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Video Overview:

We just passed the 2 year mark from when Nathan first bought this 1972 VW Beetle. It sure has come a long way since then, and as Nathan celebrates his 3rd birthday owning the car (since he bought it just a few days before he turned 13) as he turns 15, he wanted to take his car out and do some off roading.

First Sam has to address a dried out vacuum canister in the old Pertronix SVDA and does that with a custom made "Shepherd's Hook", made from a brake line. Then he installs a mildly modified JBugs SVDA distributor that he installed a Pertronix Ignitor 1 module in, sets the timing and then the pair head out to the dirt for some fun.

Unfortunately, Sam didn't notice the left side IRS pivot bolt that had backed out. Amazingly, the trailing arm stayed in place for a 15 minute drive to the dirt, and for 20+ minutes of off-roading, some of which was very rough at times. In the end, the pair got the car back home though and the damage was minor enough. So, watch, enjoy, and learn!

Video Transcript:

Nathan, you get to drive your car off-road for your birthday. Yeah. Hi guys, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate. And welcome to our garage where it is Nathan's 15th birthday. Nathan, what do you want to do on your birthday? Drive this and work on a jet ski that I got from Kyle.

So, today we are going to work on replacing this distributor only because it's got a worn out vacuum advance, which I will address later. While I do this, however, Nathan's going to get to work on his jet ski, which was a complete jet ski like last night. Now, it's completely torn apart. Yeah.

So, I have noticed driving this car — and we've almost got 600 miles on it to this point — I'm literally at my desk watching this, realizing how stupid I was to not notice that IRS pivot bolt was missing. My vision has gotten so bad — you guys have seen me wearing glasses obviously over the last couple years — but I didn't realize my vision was literally that bad. I could not see that pivot bolt, you know, 3-4 feet away, and that's kind of the zone. I can't see anything that's within arm's reach or thereabouts. If it's 10 ft away, I can see it fine. But get your eyes checked and check your cars, especially if you guys are going off-roading regularly, which we have done quite a few times in this car.

Get your eyes checked, guys and gals, and check over your car regularly, especially if you're going off-roading. I could have easily prevented this little mishap that you're going to see later. At the end of the day, we only actually lost a CV boot and flange, a shock grommet, the pivot bolt, and the two washers. So it could have gone much worse, but man, that was stupid on my part — all because I just couldn't see. So let that be a warning to you guys. Enjoy the video.

We have lost our off-idle performance, so I have to drive it kind of like it's got a 009 distributor — which actually at this point it essentially does, because this vacuum line right here is just sucking air. That means two things: A, we've had a vacuum leak, and B, the diaphragm inside our SVDA distributor has eroded. Why has that happened? I can taste fuel in here — those fuel vapors drop down into the rubber diaphragm and they erode it. Volkswagen knew this way back in the day. They ran what's called a shepherd's hook — a steel line that attached to the carburetor, went up and then down, and connected to the vacuum advance. So I am going to duplicate that today. Additionally, I am going to install one of our JBugs vacuum advance distributors — it's an SVDA.

However, it came from the factory with points. Now, I have made one small modification to that, and I was able to install a Petronix dropin 1847V electronic ignition module. I'm going to swap out this distributor for that distributor, get it timed up, and additionally hook up a shepherd's hook so that we don't have that problem with a new distributor wearing out the vacuum advance can.

**Improvised shepherd's hook:** Took a 16-and-3/4-inch brake line, ground down the ends, knocked off the threaded ends, and bent it up into a unique shape that will connect from our vacuum port on the side of our carburetor and then sit right above our vacuum advance can. We can still press on our vacuum hose — we only need about an inch-and-a-half section at either end. We can push it onto our carburetor and our distributor, and that would be done if this vacuum can was in good shape. It isn't, though.

So, for our next step today, we are going to pull out this distributor. Before we do, we're going to rotate the engine over by hand until our rotor is pointing to our number one cylinder. So we're going to identify our spark plug wire going to our number one cylinder, which goes over to here — number one, this guy back here. We're going to pull our cap off. To make it easier to illustrate, I'm going to swap in a standard rotor, because right now we have a rev-limiting distributor rotor, which sounds absolutely amazing. I want to say this is a 4500 RPM rev-limiting rotor — we don't need to be revving anything higher than that. We have a couple of different versions of this available online at jbugs.com. So we're going to swap in a standard rotor.

So right now we were pointing to cylinder number two, so we're going to go TDC — we're at number one on our rotor and we're at top dead center on the crank. So now we can pull out our distributor. Anytime you're changing the distributor and you aren't certain the interchangeability — like say you're going from a 009 to a stock vacuum advance, or a stock Volkswagen distributor to an SVDA, or anytime you're changing distributors — it's always best to put your engine at number one top dead center before pulling it. That way you know when the new distributor goes in, wherever it points, it's at number one, and then you can wire on your spark plug wires accordingly and time your engine accordingly. We're going to pull the distributor, swap in our new one, and then reset and recheck the timing.

