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Greetings to the list!! A quick introduction first--I'm not sure how formal/informal this list is, but so y'all know who I am: I live in St. Paul, Minnesota and finished college here last year (presently I'm just working and pursuing lots of side projects while I take a break before plunging into graduate school). Unfortunately (in this case), I grew up with a philosopher father and a musician mother, neither of whom ever spent much time learning about cars--if something broke, they just took it to the mechanic! I have inherited the hands-on gene from somewhere, and I'm doing my best to learn about fixing cars without any guidance from friends or family (somehow, none of my friends work on their own cars, either). I recently bought a 1971 squareback. The previous owner of 6 years was a VW mechanic, as was his father for 20 years before that. So he did a fair amount of work on the engine--it was recently rebuilt (he didn't give me a mileage figure--about two years ago), and has dual Weber carbs installed. To fit the carbs in, he cut a hole in the top of the engine cover, so they stick out into the engine. When I bought it, I didn't know enough to realize this wasn't how it was supposed to be--the previous owner told me I should be able to buy the "missing" engine cover piece from Rocky Mountain for $10-20... He said he was using an upside-down glass mixing bowl until it broke. Now I don't have a problem with having it stick up, cosmetically, and I'm sure I can come up with some bowl variation or build something to cover it well, but I wonder about the effect this hole on the engine cover has on the cooling system? I would imagine it completely screws with the airflow! I also am not sure if he modified the engine at all to run better with the dual carbs--I do know he included the original single carb in the buckets of parts he gave me with the car. I'm trying to decide if I should pull off the dual Webers and reinstall the singles, especially since I don't really care about performance/ pickup/speed. Any suggestions? Thanks! Meghan mekennedy@stkate.edu or phishlady@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/~phishlady PS I borrowed some Squareback JPEGs from a few of your wonderful web pages earlier (pics of the two red '71 squarebacks and one orange '71?'72?)--I will be putting up links to the pages they came from this afternoon, and I only intend to use these pictures until I have a chance to scan my own in--hopefully within the next two weeks! If anyone whose picture I grabbed has a problem with it being on my web page, please e-mail me and I will remove it immediately! (see http://www.geocities.com/~phishlady/square.html).