vw

21 Articles

Electric Volkswagen Adds Rooftop Solar

April 13, 2023 by 46 Comments

Volkswagen has continually teased the release of a new Microbus in the same way that Duke Nukem Forever strung us all along in the 00s, but unlike the fated video game it seems as though Volkswagen is finally building a hip new van rather than continually teasing its release year after year. With the clunky name of I.D. Buzz, European drivers can expect to see them later this year while those in the North American market will have to wait until 2024. That release will have a camper-equipped option though, but you may also want to equip yours with some solar panels as well.

The German tuning shop ABT is behind this design, which adds 600 watts of solar fixed to the top of the van. The solar roof will generate electricity largely to power the van’s auxiliary systems and is being aimed at those who are looking to outfit this van as a camper and need something to power things like refrigerators, interior lighting, and various electronics while on extended stays. There is also some mention of a 1000 watt option but with the limited space available on the roof may involve a side panel of some sort.

ABT is also noting that this system can be used to extend the driving range and, while technically true, don’t expect to be driving an I.D. Buzz on entirely solar power unless you’re willing to let it sit to charge the battery for days at a time. Like other solar installations on vehicles we’ve seen from various ingenious builders, the lack of real estate available on passenger vehicles limits their use largely to auxiliary electrical loads, but it can be possible to drive a vehicle on solar energy alone with the right design.

Peeking Inside A VW Gearbox Reveals Die Casting Truths

December 14, 2020 by 70 Comments

Recently, I was offered a 1997 Volkswagen Golf for the low, low price of free — assuming I could haul it away, as it suffered from a thoroughly borked automatic transmission. Being incapable of saying no to such an opportunity, I set about trailering the poor convertible home and immediately tore into the mechanicals to see what was wrong.

Alas, I have thus far failed to resurrect the beast from Wolfsburg, but while I was wrist deep in transmission fluid, I spotted something that caught my eye. Come along for a look at the nitty-gritty of transmission manufacturing!

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There’s An Engineer In Germany I’d Like A Word With; Tale Of A Crumbling Volkswagen Lock

July 20, 2020 by 149 Comments

In common with quite a few in the hardware hacking community, I have a fondness for older vehicles. My “modern” ride is an older vehicle by today’s standards, a Volkswagen Polo 6N made in the late 1990s. It’s by my estimation a Good Car, having transported me reliably back and forth across the UK and Europe for several years.

Last week though, it let me down. Outside the church in a neighbouring village the driver’s door lock failed, leaving me with my igniton key stuck in the door, and a mildly embarrassing phone call to my dad to bring the Torx driver required to remove the assembly and release it. I am evidently not 1337 enough, I don’t carry a full set of Torx bits with me everywhere I go. The passenger side lock has never worked properly while I’ve had the car, and this is evidently my cue to sort it all out.

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What Happens To Tesla When The Sleeping Auto Giants Awake?

August 12, 2019 by 158 Comments

The history of automotive production is littered with the fallen badges of car companies that shone brightly but fell by the wayside in the face of competition from the industry’s giants. Whether you pine for an AMC, a Studebaker, or a Saab, it’s a Ford or a Honda you’ll be driving in 2019.

In the world of electric cars it has been a slightly different story. Though the big names have dipped a toe in the water they have been usurped by a genuinely disruptive contender. If you drive an electric car in 2019 it won’t be that Ford or Honda, it could be a Nissan, but by far the dominant name in EV right now is Tesla.

Motor vehicles are standing at the brink of a generational shift from internal combustion to electric drive. Will Tesla become the giant it hopes, or will history repeat itself?

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Volkswagen Tools Turned To The Space Age

March 21, 2019 by 36 Comments

The Volkswagen Beetle, and yes the bus and the sexiest car ever made, are cars meant for the people. You can pull the engine out with a strong friend, and you can fix anything in an old Volkswagen. VW realized this, because in the 1950s and ’60s, they came up with plans for tools designed to tear apart an old VW, and these tools were meant to be manufactured in a local shop. That really turns that right to repair on its head, doesn’t it?

While working on his van, [Justin Miller] came across a reference to one of these tools meant to be made at home. The VW 681 is a seal puller, designed to be manufactured out of bar stock. It’s an old design, but now we have interesting tools like 3D printers and parametric CAD programs. Instead of making one of these DIY seal pullers with a grinder, [Justin] brought this tool from the space age into the modern age. He took the design, modelled it in OpenSCAD, and printed it out.

The VW reference book that lists this tool is Workshop Equipment for Local Manufacture, and for this seal puller, it gives perfectly dimensioned drawings  that are easily modelled with a few lines of code. The only real trouble is filing down the pointy bit of the puller, but a bit of boolean operations fixed that problem. After 15 minutes of printing and a few hours finding the right documentation and writing fifteen lines of code, [justin] had a plastic VW 681 in his hands. Yes, it was probably a waste of time as a regular seal puller could have done the job, but it’s an excellent example of what can happen when manufacturers support their local repairman.

Model Car Indicates Door Is Ajar

March 9, 2019 by 10 Comments

The amount of technology in modern cars is truly staggering. Heated seats, keyless entry, and arrays of helpful cameras are all becoming increasingly common in all but the cheapest of models. [mathisox] drives a slightly older Volkswagen van, which has been converted into a camper. Unfortunately, it lacks a proper door ajar display. Nevermind that, though – there’s a charming solution to this problem.

Rather than stick to the automotive standard of boring indicator lights and low-resolution LCD displays, [mathisox] took a more analogous approach. A small model car matching his van was sourced and quickly gutted for the project. It was then fitted with servos to open and close the doors and rear hatch. The servos are controlled by an Arduino Nano, which reads the door switches in the vehicle and actuates the appropriate parts on the model.

With the model car stuck prominently on the dashboard, it serves as a clear visual indicator of the current status of the vehicle’s doors. It’s far less intrusive than those old Chryslers which repeatedly insisted that a door is a jar.

[Thanks to Raffael for the tip!]

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Spice Up Your Shop With A VW Pickup Wall Decoration

June 24, 2017 by 10 Comments

Seeing a half car is always a disconcerting experience. Especially when that half car is about 14 feet up in the air. [PanasonicModelRC6015] — We’ll call him [RC6015] for short — has gone and mounted 1/2 (actually more like 1/4) of a VW Rabbit Caddy pickup MK1 up on his shop wall.

The caddy started life as a regular 1983 VW pickup. Unfortunately, the years had not been kind to it. The body panels were in good shape, but there were serious rust problems in the floors, strut towers, rockers, and control arm mounts. According to [RC6015], this is beyond “weld on few replacement panels”, though he’s been heavily questioned on it in his Reddit thread.

Cutting the truck down was easy – a reciprocating saw did most of the work. The VW has a unibody design, so there was still some frame there to hold things together. A 2×12 board then was then bolted from the front of the truck to the rear. This made everything stable and provided a solid mounting point. A second 2×12 was lag bolted to several studs on the wall. Then it was just a matter of lifting the truck into position and bolting the two boards together. We’re guessing the [RC6015]’s wall has solid wood studs. Don’t try hanging a 500 lb truck from the wall if you’ve only got thin metal studs behind your sheetrock.

Just in case you’re wondering, the Panasonic Model RC-6015 is a vintage flip display alarm clock, the same one Marty used in Back to the Future.

If a truck on the wall is a bit much for your shop, check out this wall mounted weather display.