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| October 2006 »
SNEAK PEEK - LEVEL HEADS II:
In Jim W. Coleman's latest book,
LEVEL HEADS XE: THE DELUXE EDITION, the author included a story called The Heat Pump, which has turned out to be (to him) the defining story in the book. Pictured above is the actual heat pump that inspired that chilling story of Ralph Monske and his beloved heat pump. Alas, life moves on, and the heat pump needs to be replaced. Pictured above, laborers move the new heat pump into position on the concrete slab.
To commemorate the occasion, Coleman is writing a story called "The Other Heat Pump." Watch for it in LEVEL HEADS II - the follow-up to his successful 2005 publication.
I have tried strippers of all kinds (but let's not go THERE!) and propane torches and you name it ... but the best way to remove undercoating, at least for me, is with a good heat gun. I bought a 1600 watt heat gun, and after just ten minutes, I was able to remove this much undercoating. It just slags right off. Be sure to use adequate ventilation and to put something underneath as you'll have the stuff dripping off and you'll need something to swipe your putty knife on.
We love the restaurant and love the food, but the people at Baldini's Restaurant and Lounge in Merlin, Oregon, are the greatest. We always feel welcome, no matter how corny we act. And we do tend to act up in the place. Just wait for the book!
I am shooting for a target publication date in June, 2007, and I hope to have a big book-signing bash at Baldini's near the end of that month. Stay tuned. Click here to read a sample chapter of "Omens II: The Rogue"; or click here for a sample chapter of "Omens."
A shot of the exterior of Baldini's Restaurant and Lounge in Merlin, Oregon. If travelling through the area, stop in! It's a great spot, just minutes off of I-5 from the Merlin exit. Jim W. Coleman's new novel, "Omens II: The Rogue" has many chapters set inside this wonderful little restaurant as that's where the law enforcement and search parties meet every night after searching the countryside for Cliff Rilek. We love the restaurant, we love the town, we love the people, and someday I'm going to buy that property the little cob house sits on ...
Author and artist Jim W. Coleman at one of his favorite haunts, Baldini's Restaurant and Lounge. Though 401 miles from his front door, Jim visits frequently. Here, he sits where the action takes place in his upcoming sequel, "Omens II: The Rogue."
In "Omens II: The Rogue," Daryl Collins and other law enforcement/search party folks hang out at Baldini's. (Actually, Baroni's in the book - don't need a lawsuit!). As he's contemplating making a grave mistake, he sees this elk looking at him, boring into his soul with its sharp gaze. That's how I felt as I was eating my French Onion Soup...
Author and artist Jim W. Coleman does what he does best (well, one of the things) at the Indian Mary Park on the Rogue River Historic Loop - he has a drink and writes novel sequences in his head, to later put down on hard disk. Here, he brainstorms chapter ideas with some dear friends and his wife, Linda. Unfortunately, he hogged the whole camera angle here and left them out ... :) (Photo by Bonnie Funari).
We are deeply appreciative of the Indian Mary Park hosts who were very friendly, and were there on a dime when we started acting up! Great people, great park and we hope to see them again soon!
Couldn't resist giving you a peek at the spaghetti sauce. Most of the ingredients in this sauce came from the garden. This little "test batch" resulted in seven scrumptious home-canned pints. Next time, a larger batch will be coming ...
Here, Jim W. Coleman (a.k.a. "Reverend Jim") does his best to describe his manhood, the fish he caught, or the distance from point A to point B. Who knows? Good whiskey. Good friends. Good fun!
It occured to Jim that when one is wearing hip waders, it's not like the ocean. You can't just "go." Fortunately, he had that thought early on but here, he's about ready to get out of the river to mark some territory.
Of course, they do have VW's in Merlin, Oregon and, of course, Jim W. Coleman took a picture of one. If you're into VW's, visit Jim's VW Page.
While driving the Rogue River Historic Loop, we saw wild turkeys everywhere! Gosh, but the things you see when you're on an old country road and you don't have a gun. Actually, Jim packs everywhere and had sufficient firepower ... but he is a law-abiding feller. Besides, with that many turkeys everywhere, it couldn't have been hunting season.
On the way down to the Rogue River, Jim and gang pitched the travel trailers at Mt. St. Helens, a favorite spot of Jim and Linda's. Bonnie and Paul had never been to the mountain. Here, on a foggy morning, they were denied a peek at the volcano...
Enough said.
