Today I decided to become a Blogger... I already post on forums, produce videos and offer a podcast so I figured the Blog would be a great way to share daily and weekly updates to my development and life in general.

Perhaps the coolest thing I experienced this week was confirming the fact that I have owned the car I was brought home from the Hospital in for the past 10 years and didn't even know it..

Here is how the story went...

My Dad's Daily Driver from 1973- 1985 was an Orange VW Thing. He drove the car every day, everywhere he went. This vehicle is how I was delivered home from the Hospital as a new born in October of 1975.

This was the first VW engine I ever touched at the age of 7-8 as my Dad suffered from a pair of very bad knees and could not climb under his Thing to do an oil change, on top of that he wasn't much of a mechanic...

 Of course the 181 had no drain plug, so I was forced to remove the entire sump plate and screen... Upon assembly I left a 6mm nut loose, the engine lost all its oil and I had just created my first blown engine and the worst thing was that my Dad was driving when it let go. I paid for that one!

Fast Forward two more years and my Dad's knees were really bad, so bad that he could no longer climbi in and out of the Thing, forcing him to sell it. We dropped the Thing off at my Grandparent's place a few days later and someone came by and purchased it on the first afternoon it was for sale, I was crushed because I LOVED that car. The new owners were from Toccoa Georgia, a town not too far from the town where I grew up.

So quite a few years go by and I forget about that particular Thing, but as my Dad and I bought, sold and traded VWs I always looked for that car, or Orange VW Things in general. I never saw the car and didn't see many Things in our area at all. 

More years go by and I leave home to see the World as a US Marine.. I totally forgot about that particular car, but owned dozens more over the next few years. When I returned home from the Marines I encountered one of the best customers I have ever experienced, who loved the VW Thing and had several of them. Over time I had built a dozen engines and had worked on all of his VWs...

One day he calls me to say "Jake, I bought another Thing but got rear ended on the way home from Toccoa with it"... I didn't think anything about this, just told him to have it towed to me and I'd see what I could do to repair it. The car showed up and it was an Orange 73, I still didn't think anything about it... I looked over the car and determined that it was not repairable at a cost that it was worth at the time and after talking to the Customer's insurance Company the car was totaled. 

Of course the Insurance Company only wanted to give him 1500 bucks for an all original 73 VW Thing that was in perfect condition, so I decided to write them a letter on my Customer's behalf. After they received the letter they decided to pay my customer the full price that he had paid for the vehicle and he was very happy. He then bought the Thing back from the Insurance Company at a serious discount..

 He had another Thing that needed a front end rebuild and he told me that he'd just give me the old crashed up Orange 73 if I'd rebuild the front axle under his Yellow 73. I agreed to this because I thought I could fix the car, and even if I couldn't it had a ton of good parts on it that could be outfitted to a White 74 I had and was restoring.

One of the things I learned early about the crashed up Thing was that it did not have the original "AM" engine case. Someone had replaced the engine with an "AK" engine from a 74 Beetle. I pulled that engine out as it was damaged from the crash and I replaced it with a 1915cc single port engine. I then drove the car for a few months until I scattered the engine while offroading. I replaced that engine with a 2,000cc TIV engine outfitted with a DTM cooling system. I then drove the car for another two years before I decided to repair the rear end damage correctly and restore the car, because it was too nice to continue thrashing on. That was in late 1999. Fast forward to 2008 and the car has been in my storage area with a fresh paint job ready for reassembly- I just haven't had time to work on it..

Now a couple of weeks ago a local woman called          the shop in search of a VW thing to buy. She talked to my Dad who still answers our phones here today. After a few minutes she had learned who my Dad was and who I was and she just happened to be the person who had bought my Dad's Orange 73 Thing in 1985!!! She was in search of another Thing because she had sold the Thing that was purchased from us back in 1998. My Dad tells her about a Thing that he has had for sale and she wants more info, so he transfers her to me and thats where things got really interesting..

She tells me that she bought the car from us in 1985, kept it till 1998 and then sold it "To a man from Cornelia".. I asked her if she knew where the car went and she said "No, I have ben looking for it since 2006 and the state says it hasn't been registered here since 1999.. Thats when it hit me!!! This HAD to be the car I came home from the Hospital in, the first VW I had ever touched!!! 

So we talked about all the similarities and I start trying to remember what had happened.. The reason why the original engine was not in the car when it was rear ended was because my Dad had a local mechanic pull the engine from a 74 Beetle that he had at the time the original engine was blown after my lack of tightening the sump plate....

The "Man from Cornelia" was my long time customer... I had owned the vehicle I looked for, for many years and didn't even know it for a decade, the 73 VW Thing that had delivered me home to the property where my shop still resides today...

Needless to say, the Thing has once again became my priority to complete and get back on the road, after almost 10 years of being out of service.... 

I'll never sell this Thing, there is no older piece of RAT History in existence.

More next time..