I had that wandery feeling in my Beetle. That's to be expected in a 46 year old car though I suppose. I have, at some point in the 19 years I've had it, replaced all of the front suspension and steering joints, and all related bushings. Well, almost all related bushings. There was one original rubber piece left on the front of the car, the rag joint between the steering column and steering box. From about the late 50's on, most cars use a rubber joint here because it dampens road vibration so you don't feel it in the steering wheel. Old American cars are made in such a way that when the rubber fails, the column and box are still mechanically locked. Your steering will be very, very loose, but you will still be able to limp home. The VW isn't like this, there is no mechanical failsafe backup. If the rubber lets go, you've got no steering, at all. So, I decided I should probably replace the coupler(particularly since it's a $10 part). It only takes 4 bolts, and is much easier to replace than when I did the same thing on my Corvette. Here's the original coupler on the left next to my new one. You can see the cracks in the original rubber that cause some extra play in the steering.
Installation is super simple. Take the four bolt out, slip the old rag joint out and the new one in, and reinstall the bolts. It's even reasonably accessible after you've taken the wheel off.
The other thing I wandered...er...wondered about was my engine. One of the first real mods I did to the car was add a full compliment of VDO gauges. They included the standard tach and oil pressure, but also oil temp, cylinder head temp, and boost. Back when I was still running the supercharger, they all worked. But for the last 5,000 miles or so, I've been running a stock 40HP engine. Since I put this engine in, the oil pressure and oil temp(and boost, obviously) gauges haven't been hooked up. I'd broken my oil temp sender taking the blower motor out, and I never replaced it. Because of this particular engine's configuration, my VDO oil pressure sender wouldn't fit either, so I had no oil pressure readings.
I decided to finally do something about it. The oil temp sender is the easiest to install sender of any I've ever used. It simply replaces the oil drain plug. That's it. I know it seems like a bad idea to have a wire hanging off the bottom of the engine, but I've done my share of "off roading" with this car, and I've never once had the wire catch on anything.
The oil pressure sender was a whole nother ball of wax. On late model air cooled VWs, the oil pressure port stick sideways off the engine, so the VDO sender screws right on. This engine has the port sticking straight up, and right next to the intake manifold. It also uses a straight metric thread while the VDO sender is a standard 1/8" pipe tread. So, I needed an adapter to go from the metric thread to standard, and an elbow for clearance. Autometer provided the adapter, Ace Hardware the elbow.
The problem with that is that the whole thing is too tall and can't be screwed in because it hits the intake manifold. So, since both fittings are brass, and brass solders very well, I decided to just make a fitting that fit. First, I cut the threads off the 1/8" pipe elbow, and filed the stub down to where it would just slip into the adapter's female threads.
Then I soldered them up. It's pretty quick work with a torch, and there's so little pressure in the system that even standard electrical/plumbing solder is more than strong enough.
The new adapter is just barely short enough to clear the intake and thread in. Here's where it sits on the engine(the little bit of clearancing on the intake is from when I'd initially tried to get the sender to fit when I first put this engine in years ago).
And with the port now turned 90°, the big VDO sensor fits just about perfectly between the intake and distributor.
And with that, all my gauges work the way they're supposed to. Except for the boost gauge. I'll put that one on the list ;)
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