Herman the German in a Swedes possession

Hi there everyone!
My name is Ken, me and my girlfriend Jenny are visiting Australia for an uncertain amount of time. However, we would both like to become Australien citizens in the future. 🙂 A month ago we bought Herman, a beautiful scabby-looking Volkswagen L from -74.

I have always been interested in VW since I was raised in my dads repair shop, which contained a huge amount of Beetle. That lead me to buy my first one when I was 12, second when I was 13 and the third at the age of 14. You can see the last one, a German Looker, on this link:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_search.php?search_author=ken+l%F6nnstr%F6m

Five years ago my dad past away and since then I haven't touched anything Beetle-related. It's been emotionally to hard. My cars was just put into a shed where they are still standing.

Now it feels like I am back to my roots. A lots of knowledge is forgotten, or just in hiding, but it feels awesome working on a Beetle again.

Our plans for Herman is to do some changes that will improve handling and a bit more powerful although under a budget. A bit nostalgi-daily-drag-car. The body will be kept as it is with dents and all the chrome, since this will enhance that image. Except for the front bumper, looking for one from -75 with the indicators.

Lower it 2-3" in the front, keep standard height in the back, weld a stressbar, find stock rims (or VW:s Sport Wheels, GT, Big, what you want to call them) 4,5 in the front and 5,5 in the rear. Lower tires in the front.

Dual carbureretors and another mean exhaust. Have an EMPI 4-tip we got with the car, which I'm gonna try to mount today.

If you have any items I might be interested of, please write to me. I'm gonna try and post some more things so I can answer PMs. 🙂 We are now nearby Albury, Victoria, but will begin to travel around Australia in a month or two. Would be great fun to meet some VW-folks.

Have a great day and stay happy!
Ken

ps. I'm gonna update my wanted-ad tonight. 🙂

Welcome to Australia Ken and Girlfriend!

Hopefully after spending time with your new Volksy in Australia,
your VW love affair will remind you of the good times in the past with your dad, and not the sad times.

I am sure he would have felt the same.

See you when you get to the Gold Coast for coffee and muffins!!

As Dave said, welcome to Australia!

Nice looking beetle there, im quite fond of the wheel flares 😊
Dont miss out on Tassie, its the place to be 🙂

Cheers Will

Thank you for your replies guys! 🙂 We have been keeping busy working in a kiwi orchard with limited time on the internet. However we have had a little time doing some small things on Herman. Tried the Empi GT exhaust but it now have a little bit of hesitation around 3k rpm so we'll probably swap back to standard and then buy a quiet pack at the same time as the dual carbs. Then we might as well get it seriously tuned. 🙂

A big thanks for the invitation Dave, of course we'll drop by on the Gold Coast! And as you say, my dad would love me working on Beetles again. It is such an amazing feeling.

Will, you are more than welcome to bid on the flares, we are working on getting rid of them! :P We had to get them for the roadworthy. The front tires stick out 2 cm so that was not surprising. However the rear ones... the sidewall of the tire stuck out 0,5 cm or less and the inspector did not let the car through.

Have a great night!