I drove Noelle in the bus today for the first time. We backed out, got going down the parking lot, turned to the left, kept going, turned to the left, and again, and then back into the garage. I know, it was thrilling!
Before this though, a friend from work came by and we drove the bus in circles around the apartment parking lot. The wheels didn’t make any noise, the steering felt reasonably tight, the brakes work well. It felt great to finally get moving in the thing. I even got it into second gear! However, as soon as the engine warms up, it loses the ability to idle. So every time I come to a stop it dies, and I’m not coordinated enough yet to press the clutch, shift to neutral, let off the clutch, press the brakes, and lightly press the gas to keep the engine running. I’m thinking it might now be time to clean the carb. In the meantime, I’m going to keep practicing my stick driving – lets just say that its a steep learning curve. Until I can keep the bus running at a stop, I’m not going out on an actual road.
But I did take Noelle out this afternoon. She was pretty apprehensive, given our earlier experiences with driving this thing, but I convinced her to ride along. Everything went very smoothly, and it really makes me look forward to when we are out there camping and road tripping it up!
In addition to my skillful turns to the left, I bought some plastic shelves, and spent time time cleaning and organizing the garage. I took a bunch of pictures, and I’ll be spending the day trying to fix the idle problem tomorrow. There’s a VW show in Joilet that I would love to attend if possible!
