole, when he managed to high center her on the trail, messing up his transaxle mounts and jamming the shifter in second gear. A friend pulled him home behind his Tundra with a rope. So Nat had to be the “brakes” in this arrangement. But his luck didn’t get any better. He burnt up the front discs on the way home, at one point ending up “dead in the water” in a busy intersection in rush hour traffic. Now, I don’t know if this in any way might affect clutch life, but there was a time he even towed a Pontiac Transport van. You think?

He loves his Squareback and wouldn’t change a thing about it, except its current cycle of breakdowns. The ladies in his life seem to like it too. It has a new engine, with hydraulic lifters, a new transaxle, master cylinder, and new radio and speakers. He has hopes for better seats, a new headliner, patching up the body and doing those pans.

I’m sure he will have his Type-3 looking good; especially with all that expert training. Here is wishing Nat the best in the Marines and that he will return safe and sound to his family and friends.