Bonnie, Paul and Jim stand in front of the historic Wolf Creek Inn. If you get a chance to visit this, it's well worth your time. Take the "Wolf Creek" exit north of Grants Ass, Oregon, to get there. The place is full of history. A newspaper article there proclaimed that "CLARK GABLE SLEPT HERE!" A gentleman behind me quipped: "Clark Gable slept everywhere. Because he could."
I fully intend to do the same, and to have the resources to do so. Buy a book, make it happen!
Author Jim W. Coleman was delighted to have the opportunity to sign the guest book at the Whispering Hills cob house.
Jim is quoted (elsewhere on this blog) as stating that Ennis Riffle is where "all kinds of humanity come to frolic." Here is living proof. What's Paul trying to do, throw rocks at Linda? She's smart enough to dodge them. I should know. Ennis Riffle plays a part in the upcoming novel "Omens II: The Rogue."
Having never visited the Rogue before, Bonnie is amazed at the scenery.
Author and artist Jim W. Coleman sits inside a structure he envisions as remarkably similar to "The Bossman's" house. In his forthcoming novel, "Omens II: The Rogue," Cliff Rilek ends up on property very similar to this, working for Hurley Waldrip, a.k.a., The Boss Man. Over the years, Jim has visited this house, but only to look upon it from afar. On this day, he was invited inside for a tour and was overwhelmed by the workmanship. Overlooking a cemetery, this is the ideal place to set this novel, and Jim was happy to have a chance to tour the interior of the home and to sign the guestbook as well. Click here to read a sample chapter from "The Rogue." The dream scenes in this chapter are set on property like this across from a local cemetery. Be very afraid. And gather rocks so that they might provide you some shelter. "Omens II - The Rogue," is coming.
The long-awaited sequel to my novel, "Omens," is coming before you know it, and it is turning out to be the most heavily-researched book I've ever written. It's amazing how much research can go into a work of fiction. Set along the Historic Rogue Loop between Merlin and Wolf Creek, Oregon, the fictional characters are set in real places and in real situations.
My fans and friends will instantly recognize this as similar to Hurley's "the Bossman" house. We've stared at this house and wondered about it for years, through three research trips and then again by examining photos of it at home. On this trip, we got to tour the house, and pictures will be posted soon. In actuality, it's a beautiful cob house, made of straw, mud and sand. It is open to the public and we signed the guest book inside. The house is located across the street from the Wolf Creek Cemetery, a hop, skip and a jump from the Wolf Creek Inn.
The house was built by Michael "Meka" Bunch, Natural Builder, Designer and Gardener. Click here for more information on Michael Bunch, and his cob house. Many more photos are coming to the blog as soon as I can get them all processed!
As we approached the back of the house to begin our tour, you can imagine our excitement. We had admired this structure for years and never knew it was open to the public. After hanging around near the cemetery for nearly an hour, Jim finally got up the muster to approach some adults on the property to inquire about the house.
When visiting Michael "Meka" Bunch's cob house at Wolf Creek, Oregon, be sure to sign the guest book, as I did.
Can you imagine going to bed and looking up at this beautiful ceiling? The house is simply amazing.
The workmanship is stunning - there are numerous colors, textures, shapes and objects embedded in the walls to all sides.
Had Hurley Waldrip (The "Boss Man") lived in a house similar to this cob structure, he would have felt very comfortable in this spacious, warm living area.
Our friends, Paul and Bonnie Funari, accompanied us on this book research trip. Here, they explore the house with wide-eyed fascination.
There is a beautiful, though steep and narrow, set of stairs leading up to the loft. Be careful on the steps!
This is the view from the upstairs bedroom windows. Hurley may have watched over his fields from a window similar to this one.
From the outside, you can see a circular window that frames a set of antlers. Here is how it appears from inside!
Here is a view of the kitchen, the first thing you see when entering the back door. Everything works, running water and all. There also is a clever garbage chute built into the wall.
Here is a close-up of one of the unfinished areas of the wall. It's amazing that a solid, beautiful house can be built out of these natural and abundant materials.
This is a view of the exterior of the house, ground level, facing the field where Hurley hired Cliff to clear rocks to build a rock wall around the property.
Author and artist Jim W. Coleman poses at the back wall of the "Whispering Hills" cob house at Wolf Creek, Oregon. Throughout the entire tour of the house, Jim was overwhelmed by the craftsmanship.
The back (garden) side of the cob house at Wolf Creek, Oregon.
Though in the book "Omens II: The Rogue," the boss man, Hurley Waldrip, has no garden, this property does, in fact, have a beautiful garden. Here, a very resourceful recycling project converted an old satellite dish into an inviting garden entrance.
