We got Herbie back!

Our Travel Bug arrived at the harbor of Veracruz on time. Yesterday Domi got the permission to pick him up. Everything worked out great and Herbie is doing very well. We are so happy about that! Now we’re looking forward heading north again.

Herbie’s vessel, the “Green Lake”, sailed exactly for four days across the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico – from South to North America. We can highly recommend this route for people who aren’t interested in driving through Central America (in order to ship the car from Panama) or who visited those countries before, like we did.

We enjoyed being in Veracruz in the meantime. It is a very nice city with a long history – part of it is kind of Austrian by the way. And our hotel (“Hotel Reforma”) is a real insider’s choice. Tomorrow we’ll leave this place, heading north on the coast towards Texas. It will take us days to get there and we’ll have to drive through the State of Tamaulipas again – certainly one of the most dangerous states of Mexico.

Matthias, electronics and a control unit

Matthias is a trained electronics engineer, so Friedrich had the idea  to copy the memory of a modified control unit (erasable programmable read only memory – EPROM) to save money, because an empty EPROM costs about 2€ and a modified chip from a shop up to 150€.

So Matthias tried to replace the original EPROM with a modified chip.

Original control unit Type B

Seven screws are need to be removed to get access to the Motherboard of the control unit.

The motherboard without case. The EPROM and  the CPU are placed under the silver cover. The cover is a faraday cage to protect the electronics against electromagnetic waves.

The IC on the right side, with the sticker on it, is the EPROM.

The rear side of the control unit. If you want to copy an EPROM it’s easier to replace the original one, because it’s quite difficult to program an EPROM twice. So the read side of the faraday cage must also be removed.

To remove the EPROM, it’s good to have a machine for hot air soldering.

 

The new EPROM gets a socket for easier assembly.

The Original EPROM in a programmer to get data out of it.

The memory of the original EPROM in hexadecimal.

Plugging the new EPROM in its socket on the control unit.

At last the control unit gets a sticker to show the modifications. I’m sorry for the quality of this picture. The original  sticker has a bug in the background.  All in all Matthias needs about 2 hours for replacing the EPROM.

More than 40,000 Clicks…

La Casa del Vocho

As you know, we are back in Veracruz, on the Golf of Mexico. There is no other country in the world in which so many Volkswagen Beetles were produced like here.

Therefore you can still find a lot of spare part shops for air-cooled Volkswagen – just like “La Casa del Vocho” (“The House of the Beetle”) right here in Veracruz.

The streets are lined with all different kinds of air-cooled “Vee Dubs”, just as Bugs and Kombis. And most of them were made in Puebla, very close to Mexico City.

People still love using these reliable automobiles as company cars. Unfortunately Volkswagen decided to stop the Mexican air-cooled VW production in 2003.

Here you can see one of the later Volkswagen Beetle versions with its proud owner, wearing just a tiger print speedo, asking Domi “Why the heck are you taking a picture?”.

Domi bought all brake wheel cylinders as well as the master cylinder and its brake light switch for just about 60 Greenbacks (or 50 Euro) as spares for our Herbie.

Furthermore Domi got a whole bunch of different spares for our friend and mechanic Friedrich from Vienna. It is a huge box which we’ll send through the post to Austria.

Step by step

Digging In The Deeps Of Vimeo

Herbie and the Globetrotters

The biggest magazine about air-cooled Volkswagen in France called “Super VW Mag” just published a story about Herbie’s World Tour and us globetrotters.

The article includes an interview with us, done and written by Julien-David Collombet. For a readable version (in French) just follow Herbie's page "Press"!

Mission Accomplished

Our plan was to explore the Andes of South America in our beloved Volkswagen Bug from 1963. Herbie accomplished his mission by driving 13,080 miles (21,050 kilometers) – all thanks to his very same engine with just 1,200 cc and 34 horsepower.

We’ve experienced so much by following the “Panamericana” and visiting Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Venezuela. So far we’ve been on the road in Herbie for more than 91,000 miles (147,000 kilometers).

