Happy New Year!

I haven't had a chance to spend any time working on the beetle since my last post in October. It's not clear to me why I had less time than normal, that is just the way it worked out. Anyway as I am now on my Christmas vacation I decided to spend to time working on the car. Followers of this blog will know that there were two sticky jobs that were preventing progress.

The first problem was my inability to remove cylinder number 2 from the engine. Various combinations of lubrication, hammering and heating had yielded no results. Therefore I decided to use my trusty (if scary) grinder. I wish I'd done this in October as within 15 minutes the cylinder was off.

Buoyed from this success I set about the second tricky job - the seized brake drum. A couple of hours of pulling and hammering later the drum had defeated me and I skulked off to pour myself a whisky. That was a few days ago.

Today, the 1st of January 2012, I went out and tried again and worryingly the puller screw just kept turning. The last time experienced the same feeling (way back in August 2010) it indicated a failed puller. But not this time - the drum was actually moving off the shaft!

And after a few more minutes the drum was off - I think I should get it mounted (like big game hunters used to do with bison). My wall will soon be littered with trophy parts vanquished by my mighty spanner (as Richie Rich would say, "ooer, that sounds a bit rude").

The final task today was to remove the star adjusters from the back plate. Twenty minutes with the mole wrench and blow lamp dispatched that job - another small trophy for the wall...