Feasible excellent heat/cold insulation material

[bobstad]

The link is one at the WIGGY'S outdoors equipment and sporting goods website; known best for their excellent sleeping bags and other cold temperature gear. <http://wiggys.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=187>

I have been thinking about trying to insulate my '91 Festiva L to give the heater/defroster better efficiency as well as making for a cooler car in hot weather, too.

I do have a number of closed cell sleeping bag ground pads for use on ice, snow or ground, left over from insulating a '75 Chevy panel van; quite similar to others previously used to insulate the interior ceiling of the '66 VW "square-back" sedan I mostly lived out of, from '82-'94. Both those projects were excellent for the improved climate and warmth inside of either vehicle. Essential with the bare-metal interiors exposed, while sleeping inside; due to otherwise massive condensation.

Though with all the curves, crevices and contours of the Festiva; this alternative insulation material being sold at WIGGY'S seems an attractive and cost-effective alternative. Being sold for $9.50 a 60" yard. Created for use as a cold barrier to cover windows with from the interior, the insulation has a cotton/poly blend fabric on either side, is machine washable and easy to sew.

Anyone imaginative about how a person perhaps could use this insulating a Festiva is certainly welcome to weigh in here with more ideas!

I've had a couple of WIGGY'S "seconds" super-lite sleeping bags, both of which have given me excellent service; whose "faults" whatever those may've been, I've never discovered.

[1988festivazoom]

Seems like a good plan to use it bc I know dyna mat is retarded expensive. I was actually looking for something to help block some exterior noise and put behind all of my plastics to help with drafts and rattles. I might need to get some of this stuff! Good info and a verry reasonable price!

[Pu241]

Welcome back Bob!
It's been a while!

[Bert]

If you are merely looking to get a little more heat in a Festiva block the entire rad off with cardboard. It has marginal effect at -20 or lower but beats going to all the trouble with insulation. Don't forget that glass is a lousy insulator. They do (or did) market 195 degree thermostats at one time and there have been previous threads regarding genuine Mazda 2-stage thermostats.

[bobstad]

Bert, so I don't need longjohns...

[bobstad]

Just wondering?

Created for use as a cold barrier to cover windows with from the interior, the insulation has a cotton/poly blend fabric on either side, is machine washable and easy to sew.

Just had a flash; to make some interior window covers and a barrier between the front and back seats, for sleeping inside without been seen at that; as this is also a light porous product.

Wonder what would make me look not like my own private igloo, however?

Maybe leave everything out a few nights with "tag me" signs...or the old toothbrush/chopstick/enamel spritz all over in multi-color abandon.

Indigo like midnite w/heat pulsing vivid crimson highlights. Probably as close to another paint job as "The FestivaL Car" is going to come.

[Charlie1717]

Maybe you could sew a darker fabric to them to give more privacy and let less light in for sleeping!

[SuperDaveGulvak]

This stuff might come in handy on my plans of a making a mini RV out of my brown little box Thanks for the link dude!

[IdealSociety]

im going to request pics of the squareback.

i daily a 68 square in the summer

[bobstad]

Hitler's Revenge; for sure!!! Yet I have survived.

im going to request pics of the squareback.

i daily a 68 square in the summer

[http://people.tribe.net/bobstad/phot...-a7d8579854ca], [http://people.tribe.net/bobstad/phot...-8262e1663945]

Here are some links to photos of the '66 type III. I think I touched and undid and redid every fastener, nut, bolt and electrical connection on the car once and usually lots more than that, except in the interior of the trans-axle.

Learning the hard way, why that John Muir book is called "THE IDIOT'S GUIDE." Funny thing though you can't do with too many other cars except the bug or bus, is with enough effort they are always affordable to drive. Not to mention great rear traction, if you don't mind going through lots of tires on the back.

One professional mechanic also a friendly, useful person at Wenatchee, WA's CONTINENTAL MOTORS; one time queried as to why I wasn't a tradesman at his craft, since living on SSDI/SSI yet obviously competent as a mechanic.

What came to mind, was my mention I felt the car had taken at least ten years off my life by then, probably in the mid '80s I'd lived out of most the time I had the rig; from '82-'94 seeing what I could of the lines on maps of the three "left-coast" states.

