Parker's Road to Recovery - Engine

You may all know him as the 1980's rock star that exploded onto the scene of Caught the VW Bug back in February 2014. Here he is again, ready to finally face the public after the dramatic report of inducting himself into rehab which I am not surprised did no good for his PR team.

So, let's talk about the first step on the road to recovery. The engine. The heart of the bug, without that, Parker would be a hunk of sad looking yet beautifully shaped metal. We bought a brand new 1200cc engine that Parker had originally when he rolled off the production line for a pricey £41! This, really is an absolute bargain in terms of classic VW parts as we have spent in excess of that for interior parts such as door cards, but this is the heart and soul of the car! However, Caught The VW Bug doesn't have NHS provisions for heart transplants/engine changes, so we had to operate on him pronto and against qualified medical advice.

Parker's heart operation in action!

We located the heart for Parker and a quick jump over to Essex, UK was all it took to collect. The benefit of this is that we didn't need to collect the heart in a van nor in an ice-cooler so we could quickly go about our business for cheap in the PARTS WAGON, who has served us well recently.

The finished article

When we picked the heart up, as you can see in the photo, it looked grim as it was left outside for many years in a bloke's back garden. Despite that, we manage to work wonders with the engine simply by a quick clean and a paint of the metal to make it look brand new.

Soon after all the metalwork was cleaned and painted, Parker's operation was successful after his new was dumped in the engine bay and wired up to run! This is only the first step on Parker's road to recovery, but the little bug is certainly on the way!

We will be returning to Parker after he is taken off the drip and showing signs of movement on the driveway where we will be reporting on his next step, emergency cavity work and filling in those nasty areas of rust.

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS! - The surgeon among the madness