The deer returned this morning. Hooga, Kayla and I watched as the deer wandered around the front yard. My heart skipped a beat as baby deer walked up to my azalea. Fortunately, he didn't eat much. :)
C2, the flagship of the "Connie" series, sits in the garage after being wheeled back inside after four back-breaking days of work. I'm not going to chronicle this rebuild by day, but I certainly will chronicle it by procedure. In looking for tips and help online, I've found a lot of misinformation and speculation. What I'm doing here is to chronicle this to hopefully save you some steps and some heartache in the rebuilding process. I'm not one of those cheesy "donate via Paypal" people - I do this as a public service and historical record. That being said, if you do find these postings of value, please purchase one of my books via amazon.com. Links are on my homepage or, in some cases, near the top of this page. I thank you - it makes the pain in my lower back worthwhile.
(This photo might take a bit to download (depending on your connection). Sorry for the delay, but you'll download it a LOT faster than I prepared it). This is a before and after shot of the canning I did over the Labor Day weekend, 2006. Look like a lot of work? I also did all this this weekend.
After doing just a small test area of the car, the propane torch removed a significant amount of undercoating (pictured above). I still will need to go in and use paint stripper to take it down to the buck naked metal. A word to the wise: Be sure to put a drop cloth beneath your car as this slag runs like old snot. I used a sheet of 1/2 plywood. It can easily be scraped clean and used again. The hot undercoating would likely damage a tarp or sheeting.
If you've been reading along in this restoration blog (as opposed to Googling "removing undercoating" and landing here) you'll know that I've tried six ways to Sunday to remove the thick undercoating from this 1971 Super Beetle. Finally, I decided to give the old propane torch a try. The results were surprising, and I'm not going any other direction from here on out. Next weekend, my bug and I will be smokin'...
A pile of fenders sit inside my garage, waiting to be stripped for painting. The problem is, I don't know where the heck I will put them. I'm still turning that one over in my head ...
After removing the window from the VW's driver side door (a real trick as the VW Trends book I'm using as a guide had it all wrong), I finished taking the door and the front down to the metal. Here, I've applied white primer to protect the bare metal, though lots of work is left to be done there.
By using a combination of chemicals and a good grinder, I was able to get through a third of an inch of undercoating to expose shiny bare metal beneath the driver's side fender well. However, it will not be sufficient to remove deep slag in tight places. I'm working on a plan ... one which will involve fire... Be very afraid!
Here, a doe and a fawn are polite to the end, they walk through our open driveway gate rather than crashing through our landscaping and outer foliage. We were just glad they weren't carrying Bibles when they came a-callin'... those are the kind of people we're trying to keep out with that gate. But the deer always are a welcomed sight...
With all the work I did in the front yard this summer, I was wondering how long it would take to see deer on it. My answer came today - as I was canning zucchini inside, Linda called out and we watched the deer move across the yard - a mama and her spotted fawn.
Well, today, day four, saw me out in my bathrobe at 5 a.m. picking up where I left off yesterday (after starting 7 quarts of green beans in the pressure cooker). This time, still tackling the undercoating, I used Por-Strip 15, manufactured by RestoMotive. After following the instructions (two coats, 15 minutes penetrating time each) I was unable to make any of the undercoating budge. True, it softened it up a little, but nowhere near the amount needed. True, I was working on a vertical surface and unable to allow the Por-Strip to soak in but regardless, yesterday's test with Tal-Strip yielded far better results. I will try Por-Strip 15 again beneath the fenders as they can lie down semi-flat. Here, I'm stripping the remainder of the paint from the driver's side door, using Tal-Strip.
Well, at the end of day three of this project, I discovered something that really deflated me - enough to make me wrap it up and call it a day. What did I discover? The dreaded Bondo. It's up on the front piece where the fender attaches, and a significant amount of it as well. That white spot on the top of the door is just paint, I can't strip it until I remove the mirror and door handle. I'm just bummed out right now and I need to go can some pickles and then spend some time with the missus.
The Tal-Strip Paint Remover by mar-hyde ($5.99 can, Westbay Auto Parts) did a very good job at stripping the paint. This is how my door looked five minutes after treatment. Close up, it looks like a topographical satellite view of Mars. Nope, it's just my Super Beetle.
Though the Tal-Strip Paint Remover by mar-hyde did a great job at removing paint, it barely touched the tough undercoating on this VW Super Beetle. Where the undercoating was applied very sparsely, it did penetrate after four applications. (This little area took one full can of Paint Remover at $5.99 each can.) Still, it's not quite what I'm looking for - this area will still require some TLC.
