REPAIR

Workshop manuals are usually based on work which is carried out on recent examples of the car concerned, examples on which nuts and bolts are not seized solid, on which screw slots, nuts and bolt heads have not previously been distorted by some ham-fisted and ill-equipped incompetent, on which clean components come apart easily and the use of brute force and ignorance is never a tempting – though dangerous –option. With old cars of all types, life is rarely so easy, and the author has attempted to include as many of the typical problems encountered when working on old Beetles as possible, and to give the best solutions to those problems.
Occasionally, a workshop manual will advise a particular course of action without explaining how the item in question works, why it is there, or without giving background information on why the work should be done. The author believes that if the reader understands how a mechanical item works and what it does, then he or she will be better equipped to deal with any problems which arise concerning it.
This book approaches mechanical repair work as though the individual jobs were being during a restoration rather than as one-off running repairs. As far as possible, the chapter is written so as to be of benefit to those who do have to tackle a particular repair in isolation, although space dictates that in this respect this book should be viewed as a companion to a workshop manual.
Mo: of v the conIn E.will in a hax you the of t, the the will the sou'. (Pr( exn and you soli whi whi ada MC eno obv can nut alw port like pull ball stru incl call uric canAs with the previous chapter, the number and variety of specifications of Beetles prevents any single work on mechanical repair from being truly comprehensive, and readers are strongly advised to obtain a good workshop manual specific to their own Beetle. Bear in mind that the more limited the scope of the manual (the fewer varieties of Beetle it covers) the more comprehensive it will be. A manual which covers half a dozen different models will be very limited in specific detail on any of them.The author strongly recommends that novices use a camera to record stages in the strip-down of mechanical components as a reminder of how they fit together during re-assembly! Not even the most detailed of workshop manuals – let alone a restoration guide – can illustrate absolutely everything and, although the author and editor have included as many illustrations aspossible, the 80,000 or so production modifications to the Beetle preclude the chance of any book ever being truly comprehensive in this respect.