Without a doubt, the big project of the last few months was selling the Cessna 170 and moving out of the hangar. This took literally months. I owned the airplane for about 15 years, and I felt like it was a long chapter that needed to finally end- the plane needed to move on to someone else. I also wanted to lower my expenses, simplify things and take a break fo General Aviation. I'd like to move to an IFR-equipped, 200mph airplane someday, but right now, I think this is a good thing. Honestly, selling the plane was the easiest part of the journey. I had been accumulating stuff for longer than I owned the plane, and the hangar was always an easy place to just store stuff that I wasn't using but I didn't want to let go of. It was always the answer that was too easy: "I'll just put it down inthe hangar." So, it took quite a while to get rid of all this years of accumulation. I must have done 30 Craigslist transactions and nearly as many Ebay sales. I sold a 4X5 view camera kit with 3 lenses. A Voigtlander R2 camera. A complete 4X5 darkroom including a Beseler 4X5 enlarger, 2 cold light heads, 18 trays, chemistry containers... giant flat files full of art, airplane parts, car parts, the Okamoto surface grinder (yes, it went to a machinist in San Pedro for about a grand), tool carts, tools, sheets of foam, a hydraulic press. The bug body and all the associated parts, desks, chairs, thousands of photographs and drawings. Even the pallet racking is gone, as is the wood from the overhead loft I built between the two rack towers. What I needed to hang on to I moved to a small 10X10X10 storage unit in Carson. This dropped my monthly expenses from, I'd guess about $1000 per month ($600 hangar, airplane insurance, annual inspection, operating costs, foreflight, etc) down to $200 for the storage unit. I'm hoping to eventually get rid of that too. Sooooo many trips to the dump, to goodwill, to the house...I thought it would never end. But as of today, I removed the padlock, the space is empty, and I no longer pay rent there. It's liberating.
No my focus is on home, on family, and reorganizing the garage shop, and the languishing project that is the Volkswagen bug. I think I may have found someone to bring the body to, and that's a small breakthrough in itself. A guy in Wilmington that wants to do it quickly- not keep it for a 'minimum of 1 year' as another perfectionist guy wanted to do. I just need a good driver. I cut up the 67 body, and took the dash out of it. The '64 body has a large hole where the gauge cluster is supposed to go. Tragic...
Next are the quarter panels. I'm trying to retrieve as large and intact sections as I can manage. There is an amazing thread of thesamba.com of this dude in Florida doing his own work on his bug, and it's just amazing seeing how he does it.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=699235
I hope this doesn't turn into a dead link- he seems to have lost some momentum over the last few months. But watching how he removes panels by grinding the spot welds away, then seeing his careful fitting and tig work... it's just masterful... very inspiring. I thought- "Oh, I'll do that!". It really made me feel ok to start cutting body panels instead of fretting about it. So I started grinding the front sill spots rivets away from the dash piece. Let me tell you, it's exhausting. I went immediately the "what the hell was I thinking?" place. I go there a lot with this particular project, which has now expanded like some car-parts-kaleidoscope. Now that I'm committed to having all the parts in and around my garage, it has completely overwhelmed the space.
Adding to the mayhem, I impulsively put the Clausing 5914 lathe up on Ebay. I just had enough of it taking up so much space and never quite coming together. then, of course, as it was up for sale, I started putting it together. Not only getting a new leadscrew shear pin back in place (which is, like, everything if you want to actually use it) but I was so disappointed in the performance, I bit the bullet on changing the motor drive pulley diameter- I went from 24 teeth to 18, I think. and that made a huge difference in usability and torque. This was all happening while it was up on Ebay. There is nothing that will get the weird dudes out and stalking you than putting a decent American lathe up for sale. This one guy from Texas stalked my via craigslist, found my email and got my number, then talked my ear off for over and hour. All they want is the same thing- they want you to take the machine off the listing and sell it to them directly. Of course, Ebay very much frowns on all that.
Here is a short video I made that acts as a sort of sales pitch for it:
As I got it ready for the auction close and eventual pickup, I kept fiddling with it. I installed the Royal collet closer. It had been sitting for years- I never installed it. What a sweet piece of kit that thing is. So satisfying to operate and dial it in (Joe Piecynski has a great video on refining the bearings and mounts to reduce clatter and noise). In any case, by the time the auction was halfway through, I was like, 'Damn. I don't want to sell this now.' The clincher was an exchange I had with Ryan Kalamers- a fellow in Northern California who has completed a stunning restoration of his 5914. He convinced me that the lathe was so close to getting dialed in. I have a small leak from the headstock which he thinks is not a big deal to fix (he's been all through his own headstock so I'm inclined to believe him on this.) His own machine had been crashed so hard that the chuck was seized, the spindle bent and the T-nut slot was bent upward. After all that, he is now a hug fan of his machine. All this made me regret putting it up on Ebay.
So, somewhat fortuitously, some mystery no-name bidder with like 2 transactions in their history won the auction. For $1900. Less than I had expected, honestly. But no call or message came. I opened the 'unpaid item' case. Still nothing. The case finally closed and now I'm just thinking I will keep it after all.
Continue reading "Finishing out 2020 / Getting back into the bug" »