This is what I'm facing, removing up to a third of an inch of undercoating in the fender wells of my 1971 Super Beetle convertible. I would really appreciate any tips on how to quickly remove this, otherwise I'm doing a lot of grinding. If you have a tried and true solution, please
e-mail me!
On day three of the 1971 Super Beetle teardown, I decided to have a drink or two and just strip all day - in front of God and everyone. I bought several stripping solutions but decided to first try the spray on Tal-Strip Paint Remover by mar-hyde. As you'll see, it stripped the paint fine, but didn't do well on the tough undercoating beneath the fenders.
At the end of day two of the tear-down, a shot of the driver's side of the car. Much of the black primer has been removed, revealing the original orange paint. The white spots are primer where my sander may or may not have made contact with the bare metal. As the car will sit outside for the remainder of this dry spell, I want to be sure all exposed metal is covered. I pressure-washed beneath each fender well, knocking off a lot of the undercoating, but not as much as I had hoped. That will involve a lot of patient grinding. Right now, I'm covered head to toe with black flaky stuff and orange dust, so I'm going to take a shower. (Sorry, no picture of that. It's over on the subscriber-only site.)
Here is a photo of the EGR system (charcoal canister), located below the passenger-side rear tire fender. (This is more for my sake than yours, but hope you get something out of it!)
Well before lunch on day two of the rebuild project, already had most of the front of the car stripped and much of the primer removed from the driver's side. I'd be happy to leave the car as is and drive it around. Yup, it's a South Kitsap thing. When those Nascar rednecks show up, I'd blend right into that sorry crowd.
Ah, stripping the car naked, down to its hidden orange tones.
The first thing I did bright and early on the Labor Day Weekend was to labor with the front fender. Actually, the driver's side fender wasn't too bad. The other, well, that's a different story.
Got a really cool VW? Type 1? Type 2? And beyond? I would love to showcase your VW here. Doesn't even have to be a gleaming, restored car. Could be something you just bought and you want to show it off. Could just be a snapshot of something you were doing to it while rebuilding. Could just be a question about rebuilding or runnability. If it's a question, just comment. Someone will answer. If it's a photo please upload the photo to me with whatever text you wish to have displayed. This is not a commercial venture, you will not get spammed. Upload your photo and description to jim3@jimwcoleman.com. (I prefer to host photos on my site rather than to have links to images posted in the blog. That way I can control broken links and deprecated images.)
A photo of all three little buggers sitting out in the driveway, awaiting more painful tearing down and delightful stripping. Here rests the "Connie" series (from left to right): C1, C3 and C2.
To add to our growing VW Beetle population, we just added this car, a 1972 VW Beetle (it runs!). This is Linda's car, and she's chomping at the bit to get me to work on it. She'll have to do more chomping, heh heh. The car is pretty straight, running, with a lot of work already done on it. We're not to happy about some of the sloppy workmanship (incorrectly installed parts, bad primer job, primer overspray on the windows, etc.) but that's all easily fixed. Here, the front wheel is off to access a master cylinder that leaks continuously like an old man on a drinking binge.
Chris DeBurgh sings a song called "At the End of a Perfect Day." That was my feeling when I wrapped up the first day of stripping down this 1971 Super Beetle convertible. The only problems encountered so far are a frozen release on the passenger side seat and a frozen screw on an interior window crank. I put WD-40 on both and proceeded to lubricate myself with a Mirror Pond or two in the event that that, too, might work. :)
Here is how the interior floorpans looked at the start of this project, and it's typical of Beetles. Note the hole in the floor in front of the battery pan. I would hate to be the sucker who put his foot through that. Oh wait, that was me. :) Fortunately, my father-in-law has a welder I can use when I get the body off the car.
I was surprised to find the original jack in the car, and in pretty decent shape! Here's a photo of the trunk after I removed the hood.
Although I can read an electrical diagram with average efficiency, I still believe in photographing tricky combinations of wiring. I know that on VW Rabbits, wiring your signals and lights wrong can have a domino-effect throughout the electrical system. I want to make sure I get this right the first time.
Didn't know whether to file this under "Interior" or "Bodywork" but since I'm starting to tear down the interior, I put it here. The front passenger seat came out easily (though for a 1971 it does have that seat spring clip to watch out for, typical of 1972 models), but the passenger seat is frozen - the seat adjuster is rusted into position. I'm treating it overnight with some good metal penetrator fluid.
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