The driveway is empty now

Took the morning off yesterday.

Put the trailer ball on the Sequoia and hooked up the beetle. In its current state it's real easy to push around myself. Put on the safety chain and tried the turn signals - Murphy's Law, left on the truck is right on the bug and right on the truck is left on the bug. Good thing it's all spade lugs, took a couple minutes and swapped them.

I started to drive away and the bug's front wheels were wandering all over the place, anything but straight ahead. Another stumbling block. I wouldn't be able to drive that way. Light bulb over my head - I got a bungee cord, hitched it to one side of the steering wheel, under the front seat mount, and back to the other side of the steering wheel. The car has very light steering and this did the trick - straight ahead but with a little give each way. One of the things I like about this project - it's light bulb over my head over and over. Figuring things out is fun.

Got to the body shop and unhitched the car. Spent some time with the shop owner going over what I want for the car. Fill in the exhaust pipe cutouts with sheet metal welded in. Fill in the louvres in front of the windshield. Fill in all the chrome strip holes. Fill in the antenna hole. He got out a marker and started writing all over the car. We discussed paint color options and he told me we have some time to make a decision.

In the mean time, I decided to deal with some minor vibration issue with the flywheel on the motor. I have a dial indicator that I borrowed and there's a little runout. I took out the allen bolts and used a chisel to wedge between the tapered split ring and the hub, but it was on so tight that I cracked the tapered split ring. Well, live and learn. When I installed the hub a while back I assumed that it would just all come out straght, but apparently you need to keep an eye on alignment while tightening, cuz once it's on, it ain't easy to get off. Ordered another tapered split ring from Ryan this morning.