[T3] '72 Type 3 Progress

[Jim Adney]

I was going to send this to Dennis, but I thought it might be of more 
general interest. Dennis, our resident shop instructor, sent me 4 
parts from his '72 fasty that his students are bringing back to life. 
He sent the FI fuel pump. the distributor, the speedo, and the clock.

The fuel pump parts are all ready for me to put back together, that 
was straightforward.

The speedo was very rusty on the outside, but the odometer problem 
seemed straightforward. When I started to open it, it became clear 
that I wasn't the first one in there. The odometer input shaft was 
out of place, which was odd, but I had to remove it anyway. It all 
went back together nicely, but then I discovered that the speedo 
input shaft was VERY hard to turn. This turned out to be another 
common problem that took a few extra minutes to fix. Now everything 
seems to work nicely, although the odo numerals and the speedo 
pointer look like they've suffered and discolored, possibly from too 
much sun. Regardless, it's gonna work just fine.

That brought me to the clock. This is a late clock, the kind with the 
little coil and the transistors. I've almost never managed to bring 
one of them back to life, and this didn't seem any different. I 
powered it up and it showed some signs of life, but really wouldn't 
run. Then I checked out one of Dave's suggestions: see if the coil 
windings showed continuity. There are 2 windings; it's a bifilar 
wound coil, so both should have the same resistance. One showed about 
800 Ohms, but the other was open. Bummer. 

There's no way to get to the leads on these; I'd have to bust it 
apart to get to those leads, but the solder connections are on the 
side I can get to. So I tried warming up the solder. Wow, now I've 
got two 800 Ohm windings!

Power it up again and the signs of life are a bit stronger. So I 
followed another of Dave's suggestions: Flush the works out with WD-
40. After that, and a bit of cleanup, it's been running for the last 
2 hours!

I don't care for the WD-40 as a permanent solution, so I think I'll 
let it go like this for another day, then flush it out with alcohol 
and lube the pivots with clock oil. Hopefully, that will be a more 
permanent solution.

If this actually works, this may be the very first late style clock 
that I've managed to bring back to life.

That just leaves the distributor. The very special '72 only 
distributor. That's a rusty mess and I don't know what I can do with 
it, but at least I managed to get it all apart, so there's some hope. 
The big unknown is the very expensive '72 only vacuum advance can. 
The vacuum retard on those is almost always broken.

We'll see....


the input shaft was very tight. That turned out
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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