Type III Cross-Country Manners

Fastback, Squareback, Notchback, T-3 Karmann Ghia.

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Amskeptic
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Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Feb 16, 2007 6:24 pm

An excellent little road car. Bravely slices and dices urban traffic, just a little anemic when you need to point and squirt. The little 165 tires hung on good when I pulled off the accelerate-on-the-diminishing radius onramps to see if the Hyundai would keep up with me which it would not.

Settles in very nicely at 73-75 mph with a decent pull in 3rd gear to 50 mph as you enter the onramp (it'll give you 60 in 3rd briefly), it has a rather busy chassis movement on CA expansion joints and very nice communicative steering, the key is to ignore most of the feedback or you'll find yourself correcting things that need no correction. The rubber suspension mountings do add a little rear wheel steering tendency to any chassis loading. An avoidant swerve to miss a large piece of truck tire had the suspension seemingly coiling up against its rubber. When the transient swerve came in, the car was a little too happy to assume an oversteering attitude. A little unnerving at first. Wind was not an issue, it pushes the front end a little, but never did it threaten to shove the car into an adjacent lane.

This particular Type III was a real pussycat in traffic. I refuse to try to keep up with the stupid acceleration into the next clot of brake lights like so many people do. So, like in the bus, some people behind me were not expecting my 1st/2nd shift at 15 mph when they were all ready to launch up to speed seamlessly.

Days on end, this car grabs you with its plucky loyalty on the road. You get in on day nine of freeway driving with the same sort of anticipation as day two. When the temperatures plummeted in eastern Texas, I discovered that the heat is truly fierce. It burned my bananas right in half on the floor behind the driver's seat.

A surprise to me, the dowdy little Type III engenders as many comments and recollections as the bus does. It is an air-cooled VW in every way.
Colin

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dingo
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Post by dingo » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:38 pm

A surprise to me, the dowdy little Type III engenders as many comments and recollections as the bus does. It is an air-cooled VW in every way.
Colin
was it not also the very first mass produced vehicle to use electronic fuel injection? ...1968 i think
'71 Kombi, 1600 dp

';78 Tranzporter 2L

" Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."

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Post by Amskeptic » Fri Feb 16, 2007 8:42 pm

dingo wrote:
A surprise to me, the dowdy little Type III engenders as many comments and recollections as the bus does. It is an air-cooled VW in every way.
Colin
was it not also the very first mass produced vehicle to use electronic fuel injection? ...1968 i think
Electronic grouped-fire port injection no less, and the first economy car with disk brakes.
Colin :flower:

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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by baygeek » Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:37 am

Amskeptic wrote: The rubber suspension mountings do add a little rear wheel steering tendency to any chassis loading. An avoidant swerve to miss a large piece of truck tire had the suspension seemingly coiling up against its rubber. When the transient swerve came in, the car was a little too happy to assume an oversteering attitude. A little unnerving at first. Wind was not an issue, it pushes the front end a little, but never did it threaten to shove the car into an adjacent lane.
just as a suggestion, you may need to tighten the sway bar up front, check the quality/age of the shocks and maybe even adjust your tire pressures -- if all is in order, your T3 should handle quite well....
Amskeptic wrote: When the temperatures plummeted in eastern Texas, I discovered that the heat is truly fierce. It burned my bananas right in half on the floor behind the driver's seat.

a Type 3 with all the original heating components in working order is an amazing thing -- you have to be VERY careful of putting anything in front of the heat outlets.... including your feet (in the driver's footwell).... it will singe your shoes ....


sounds like you are coming to grips with the beauty of a T3.....
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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:56 am

baygeek wrote: just as a suggestion, you may need to tighten the sway bar up front, check the quality/age of the shocks and maybe even adjust your tire pressures -- if all is in order, your T3 should handle quite well....
The upper torsion arm adjustment came to me by accident on day-two of ownership. The maiden drive was a frightening run up the Harbor Freeway in a maddening rain. The front wheel bearings were growling something fierce, so I assumed that the ridiculous play in the front axle was because of them. Indeed, the grease was full of metallic sparkles. I replaced the front wheel bearings and found that the front wheels were still giving me a serious clunk. When I saw the upper arms rocking as they went into the beam, I thought I had some shot needle bearings or wallowed-out set screw holes. But that little end bolt/lock plate set up on the right arm looked intriguing, so I loosened the set screw and cranked that end bolt in to see the arm snug right up. Nice! Turned it back 1/8th turn for operating room, snugged up the set screw and did a steering box adjustment, and the steering is a dream.

