1970 VW Fastback (1 Viewer)

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Got it to fire up on starting fluid Saturday night. We tried several times with gas and the fuel pump, but determined that I purchased the wrong length fuel pump push-rod so we needed to find one of those.

My buddy 'knows a guy', crotchety old vw hoarder in town. We scheduled a visit to him for Sunday morning as we had a short list of items I'd misplaced or never had. Starter bolt and nut, throttle cable barrel nut (vw specific, not a generic one), 4-3/8" fuel pump push rod (I'd purchased a 4" rod) and shifter-tube lock-out plate? (I think that's what it's called).

We spent an hour at Don's place/junkyard, I guess there's a house in there somewhere, but it's mostly piles of vw parts and cars and pathways and plastic tubs/homemade sheds. We were quizzed and berated a bit, but he eventually found everything we needed and gave it to me for a whopping $5. Well worth the abuse. Like I said he's a crotchety old dude (probably in his seventies, we're the 'young guys' in our fifties), so we took our abuse and thanked him.

Got the right fuel road installed, still no fuel...bad fuel pump. It's really sad that a town of this size has no parts store that stocks a mechanical fuel pump for a vehicle as ubiquitous as an air-cooled vw. 'Back in the day', we had a store called Bow Wow, that would have had everything we needed on the shelf, including the berating parts-counter guy that new everything vw...alas I had to resort to Amazon-one-day delivery and am anxiously awaiting a cheap Chinese POS fuel pump to arrive sometime today.

Shift-plate installed. The auto car pan does not have a captive nut in the right spot for the manual shifter plate, so we jury rigged a floating captive M8x1.25 nut into place on the forward half of the plate using some weatherstrip adhesive. Worked out well. shifts through all the gears. Clutch probably needs adjusted, but I'm saving that for after I can get it to run with the fuel pump.
 
Nice work! My older brother bought a '66 Fastback as his first car, it ended up needing a lot more work than was planned. That car was my introduction to wrenching on older vehicles: we pulled the body off the floor pan, swapped the Type 1 engine it came with for a correct spec Type 3 pancake engine, repaired rust, welded in new engine tins, rewired pretty much the entire car, replaced a damaged front frame horn, and replaced most of the interior among other things. He still has it, but it has been parked for a few years due to a transmission issue.

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auto or manual trans? If auto, probably time to swap to manual as I'm told the autos are hard to find and repair.

I got a new fuel pump and it works, then tried to get the accelerator cable hooked up and it was an inch and a half too short. Ordered a new one, 2642mm long, and it showed up Friday.

Still having issues with the key/ignition staying in the start position and when I try to manually turn it back to disengage the starter, it kills the engine.

I think whenever the P.O. hacksawed the wheel lock pin off of this assembly, they damaged something. I may have to source a whole new assembly.

Also, the only way it stays running is with the carbs almost wide open. Probably need to rebuild the carbs too.
 
Manual transmission, as I recall it had problems popping out of gear and leaked gear oil in large quantities.

P.O. wiring is the worst! Are new ignition cylinders available? As I recall my brother had to get an ignition switch, he ended up with a complete used steering column.
 
New cheap knock-off cylinders are available. I'll probably have to source a used one as well. I've got one in the squareback I bought for parts, but it's a 3-wire and the 1970 fastback is a 4-wire ignition.
 

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