The car was sold me by the best friend and diving partner of someone nearly a housemate, the male partner of a couple in the garage apartment behind the small rented home I'd rented a room in from a woman met on the Ventura county bus and got off at the same stop as, the day her yellow '72 Super Beetle was in the shop. I got the car I'd thought attractive for the faded "Desert Sand" factory paint job; without ever driving the thing beforehand, and was irked when I found the synchromesh on second gear was shot. That was the least of my problems as things turned out, where at one point Jay Warell who'd sold me his wife's car had me give him a massage as a way for me to work through my frustrations with him.

On both sides of his torso, from under his armpits to below his buttocks were half-moon scars from where a great white shark had Jay in the big fish's jaws, that only since Jay had seen the animal out of the corner of his eye just before he was hit, was he able to poke the diving knife he'd had in his hand he'd been gathering illegal abalone with, right in the shark's eye; that an experienced Samoan later told me was the only way Jay'd been able to save his life, who also mentioned the shark had chased him right back up to the small boat he'd been pulled aboard, in just enough the nick of time.

The eventual buyer was also nearly as colorful considering his younger age, early twenties Todd Molyneux of Spokane, WA a Sicilian youth with long blond hair whose parents had been the criminal couple depicted in the book and movie THE FRENCH CONNECTION. He'd offered me a large paper grocery bag full of red marijuana buds, though I'd declined in favor of the $200 he paid me with ten dirty old bills each looking as if under the heel of someone's foot in their shoe for months or even years.

Born after the events his folks were a little famous for, his Dad who'd been a friend of Tommy Ivo's the builder of a famous four-engined Chrysler hemi-powered dragster, died when Todd was a five year old when they'd still lived in NYC whose mother passed away when he was fourteen after they'd moved to Spokane. He'd become a talented person in business who was a local music promoter and aspiring Latin percussionist; winning the city wide Chase youth award for his efforts as an entrepreneur.

Which from my point of view I wish he'd been a little less accomplished at, for the price I'd gotten for my car. With a brand new trans-axle I'd just installed doing the work myself, which had been built for a Ghia Type III dragster I got for $300 from a musician in El Cerritos, CA who after seven years decided to part out his unfinished project car as he'd suddenly started getting good gigs at about the time the rig was well thought out though still a pile of parts in the basement.

Plus, I'd also rebuilt the motor and twin Solex carbs, also by myself which only had ten thousand miles and ran great; which cost $600 in parts and the align-bore and other machine work I'd sent to the famous RIMCO VW specialists in Santa Ana, CA. A lot of local VW machine shops in that era I wouldn't trust with your dog.

One place in Ventura I'd been warned against left a scratch on the bearing saddle next to the fly-wheel, causing an oil leak I'd endured for 85,000 miles before finally figuring out their perfidy doing the rebuild Todd ended up with.

Before selling to Molyneux I'd even just plumbed the oil cooler so that I had an after-market one in the left rear-fender, instead of sitting right on top of the #3 cylinder, unlike the bug or bus which both have vertical instead of the malignant horizontal one on the Type III. Though not yet installed, I'd also gotten a much better Permacool cooling element to replace the pretty cheap unit which came with the remote kit, I also gave to Todd.

I loved that aluminum roof rack though; made in France I found in the woods near an old miner's cabin not far from Galice Creek, OR where I'd thought of spending a winter; which runs the whole length of the car, I'd mounted permanently by drilling four holes in the roof, lowering the thing considerably.

The rear corners of the hood are a little curled, from the latch on the front slowly wearing away until driving along the freeway along the Columbia River east of Portland, OR the hood just flew up, opening suddenly at speed right in front of my face.

I was also pretty hard on driver's side doors; one simply wore out, and another ended up being roped on for awhile, after having the starter fail about a twenty mile hike to the nearest traveled road, alone deep in grizzly bear country near Silvanite, MT west of Libby where I'd returned to see if I could find any more mushrooms to pick and sell.

I'd had to coast backwards to start the motor, and at the last second getting up enough speed to pop the clutch, I'd noticed a high berm coming up beside me heading right for the ill-fated door which got bent back rather than suffer loss of momentum; I'd figured a reasonable sacrifice at the moment.

I also had a fine Raleigh Colt three-speed, I'd hung from the ceiling invisible outside the car unless a person bent way over to look upwards. Even with the bike inside I'd had plenty of headroom to spare.

