God plans things in a strange way

I went to the Deutsche Classic last Saturday and picked up some parts (tools mainly). I was able to identify the cast iron header that came with my Beetle; the dude who had the same one at the swap meet said it is for a diesel Rabbit and that it is undesirable except for the fact that it mates with some performance exhaust he was hocking. There were a lot of show cars, yet not a lot of swappers (they might have already left before I arrived just over an hour before the end).
I left the house at 10:30 for what should have been a less than two hour ride. My departure was delayed by a mysteriously tripped breaker followed by a power outage then the bank held me up for a super long time. On the way, I was expecting to arrive a little after 1:00 until I found a Canada Goose languishing on the road side presumably because of a car collision. After some assessment (and turning around twice with a trailer), the goose was languishing in the car. A friend gave me some wildlife rehabilitator phone numbers and I was on my way. The one rehabber who could handle the bird turned out to be not too far from the swap meet, but it still killed over an hour.
The Deutsche Classic seemed like it would have been a bust for me even if I had arrived earlier.
It is amusing to see some of the same people at the meets, especially the ones who try to peddle the same crap at the same high prices. On the plus side, I scored the twelve point tool I needed to get those floppy drive shafts off of my transmissions! I spent too much on tools. I also made a contact who sells VW parts near Pottstown: Willie Fink.
After my friend's party up in Bethlehem (over an hour of more driving), I went down to Newport, DE to meet with a older gentleman with long hair and long beard (funny how VDubbers often fit that bill) who was selling boxes of Beetle parts on CL for $100. He had posted the ad on 6/28 and I found it around 7/5. I kept forgetting to call and thought that I would give it a shot on Saturday even though he had probably sold it all by then. He had not, obviously, and I was there to slurp it up for $80! His granddaughter had wanted a Beetle, so he bought three with the intention to use the parts to restore one. All good plans are bound to go wrong: he fixed all of them. His spawn eventually moved on from the Beetle and he was left with some remaining parts that he wanted gone: a 1600 block, a set of 85.5 pistons and cylinders, new engine gaskets, a carburetor, tail lights, a muffler, window cranks, nuts, bolts, hard brake lines, dual port carbureted heads, distributor bits, miscelany, and some other items I have to identify. The parts I do not need should drop the cost a lot.
Later, I found a Engle 110 cam on The Samba for $25! People on the forum say not to use a used cam, but this is LeMons! A used performance cam chewing up the old stock lifters should earn some bonus points with the judges, right?
Thursday, some $30 Ghia disk brakes and spindles are in my future! The original car already came with a set, but I would like some spares.
Since I was measuring the pistons that came with Saturday's lot, I had to measure the ones that came with the original purchase. The fire engine has 85.5. The other engine appears to have a set of 92mm, which is both good and bad. 92 equates to about 1800cc and the pistons are short skirted, but the cylinder surface that mates with the heads is smaller. With this surprise, curiosity had me probing the block which I now see contains a balanced crankshaft! I have to get that block apart to see what is going on there. This is more exciting than when I identified the dual Kadron carb setup and what appears to be a Bugspray, both of which came with the original purchase (OP)!
The Lord has had some weird assed plans for this car, but the parts are falling into place within budget.
Coming up: I need to sell more parts off the OP along with the most recent lot. I also want to start posting pictures here and on the classifieds. I am waiting on a SM card reader for that. Yes, my camera is old :P

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