Shocks have decent low-frequency damping. Railroad tracks and drainage dips are all taken with good control. But I do not know about the high-frequency damping such as what happens with out-of-balance tires for long periods of time.

Tire pressures, I just can't bring myself to go down to the recommended 18 psi in the front. I know why they recommend the low fronts, but rather than follow their recommendation, I am keeping them at 25 psi, and will rotate front-to-back if I see the center treads wearing too much.
Corvair did the same thing. Half of their reasoning was to ensure that the tires wore evenly across the tread, the other half of their reasoning was a cheap and dirty trick to force understeer in a chassis that wants to oversteer in evasive manuevers or hard cornering. You'll note that Ford did the low tire pressure trick to help prevent their Explorers from rolling over at great expense to the tires, people's lives, and their reputation.
baygeek wrote: a Type 3 with all the original heating components in working order is an amazing thing -- you have to be VERY careful of putting anything in front of the heat outlets.... including your feet (in the driver's footwell).... it will singe your shoes ....
sounds like you are coming to grips with the beauty of a T3.....
I can now see the reasoning behind their fancy little mixing valves with the forced fresh air piped in from the fan housing. I have not checked to see if the bellows thermostats are doing their jobs moderating the heat output. . . my bananas would have told you that they are not working.

The cables to the front footwells are bisected in half by rust. I want to get a couple of lawn mower throttle cables or something to replace them, do you have any suggestions?

It is a charming car. It looks so frumpy 60's, but there really is the hint of a Porsche lurking under it. Had it been a pre-70's Type III with the wipers parked to the left, it would have even more Porsche 912 flavor as you look out over the hood.
Colin Caw

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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by baygeek » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:16 am

Amskeptic wrote:
It is a charming car. It looks so frumpy 60's, but there really is the hint of a Porsche lurking under it. Had it been a pre-70's Type III with the wipers parked to the left, it would have even more Porsche 912 flavor as you look out over the hood.
Colin Caw
yes -- the look out over the hood with the doublebubble headlights is definitely 60's nostalgia.... but the Porsche analogy is difficult for me to pull off in a squareback...

now that you mention it... I have a set of left-parked wiper arms....

that may be another spring project to add to the list...
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Amskeptic wrote: Well, even though we have these pesky visitor crows who come swooping in to caw about hypocrisy! hypocrisy!

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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by tristessa » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:22 pm

Amskeptic wrote:Tire pressures, I just can't bring myself to go down to the recommended 18 psi in the front. I know why they recommend the low fronts, but rather than follow their recommendation, I am keeping them at 25 psi, and will rotate front-to-back if I see the center treads wearing too much.
Before my Fastback went into it's GEX-induced hibernation I religiously ran the front tires at the recommended 18psi with no ill effect, odd wear or other difficulties. Daily-driving, trips to Sacramento, the 2002 Type 3 Invasion run from Santa Rosa to Parma and back (I-80 to Winnemucca, cut north) and it's final pre-hibernation trip to Portland.

Try it for a while. You can always put air back in if you don't like how the car rides & handles.

You going to find a set of sleep-extender hinges for the back seat?
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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:32 pm

tristessa wrote: Try it for a while. You can always put air back in if you don't like how the car rides & handles.

You going to find a set of sleep-extender hinges for the back seat?
Nah no no way. 18 is fine until you need the damn tire to stay on the rim in serious moments. I know they want understeer for the masses, but I am old Porsche 911 material, I'll catch the rear.

Sleep extender hinges? Explain.
Colin

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Re: Type III Cross-Country Manners

Post by tristessa » Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:06 pm

Amskeptic wrote:Sleep extender hinges? Explain.
Dealer-option add-on hinges for the Squareback model. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, they let the rear seat do this (for camping):
Image

Toby Erkson has a pretty decent page about the hinges, and what he had to do to install them in his '72, at http://www.icbm.org/erkson/ttt/back_seat.html

.. think of the gas you could save doing your next cross-country journey in a T3. :cyclopsani:
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Post by Amskeptic » Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:20 pm

Thanks for the link. I am 5'8" I'm good. There is no car on Earth that can take the place of the bus on a cross-country jaunt in the summer. But the Squareback might be just the ticket for winter trips. Really, the heat is faster and stronger than my BMW 5 Series.
Colin

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Post by covelo » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:33 pm

When I put the new tires on there, the guys at the tire shop didn't look at the label and inflated all four tires the same (I think it was like 30 or something). So I get straight on the freeway on a windy run across the Bay Bridge. That was fun! :pale: Fortunately, I was using the front trunk to store a bunch of old books, so that helped keep it on the road, but the front certainly wandered a lot more than at 20psi (where I usually kept them).
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