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OK this one does tend to ramble, be warned I went over to my sister's to fix the ignition switch on her bug. on the way home I decided to take a little journey off the beaten path. I rounded a corner and stepped on the gas and felt a horrible loss of power. I glanced in the rear view to see white smoke coming out the back of the car, and started thinking burnt piston,valve,bearing or something along those lines.. but as I stopped the interior filled with black smoke . I grabbed my daughter out of the seat next to me, got out and ran to the back of the car, where I opened the hatch and the engine compartment lid. Flame shot out, licking my headliner and driving me back from the car. we're out sortof in the country and the ditches are pretty full, it's been raining alot lately.. so I grabbed an old ammo box out of the back, dumped it's contents out and started bailing, thinking to myself "don't throw water on a grease/oil fire"(SPLASH) " you're gonna spread the fire and burn up the whole car"(SPLASH) "Why oh why is my fire extinguisher at home in my garage"(SPLASH) and then it was out. the whole thing burned for maybe 45 seconds, but it seems like five minutes when I look back Mostly melted damage, a few wires, distributor cap, PCV hoses. my main concern is the foam type air cleaner melted away and I can only assume it got sucked down the carb. to add insult to injury the wrecker driver dropped the car while backing it in to my driveway, crumpling my right front fender.. so he only charged me $40 for the tow (Christian wrecker service my ass) The culprit : there's a three inch rip in the fuel line between the Y and the right carb. the other fuel lines were cracked( or maybe just baked) so they all get replaced.. aside from a few wires not much was damaged that I wouldn't have replaced in a major tune up except the plastic plugs on the top of the breather box( as bastardized as my engine is I don't know if they are FI leftover or if I really need this breather box) speaking of things I don't need, why do I need the plastic spacers between the carb and the manifold? if I lost them it would drop the carbs down about 5/16" and this would shurely help with the fitting of an aftermarket paper type filter.. I think every thing is going to be OK, there doesn't appear to be any meltings in the manifold, but the inside of the carb was a nasty mess. cleaned up really well, so I'm going to try it , but I bought a rebuild kit, just in case.. new wires and a steam cleaning and we'll see how it goes sorry about the ramble, but I feel better getting it out(cyber therapy) brandon ------------------------------------------------------------------- List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org