On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:30:54 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 06/17/2019 12:29 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 23:45:01 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 06/16/2019 09:52 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 21:07:17 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 06/16/2019 07:38 PM, wrote:
BMW is a whole other thing. It means Bring More Wampum. A ****ing
battery can cost you $500 by the time you get out the door. .

That philosophy has carried over to their bikes.

Pretty soon you figure out why they lost the war. Everything German is
very expensive, over engineered and hard to maintain.
One exception might be the old VW bugs but even they had some strange
stuff, like threaded exhaust fittings. Then of course there was the
gas tank, guaranteed to arrive first at the crash.


I had an Audi back in the day. They must have improved quite a bit since
they're still in business. It took VW a bit to figure out how to put the
engine and drive wheels in front.

In its defense Nixon dreamed up the 55 mph speed limits after I bought
it and it really didn't have a gear to handle that speed.

If you had an old (36 HP) Beetle the 55 MPH speed limit wasn't an
issue. That was about all they would do.


Probably odd for a member of my generation but I only rode in a Beetle
once, and drove one about 100' to get it away from a loading dock. I was
fascinated by the concept of an easily repairable vehicle where parts
could be mixed and matched across the years but never got around to
buying one. The closest I ever got was a model old enough to have the
little stalks that popped out for turn signals but it needed a lot of work.

You would be surprised what did NOT fit from year to year.
I stripped the splines out of the rear brake drum on the '49. A '61
had the same spline - but the drum was almost an inch wider. It fit
after an hour or two with a hammer and cold chisel and a few hack-saw
blades. -- - - - -

The Topolino (Fiat 600) I am driving this summer has a smaller engine
than the old beetle -a bit smaller overall too - and the little sucker
will do 75 on the level and 80 downhill with no problem. It's
registered as a '69 - may have been built in '67 or '68.