I'd also mounted myself Monroe Load-Leveler coil-over spring/shocks made for a bus on the back; which made the car ride like a buckboard when not too heavily loaded, but really came through when there was a ton of crap onboard, I lived with and hauled around with me; as I'd sometimes do, loading up really heavily to move from one storage unit to another.

The front buckets were from a '50 one-ton Chevy panel truck in the Brewster, WA wrecking yard, I lucked onto just after a Washington State Patrol officer had stopped me and found I was using a rapidly collapsing folding aluminum lawn chair to sit on as I drove, who'd given me a warning ticket.

The rear seats were a pair from a '67 Camaro I'd made a heavy galvanized sheet-metal bracket for so that the two would tilt forward as a pair if I wanted to check the battery.

Though I'd also removed the standard rear seat bottom from the factory bracket below that, and made a fitted plywood bench on the metal bracket, so often used that instead of the rear seats, which fit perfectly my Thermarest air-mattress I still have, I'd sleep curled up in a fetal position on top of, on top of my plywood perch.

The four seats fit the car as if made for the vehicle too; and were amazingly comfortable compared to the stock ones. The shotgun seat even folded forward to allow ease in getting into the rear! The first time I drove with the new front buckets, the sensation was as if sitting on top of a waterbed they were so plush and soft underneath a person.

The same place I got those front seats, I also later came up with the welded steel bar rear bumper the car had in place of the stock one, which always served perfectly as an impromptu anvil whenever I'd need one of those. Someone who'd had a special similar front bumper made to tow their "square-back" with behind a big RV, had a matching rear bumper made which just looked to cool to pass up I think I paid $10 for.

Even just getting to look at the '50 Chevy panel truck was worth the stop; which the previous owner had torched most of the roof off of, and replaced with a large camper they'd adapted perfectly to the truck. Nothing at all was apparently wrong with that rig, one assumes had some sort of terminal problem with the motor or transmission; to expensive to fix.

Wish now I'd of photographed the VW more often; especially in the amazing locales I'd often visited and spent time at. Guess though my oral history, I often write down out of a sort of loneliness, feeling a worthy way of life to encourage of others; is a pretty good substitute?

[deathegg]

im going to request pics of the squareback.

i daily a 68 square in the summer

I'm about to get my '69 Fasty out of storage for the summer! Been sitting since '05 in the (heated) garage. My first car was a '72 Square.

[bobstad]

the links are fried.

[http://people.tribe.net/bobstad/phot...-a7d8579854ca], [http://people.tribe.net/bobstad/phot...-8262e1663945]

Here are some links to photos of the '66 type III.

Hey, I don't know what is happening with these two links? They seem to go to the photo album instead of the individual photos.

The www.tribe.net website is set up so I can link to particular photos; and each of the two links are different from the other; but, both only go to the photo album instead of the two pictures of my VW.

You'll have to hunt for those, which are buried at the back of the selections, #61 & #62.

[bobstad]

killing time while enjoying the space

I'm about to get my '69 Fasty out of storage for the summer! Been sitting since '05 in the (heated) garage. My first car was a '72 Square.

Hey, what kind of mileage did you get with that '72?

They always scared me, with fuel injection, and sort of ugly if you don't mind my saying so; compared to the early models. I always thought the early ones were sort of styled like a chubby MGB-GT.

I got 35 mpg every once in awhile, usually no worse than 30 mpg or so traveling and quite often around 33 mpg on the open road.

After awhile I noticed the linkage between the dual Solex carbs would slowly bend a little after awhile causing the carbs to be out of tune or something I forget now, so I got someone to weld thicker unbendable steel rods to the ball and socket attachments to each carb and the linkage in the center of the motor.

Though then the extra weight eventually wore the socket on one end enough, the damn rod started falling off on a trip from Spokane to Manhattan for the fall '90 "Dead" tour.

I had a great musician friend a wanted felon probably still on the lam traveling with me, who jumped bail in South Carolina after getting busted selling sheets of LSD there.

So he'd never let me stop along the road, to see why the motor was running so poorly when that rod would fall of the right carb.

We figured out the problem pretty soon though, and eventually I wired the rod onto the ball on the carb so that worked fine again.

