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Hi all, The '69 is zooming again! We just got back from a trip out to dinner, and it was a happy camper. Here are the gory details: I started off by digging into the fan housing. To get the fan/pulley bolt off in the automatic, you can't just put the car in gear as with the manual. I fear that I probably shouldn't even tell you how I got it off, but... ...here goes. :) (Don't try this at home, kids!) I disconnected the big coil wire *and* removed the distributor trigger contacts. I put the 36mm socket on the breaker bar, added a couple of feet of cheater pipe for extension, and had my wife engage the starter for just a *second*. Worked like a charm--the huge bolt popped free on the first try. (I held the cheater so that if it got away from me, it would just fly out of my hands -- not hit me!) Try this trick at your own risk. Slid the generator out of the pulley housing, unbolted the pulley housing, and removed the pulley housing and pulley together. Just slid them up. Next I undid the rear (front is front) of the fan housing. That wouldn't come out of the car until after the fan was off, so I hooked up the ol' puller and yanked it off. (I didn't remove the stock muffler!) Tink! A little, innocent (but quite rounded) bolt fell to the ground. Problem confirmed. I chatted with Jim Adney a bit, and he said that the stock bolts are quite short and that the hole in the case is quite deep. He generally suggests drilling and tapping that hole (6mmx1.00) much deeper and using much longer bolts w/ loctite. I went to the hardware store & picked up some longer bolts. I chased the threads a bit deeper with my tap and installed new, longer bolts with loctite. I bought several lengths figuring that I would buy bolts that were too long, but the longest ones I bought went in just fine. Also, one of the other bolts was missing, and a third was finger-loose and ready to fall out. Ugh. (Steven A. -- if you run into J.D., you might pass on the "tap 'em deeper & use longer bolts w/ loctite" tip for the next T3 he builds!) Inspecting the fan I removed from the car revealed that the loose bolt sheered flat the inner front (front is front) fan blade retaining tabs. Ugh. After inspecting my extra fan (the one the rebuilders didn't want to put back on the car) revealed that that one was ever so slightly loose on its hub. Almost imperceptible, but loose just the same. Must be why they rejected it! I decided to reinstall the fan I'd just removed. I'll look into having Berg repair the fan that's loose on the hub, so that I can put it into service. So much for the Columbus show! It really is a spectacular event, and I'm sorry to have missed it. I got a "VW day" just the same, but it's not what I'd planned for. :( Anybody got a show report? -Greg '69 & '71 Squarebacks '63 Beetle ------------------------------------------------------------------- Search old messages on the Web! Visit http://www.vwtype3.org/list/