After we do that — disconnect our wires for our distributor, loosen our clamp — and with that, our distributor can come right out. For demonstration's sake, normally when you would apply a vacuum right here, this plate would move. However, now when I provide a vacuum there, it's just sucking air, which is what we want our carburetors to do. Or in this case, we have our fan hooked up to a hat to blow air in there. Gives a little bit better performance, but it's minor — it doesn't provide any boost, but it does actually help on horsepower. Ask the guys at Seward Speed Shop — proven. So this is a JBugs 113905205AN, as Nathan's showing there. As you can see — oh, it doesn't just blow air, it doesn't just suck air, it actually advances this plate like it's supposed to.

So, I have modified this, and I was able to install a Petronix 1847V electronic ignition. If memory serves, there is just a small little tang or tab on the inside back that I had to snip. I just use a pair of side cutters and snip that little plate down, and I was able to bolt this Petronix electronic ignition into our JBugs distributor. So with that, we're going to get this guy installed. Wherever our rotor points is going to be number one — we'll see if it's the same place as it was before or if it's in a different position. But that looks like number one. Yep, there we go. All right.

So that is number one. We'll just continue using our same cap, because our JBugs distributor uses the same cap as a 009 distributor, and it's easier doing it this way. However, it might be in a completely different position than it was last time. Yep — and this distributor cap is out 180° compared to what it was before. So all of our wires have to be spun around 180°. Easy enough. Like that — so this is cylinder number two, cylinder number one, cylinder number three, cylinder number four, and coil in the center. We'll go through and plug our wires in just like they were before. Black to negative, red to positive, and this thing should fire right back up.

All right, Nate, you want to do the honors? It's either going to start or it's going to backfire. Yeah — make sure she's not in gear. Just like that. Yeah. Timing without — yeah.

So, now that we know we're running and good to go there, we're gonna hook up our Snap-on timing light. Hopefully it still works — last time I used it at work it was being intermittent, so hopefully it does work. I'm going to go through and set the timing to 30° advance with our vacuum line disconnected and plugged off. That way we know that no matter what, under full advance, we're not going to get anything more than 30°. From the little bit of testing I've seen when Kyle was tuning his car — he played around with timing on the dyno, and honestly 28 degrees was the maximum amount of horsepower he had gotten. We went 28, we went 30, we went 31, 32, 33, even as much as 35° advanced, and it was just not making any more power after 28°. So I'm going to dial this thing at 30. A lot of times people are going to tell you between 30 and 33° — it's just all personal preference from there. But I'm going to set it at 30, assuming my timing light works, and this thing will be good to go down the road. Start her up, Nathan — see if we're outside. I mean, we could — yeah, we could go ahead.

Yep, all right — so vacuum line disconnected. Pack advance 30°. We're looking for about 2500 RPM. All right, I'm going to try and bring you guys in for a closeup of kind of what I'm doing — Nathan's going to hold and help me out. So we're going to go to 3,000 RPM on our tachometer. I'm going to again go over to 30 and I'll show you what we're looking for on our distributor. Nathan, rev it up to 3 grand.

So, with that, when we hook up our vacuum line, we should get a lot better acceleration off of idle — I'll show you what I mean right here. Notice how it kind of bogs right off when we touch the throttle — got that little bog right there. Watch this. And that's why I like vacuum advance distributors.

So with that, we've got our new JBugs 111395 205AN vacuum advance distributor installed. It's a single-vacuum, dual advance — meaning it's got a vacuum advance and a centrifugal advance. That centrifugal advance is what we saw when I was setting the timing light — that was just the distributor itself advancing out to 30°. And then once we hook up our vacuum, we get that little bit of vacuum right off of idle, which helps that transition right off idle — it just makes the drivability that much better. We've got a shepherd's hook installed, so hopefully this vacuum diaphragm should last much longer than that other Petronix one has. Now, fair point — that's been on there almost a year and a half. Longer than a year and a half. I've noticed this problem with the vacuum over the last two months. But yeah, with that, we're going to go out and do a little off-roading today, because that's what he wants to do for his birthday. And with that, we're off-roading for Nathan's birthday. Yeah! Happy birthday, Nathan. Thank you. I'm Sam and I'm Nathan — life, people can't find one. Later, guys.

*[Off-roading footage]*

Well, Nathan, it's broken. Really broken. Yeah — really, really broken. What had happened was our IRS pivot bolt came loose and then all the way out. That's why guys will actually cer-pin those in place for off-roading. Nathan was having fun, we were having fun, and then I noticed — hey, feels like we have a flat tire. No, we lost the pivot bolt.

We tried to drive it out because I'm not going to leave a car like this just sitting out in the dirt. Yeah, we saw a pretty bad truck — we saw a very bad truck, with the roof cut off and spray paint all over it and a lighter in the gas cap area. So we weren't going to leave this out there. So we tried to drive back, and we lost a CV.

Well, at least Grandpa's house is pretty close. So we got to tow it back, and we will fix it and cover that in a video coming soon most likely. Yeah, we're just — so with that, I'm Sam and I'm Nate. And life's full of good people — if you can't find one, be one. Later, guys. And one last time, happy birthday, Nathan. Yeah, happy, very happy birthday. Happy birthday. Not the to the Baja bug, Nathan. Not, not to the Baja bug. Yeah.