Due the rain season and certain road conditions, we had to cancel our plan driving across Brazil and the Amazonas towards Venezuela. So we went all the way back by climbing the Andes again couple times, which was for sure even more challenging.

While Herbie will be sailing across the sea towards the Golf Coast of Mexico, we’ll leave South America on Sunday, getting to Veracruz by three flights via Panama and Mexico City. If Herbie’s vessel arrives on time, he’ll reach North America on May 17.

Port of Lonely Hearts

Today we delivered Herbie to one of Cartagena’s ports where he’ll go aboard on his vessel “Green Lake” heading across the Caribbean and the Golf of Mexico to Veracruz.

Unfortunately too many things went wrong again at the “Contecar” port and we had to spend the entire day getting almost all necessary shipping documents done.

Thanks to Pablo Uribe from the Cartagena port administration we got through this chaotic organized harbor which already caused several problems at our arrival.

When shipping a vehicle via “RoRo” (Roll-On/Roll-Off) it is very important to remove things like the car radio, ashtray or cigarette lighter, because they can get stolen.

Tomorrow our Love Bug No. 53 will have his final inspection by the Colombian anti-narcotic police, before he’ll get on his boat leaving South America for good.

Waiting for the Ship

As you know we are back in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, waiting for the ship, which will take Herbie back to Veracruz, Mexico. Hopefully it will depart on May 12.

We initially booked a boat called “Green Lake”, which got canceled but they called the cancelation off again, so Herbie will be on his favored vessel anyway.

There is a lot of bureaucratic stuff  to do, before getting a car shipped overseas. But tomorrow we’ll finally deliver Herbie to one of the ports named “Contecar”.

Nothing Can Stop Herbie

After we crossed our last border in South America, we ran into a protest of the Colombian teacher’s union, who blocked an important highway intersection right after the border, one of just two roads connecting Colombia and Venezuela with each other.

They demonstrated for higher wages and even blocked the train tracks above the street. Nobody was able to pass. Police men told us to that there is no way through.

The protest should last for 24 hours, as all teachers would remain on the road for the night too. Cars were making u-turns and trucks pulled over to wait for the next day.

But Domi begged for passage and pointed out that Herbie has nothing to do with Colombian politicians and we eventually got permission to pass. We were the only ones who got this privilege! What was it: Sympathy for Herbie or Domi’s charm?

Venezuelan Herbie Fans

While having lunch in the shade of a tree on Highway No. 6, heading towards Colombia, we got to know true Love Bug fans from Venezuela who invited us to their home.

They even filled up Herbie with a couple gallons of gas. Getting closer to the border, it is not possible to buy gas as a tourist, in order to avoid cross-national gasoline trade.

So we were heading straight towards the border, getting back to Colombia and our final destination within South America – Cartagena, where Herbie will leave by ship.

Three Cents per Gallon

You probably won’t believe it, but a complete fill up for Herbie just costs 30 US-Cents in Venezuela. This is not a joke! Venezuela has the cheapest gas prices in the world.

Herbie feels like he is in paradise. Gas for just three US-Cents per Gallon (or less than one Euro Cent per liter). Gasoline is subsidized by the government of Hugo Chávez.

Today I got two fill ups actually for free, because the guys at the gas station had no change, so they decided not to charge for it. It was a total amount of 20 US-Cents.

However it was really hard to get here: Initially the custom office at the border was closed for two days. Yesterday it took us hours to get the necessary paperwork done.

Venezuela had the toughest border in South America respective entering a country with a car. But we rejoice to be able to visit our ninth and final South American country.

Eggenburg 2012

Christian, Fabi and Georgy visited the biggest aircooled VW meeting in Austria with Flo’s ‘73 Buggy and Georgy’s ‘84 Mexican! The second one was fitted with standard tires at the front because the lowering doesn’t offer enough space for the ATS rims!