My $35 Convertible, The Silver Bullet
My love of cars began with lawn mowers and bicycles. Cutting grass provided money for bikes and magazines in my early teens. With pals Nathan and David, I rode my Schwinn Traveler all over Bartholomew County. The bike required constant fiddling with cables, tires, brakes, and lights. I learned to spin nuts and fit parts and gathered a few tools.
I wore out our old Lawn-Boy mower cutting neighborhood yards and earned maybe fifteen dollars a week. A friend and I dismantled an old Briggs & Stratton mower to learn about pistons, valves, and crankshafts. I studied an Indian motorcycle engine from a dump.
Car and Driver magazine filled my head with sports cars and the new American “pony cars”. Car races, specifications, road tests, and history fueled my imagination.
With a love of aimless wandering, rudimentary mechanics, and automobile design I was ready for my first car. A friend of a friend just happened to have my dream for sale!
We visited the 1961 Volkswagen Beetle convertible in a backyard. It had been white but now sported black, green-, and rust-colored patches in a random pattern, like spots on a cow. The top fabric drooped at the rear, letting December snowflakes settle over the parcel shelf behind the back seat. The tires were bald, and the bumpers were loose. But the engine started easily, with its signature whistling exhaust. It had a title and license plate. The best part was the price — $35.00. A friend drove it to my house, where I worked on it while waiting to receive my driver’s license.
A junkyard top replaced the ragged roof. The battery was under the rear seat where leaking sulfuric acid had destroyed the steel floor. The battery perched on a board spanning the hole, open to the pavement below. I carefully fitted a chunk of plywood under the battery.
There was no fuel gauge; instead, a lever below the dashboard opened a reserve gas tank. You could drive until the engine sputtered for lack of fuel, then deftly open the reserve with your foot while driving. The engine would promptly restart, giving another 20 miles to refuel.
VW Beetles had air-cooled engines in the back. A fan atop the engine blew air past cylinder heads and exhaust pipes into the car for heat. Warm air was supposed to emerge from the footwells and above the dash, to blow on the windshield. The flaps and ducts of this system were damaged and leaky. So, like many older Beetles, my car had little or no heat. While driving on cold days I scraped frost, from breath condensation, on the inside of the windshield. I believe air-cooled Volkswagen vehicles were unique in this woeful driving experience.
As the weather warmed, the oil pressure warning light stayed on, suggesting internal engine problems. No worry, it’s easy to drop the engine and check. I raised the rear of the car and removed wires, cables, and ducts. Then I removed 4 bolts and wiggled the engine free — this whole process took only an hour or so. I carried the engine into the house for disassembly. The crankshaft was grooved and worn. I ordered a new crankshaft, bearings, and oil pump from the encyclopedic Sears catalog. The new parts fixed the oil pressure.
The car looked awful and only got worse as I worked, accumulating new patches of primer. My mother nicknamed it the “Calico Cat”. Once, when I parked in front of my girlfriend’s house, guests of her parents were struck by the extraordinary homeliness of the car. Gail’s father gently remarked how the VW made quite an impression. He drove an impeccable red Alfa Romeo — my wheels must have made an impression on him too!
So that summer of 1970, with the car “sorted” to the level a 16-year-old with little money can manage, I undertook to beautify her. I spray-painted the car silver and applied black “convertible top dressing” to the cloth roof. From a distance, it looked pretty good! Up close the paint looked like it was applied with a Windex bottle, with a crinkly bubbly finish. I renamed her “Silver Bullet”.
The VW took me to college that fall. Driving the winding roads around Bloomington with the top down was dreamlike. The car lost speed climbing hills on Highway 46, aggravating motorists behind me. But they couldn’t have known the bliss of puttering along with the wind in my hair and the dappled light flashing through the trees above.
I drove to campus early each morning. The starter broke. I knew the car was easy to push start — ignition on, second gear, get somebody to shove, pop the clutch and away you go! But pushers weren’t always available. I found I could hold the clutch pedal down by jamming a board between it and the driver’s seat. Each morning, I would start the car by rolling down a hill and releasing the clutch. After class, I returned to the car, parallel parked on 7th Street by the Union building. I opened the driver’s door and pushed the windshield pillar while steering, in neutral, out into the street. I quickly fitted the board on the clutch pedal, selected second gear, and switched on the ignition. I then pushed and ran along next to the car, kicked the board away, jumped in as the engine fired, and drove off. After a couple of weeks, I replaced the starter.
Then the clutch cable broke! The workaround to start the car this time was to select second gear and crank the starter, making the car lurch forward. When the engine fires, apply gas, and off you go. It’s easy to shift gears with no clutch by blipping the accelerator, but you can’t stop without killing the engine. So, I learned to time traffic lights and glide stealthily past stop signs. This got old quickly, so I replaced the clutch cable.
In 1971, I got a junk VW Microbus for my daily driver. I sold the Silver Bullet, the first of a series of lovable cars I fixed up, sold, and wish I still owned. These include VW Karmann Ghias, Saabs, Mercedes, a Messerschmitt, Citroen, Triumph, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo.
I now drive my ninth Volkswagen, a 2008 Passat, with features unheard of in my times with the Silver Bullet — electronic fuel injection, stability control, anti-lock brakes, power windows, turbocharger, air conditioning, and HEAT.
