Do I have 6 volt VW Woes? Well, only at night!
In 1966 Volkswagen decided, that would be the last year for the 6 volt system. In fact 12 volt charging systems were an option in ’66 but not one the original owner of my beetle decided to take. Most american cars had migrated to 12 volt systems at least a decade earlier. So it only made sense for VW to follow, even if they were late to do so.
When I had my first 66 at age 18, I never noticed how inferior the headlights were at night. Of course, now it is all to obvious. There are more things that are affected than the lights with a six volt system. If it’s raining and you have your headlights on, you can watch the slowest windshield wipers in the universe (and don’t even think about turning on your radio). The faster you drive, the faster the wipers move.
Many 1966 Beetle owners have also migrated to 12 volt systems, or they came up with work-arounds. One of the guys at my VW meeting, Adam, has bypassed most of the headlight wiring by going directly from the battery to a relay. I don’t know the specifics of the wiring but it’s more complicated than I would want to do, mainly because I can’t fish my wires along the inside of the beetles headliner. I would need to run them under the carpet. That’s a no-go for me.
Then, apparently years ago some folks were dropping 8 volt batteries in there beetles and fine tuning the voltage regulators. I’m not interested in that either.
So my plan, eventually, is to make my way through the morass of wiring and see where the voltage dropping out. I can almost guarantee that I’m getting less than 5 volts at the lights. The three way spade connector that goes to each front light, looks like one connection point that definitely needs to be replaced. The connections cannot even be seen within the plastic insulator. I have ordered the replacements, and as I go through, I’m sure I will find more issues. In addition I have already discovered a very questionable wiring job involving the radio speakers which I have corrected.
I also want to check the ground connections.
Now with the days so short, the sun comes up close to 7:30 AM in north Texas. I usually leave for the VW meeting at 7:00, but I’ll be leaving later now, just to be safe.