Volkswagens are great if you get tired of jerking off all the time, for something else about as productive to do with your time. I'm SERIOUS! lol

[deathegg]

Bob, I never remember calculating the MPG's on that '72 Square. It did have the F.I. It was an auto, so I'm sure the mileage was not good. Same with my Fastback. It has dual carbs (Dellorto if I remember, as I said it's been sitting for years), and the auto trans, and my fuel gauge is not working, so I could only estimate the mileage to be around 20 mpg. One of the first things to do is get the gauge working, and somehow give it a bit more power; that auto trans sucks it away. I'm thinking of ratio rockers at least.

I agree with the statement on styling. The later versions are so squared off, with a longer fenders and a longer hood, and with those ugly BIG tail lamps. The earlier ones, like my Fastback, are almost elegant, with that short rounded hood and the smaller tails.

If I get it running again, I'm getting new tires to replace the whitewalls, and some Empi 8-spokes. I also may be selling it, if anyone may be interested. It may be time to move to another project after all these years.

[bobstad]

&quot;So it goes...&quot; said Vonegut and my grandmother as well.

By the time the car had the Ghia dragster trans-axle, the thing really had some style. Due to having creamed a doe one morning along Lake Roosevelt on US 395 driving towards Onion Creek from Rattlesnake Ridge. There were so many road-kill dear that summer you'd see a couple at once along any stretch of highway; with locals tanning hides like they were going out of style, despite being illegal to do so.

She'd been a nursing mother, so I'd been grieving little Bambi out there somewhere getting thirsty as hell; when a carload of folks drove up and asked if I wanted to keep my trophy. Deigning the prize, they'd hoisted her atop their car's roof and sped away; to hopefully elude the gendarme's with definitely warm, fresh meat for the day and the aforementioned hide as a bonus.

I'd had on board a five pound sledge hammer; found riding a ten-speed I carried with me, near the Concord naval weapons station. When I'd lived in the car the winters of '92-'93 & '93-'94; across the Port Chicago highway at the peace vigil established there after Vietnam war veteran peace activist Brian Willson got his legs cut off by the navy locomotive, trying to do symbolic protest. A train which hauls bombs and stuff to the Port Chicago docks for shipping around the world. An underground city, the largest munitions dump on the west coast, which provided most of such nasty things for the Pacific theater during the second world war, the war in Vietnam, the Iran-Contra cocaine driven wars in central American including Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and no doubt any variety of other conflicts.

Where they also store nuclear warheads and actually tested a bomb the quarter size the ones exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1944, that was the actual reason over two-hundred and fifty African American bomb handlers died in a ship explosion ascribed to an accident due to overwork and poor supervision. There is an '82 issue of BLACK SCHOLAR QUARTERLY that well chronicles both the atom bomb test, and the famous "Port Chicago Mutiny" of the remaining black bomb-handlers who refused to go to work the next day. Who'd had a young Thurgood Marshal as one of their attorneys; in the first of two loosing efforts to defend their rationale' and honor, which got retried in '90 unsuccessfully again.

Anyway, that morning after nailing the deer around four a. m. driving really slowly since so many deer had been hit; which managed to jump out from behind some brush and over a guard rail, to smack on my right front fender and headlight just after brief startled eye-contact with me. I'd taken my heavy hammer and spent the next three or four hours hammering out that fender into a drivable configuration. Reminding me of a friend Gary Brotherton into body and fender work's mention that VWs along with Jaguars and Rolls-Royces have the best sheet metal of any cars in the world.

Finally when the fender had been pounded out and was drivable I limped to my friends' place I'd been headed to, south of the Onion Creek General Store; and there soon was employed fixing the fender up so that the car could be legally driven again. Which began the final stages of that rig's re-beautification program under my hands. Ending with use of one of the '59 Chevy APACHE fender chrome strips off of Greg Getty's twenty-five cent half-ton pick-up he and Dominick lived out of the back end of at the peace vigil, in the camper they'd scavenged for free off of a vacant lot in Berkeley. Close friends of Rosebud Abigail Denofu* Berkeley cop Greg Chew murdered just weeks before my original appearance there; I'd shown up that winter, my second, with $400 worth of Afri-I's/Gentle Spirit/Boyd Knausse's purple fluff or orange twist cannabis bud in ROSEBUD match boxes, to share with the peace vigil's vital crew. So, perhaps an adequate compensation for a piece of Greg's truck. The chrome strip was placed upside down to cover the crease on top the fender I'd pounded out, and as a memorial to the mother deer.

