I Think This Is A Training Cutaway VW Chassis But I Know It’s Amazing

I know you’re waiting for the final, full wrap-up of the incredible 375,000-mile, $800 NYC taxi cross-country trip. I am, too, and I just did it! But I’m tired, so deeply, deeply tired, and I don’t think I can pull that off right now. And by “right now” I mean way too late at night, after I got to the hotel room with every intent of writing it up, but instead made the I-should-know-better decision to just see how that bed felt.

It felt great.

Anyway, I woke up and realized, crap, I fell asleep, and I said I’d be back doing Cold Starts today and I haven’t written the final day wrap-up. So I’m doing the shorter thing that we need sooner, this very Cold Start you’re reading right now. But I’ll get that final wrap-up soon! Or at least soon-ish!

In the meantime, let’s talk a bit about this amazing cut-away teaching/training chassis I saw at the air-cooled Volkswagen show when we were in Effingham, Illinois. I believe, based mostly on the steering wheel, that this is a 1956 to 1959 chassis, and based on the quality of the cutaway work, I deeply suspect this was an original Wolfsburg factory-built training tool.

Just look at how carefully and how much of this thing is cut open to reveal the secrets within! This isn’t just some bare chassis with a few parts hacked open – this is like a real-world version of a cutaway drawing, precise and careful and incredibly thorough.

Look at this – even the coil is cut open. Nobody opens a coil to service it, you just swap out a new one. This is just setting the stage here, a bit of showing off, just to make clear how deep this is going to get.

There’s the fuel pump cut open, with its diaphragm visible. The inside of the distributor is laid bare, too, so you can see the rotor mechanism inside.

Around the other side of the engine we can see not just inside the generator, but also in the voltage regulator mounted atop it! The carburetor is revealed, too, and the muffler as well.

Here, let’s look closer at the muffler; I’ve never really seen inside of one of these, except when they’ve rusted holes in them, but then the inside is usually pretty eaten away as well. The exhaust pipes are flayed open, too, revealing those perforated sleeves that give Beetles their distinctive sound.

Of course the cylinders have been carefully sliced open, with sliced areas being painted red/orange as they are for every cut open bit of this chassis, and here that helps see the cooling fins better, both on the cylinder jugs and on the heads. You can see the flywheel here, as well as the differential gears.

The starter is opened up, as is the transmission. The boot on the swing axle, too, and the bell housing where the transaxle meets the engine. Everywhere secret things lurk inside other things, metal has been removed to expose all the good bits.

Here’s more transmission exposure for you to enjoy, especially for you meshed-gear fetishists. And look how the swing axle tube itself is opened to reveal the yellow-painted axle shaft inside!

Hell, the solenoid is cut open, even!

Look at those rocker arms! This is starting to feel porny.

The center tunnel is opened so you can see where the control shafts and cables run; honestly, I wish I had this kind of access all the times I had to replace an accelerator cable.

Here’s the bundles of metal bars that act as torsion springs in the front axle! You never get to see them from this view!

…and that’s the inside of the steering box!

I mean, hell, they even cut open the battery! If someone at the factory had left their lunch on this thing, I’m sure we could count every layer of their sandwich, and each Cheeto would be bisected to reveal their complex inner workings, too.

I’ve seen cutaway mechanic training cars before, but few as carefully and comprehensively done as this one. It’s a real visual (and, I imagine, tactile, but I didn’t test that even though I wanted to) treat, and I wanted to share it with you.

Okay. I’m going to sleep!