Today we are pleased to add a new section to our blog. These entries will document the storyline (as mostly written by the students) of the restoration and rebuild of a diesel VW Rabbit Pickup by students at Penn Manor High School in Lancaster, PA. We hope to help them along the with advice and some products to help their project move along. I think this will be a great chance to see them grow and hone their skills (not to mention maybe inspire some of our adult “beginners” to take on a project or two of your own!). Ill let one of the students Tyler kick it off with his background on the truck.
My name is Tyler Newswanger, I am one of the students from Penn Manor working on the Volkswagen diesel pickup. A basic history of our project began a few years ago when our chapter of TSA was working on creating bio-diesel. We wanted to continue our experiments and create a larger scale operation to create bio-diesel and have a vehicle to run it through. We wanted something that was unique and yet still usable. After searching several weeks, and several failed attempts, we were able to find our 1981 Volkswagen “Caddy.” It was in an old garage of which the owner was tearing down and had to remove the contents (see attached photos). It was delivered to our school with needs of a replacement head gasket and repair several spots of rust damage (see attached photo of driver’s side shock tower). In the past week we have set up a schedule to work Mondays and Fridays after school and start removing the head. We are currently in the process of cleaning parts that we have removed and finally removing the head.