Before adding the upside-down APACHE chrome strip though, I'd gotten a sixties FIAT 124 headlight and one from a '59 RAMBLER including the aluminum decorative housing; and mounted both of them EDSEL/PONTIAC style one above the other, to replace the destroyed stock VW right front headlight. The FIAT illumination was the first to go on, but mounted down where the normal turn-signal had been, sort of looked catty-wampus that inspired me to add the RAMBLER headlight too. I'd run out of baling wire by then or whatever I'd used to attach the FIAT lamp with, so had to employ a length of fine hemp rope, the type superior to nylon or other synthetics both for strength and longevity. By the time the project was finished and I'd aimed both lights, either of which were adjustable entirely as if in their stock applications; the car at night could be driven with even more confidence than originally since the illumination was superior. Also of course looking a little peculiar.

That car is one I often dream about, more often than "The FestivaL Car" to date. One of the few air-cooled VWs to feature a forced air defroster; from the Subaru 360 electric heater/defroster fan I'd added, operated by the original Subaru knob on the dash of the VW. Which I have to admit I'd kieped from someone's stash in an orchard near Tonasket, WA I'd mistakenly presumed was an abandoned junker rather than prized "keeper." I do think there'd been a pair, I think someone ultimately informed me. That set-up in the VW still employed the conduit box from the Subaru as well, so that heat could be diverted from the windshield to the interior, instead. Which really worked fantastically, making a person wonder why VW screwed around with their optional gasoline powered heaters instead of just adding a forced air fan instead?

Todd Molyneux claimed his plan was to use the dragster trans-axle in a van, so probably my car had an ignominious fate; not hard to imagine of that "Peaceful Valley" neighborhood, for sure. The idea he'd had the heart to preserve such an amazing rig does linger on in my imagination. I'd like to travel there someday to see for sure; but, a pretty daunting place to have to revisit. A known "mafia retirement town" locals will comment of "well, at least they're retired." My closest friend, also Todd's age, had been using heroin there a year or two by the time I sold Molyneux the VW; or I'd of given my friend the car instead, who'd been a great admirer of that rig for sure.

Someone named Miah or Maya I was never sure which who'd been a lanky, skinny youth raised without a father since the age of seven with slime green dreadlocks and a look like John Lennon when he smiled, who with an equally funny character his age named Derrick who lived out of a green Datsun 510 station wagon and another quite comely youth also their vintage; were the only quartet to ever ride in the car with both the '50 Chevy crummy buckets up front and the '67 Camaro buckets in back. We drove from Spokane to the Aneas Valley east of Tonasket, WA for one of Antahkarana Circle of healers three day weekend gatherings of about a thousand people in an impromptu village; where driving back to Spokaloo from that along the Republic-Keller Ferry highway, there'd been an amazing rainstorm so heavy that tree branches had been broken off of trees. Which falling, had blocked the highway in places so as to be nearly impassable; we'd had to circle around driving at a walking pace to get by.

I'd also managed to invent the "Mudman" phenomena at the gathering, using a freshwater spring and creek next to the plywood sweat lodge; to wallow in nude until covered with the abundant black mud there. I'd then wandered the clothing optional gathering entirely incognito, while inspiring many others to take on this incredible character of appearance. As if gigantic, highly animate insects perhaps; or somehow branches of a tree of some sort come alive as sentient beings of high intelligence apparently human in nature.

*This nineteen year old People's Park activist's short life's controversy is chronicled by Claire Burch in the book and video both named WHAT REALLY KILLED ROSEBUD. [http://users.rcn.com/cburch/rosebudtext.html] Another great pair of book/videos by Claire Burch HOW I RAN FOR GOVERNOR AND GOT OUT OF JAIL, an "as told to" biography of my friend the late communist Jim Moore; has some of Jim's extensive commentary about Rosebud, who'd been convinced she'd been misled into attempting the guerilla theater she'd been about, when murdered by the recently returned from psychiatric leave and already a killer cop, Greg Chew.

Hey, don't blame me, the link works fine from my computer in the original browser window?