Donnie prater

Hi Joe it Donnie Todd’s son. My entire life I was exposed to VWs all the way back to my birth when dad put me in a tye dye onesie that said “future VW driver”. I’ve always joked that I was doomed from the start and never had a chance to be normal. I always loved helping dad work on ours cars when I was little and would sit and talk while he worked on the bus, sometimes I would sit in the front seat and pretend to drive everywhere. when I was older I would get tools for dad or parts he couldn’t reach which taught me a lot. I’ve helped replace almost every major component on hienz and learned a ton about vw’s that way. I vividly remember the first time he let me actually do some work was on an early 2000s Oldsmobile, he taught me how to replace the brake pads then let me do it myself and after that I wanted to do more. Over the years he would teach me about different parts and different tools and how to use them and then I would go read in our repair manuals about diagnostics and repairs. At the same time dad would bring me to the vw club meetings and events so I was surrounded by vw people all the time. I would talk to them and ask about their cars learning more and getting more interested. One of my favorite events was the show because there were so many cars and my favorite thing to do at the show was inspect engines and see how different engines were made and how different people would customize them. 2 of my favorite cars were a barn door bus and a very original split beetle. I looked at them all day and examined how they were different from the 60s and later beetles and buses I’ve seen so much. In school I’d try to talk to people about vw’s and used to pretend I was driving a beetle during recess all the time haha. I loved bringing magazines to look at and reading about different modifications you could do and I especially loved the advertisements for the parts and the artwork. Pretty much every second I was awake somehow involved vw’s. Once I was a bit older around 10 or so I started actually fixing things. I could replace entire drum brake systems and change oil while dad was doing something else. One time dad’s truck a 1969 ford f100 wasn’t running right so he pulled the carb off to rebuild that night on the kitchen table after dinner. Well he ended up falling asleep so I followed the diagram and did it myself. Next day we put it back on and it ran great for years until it needed cleaning again. That’s when I really started getting into repairing things myself because I realized I knew how. When I started high school I really wanted to fix up a beetle for my first car so I chose one of dad’s beetles that had been sitting for over a decade at that point to make my first car. I put many afternoons and weekends into fixing up that car. I replaced the front suspension, transmission, all the brakes, and was building an engine for it until I found out that the heads on this engine were bad so I had to tear it all down again and then found out that engine has a spun rod bearing so unfortunately with no engine the car got put on the back burner but I do have an engine for it now that I’m hoping to put in it soon. I learned a lot about vw’s from the couple of years I worked on that beetle so when the engine in Heinz blew up I offered to build a completely new one. so for about 6 months I tore down an old engine we had and completely rebuilt it. I put a mild performance cam, used bigger 87mm cylinders, and a 2 barrel Webber carb. It was such an amazing experience to hear that engine fire up for the first time and survive cam break in. It was a pretty strong little engine too and had no issues hauling us around. Unfortunately a couple years later one of the valves in the used heads I used let loose and completely destroyed that engine. The block, pistons, cylinders, and heads were completely destroyed. I did manage to salvage the camshaft and crank though so not a total loss. I then found a decent type 3 engine on Facebook that we bought and converted to a type 1 and it ran really good for awhile until last November I was going to drive the bus to New Orleans for a vw show when it lost cylinder 3 due to a broken valve. Seems to be a running them with the engines I’ve put together haha. Now we’re on engine 3 since I’ve been working on the bus which I bought for $75 from a junkyard seized. I got it freed up and running pretty good, have it a much needed bath and tune up and so far it’s been pretty good for the past month. recently I bought my first vw of my own. A 1983 Jetta with a 1.7 gasoline engine and 5 speed manual. I’ve wanted a mk1 vw so when I found this one for such a great price I had to get it. It’s all original and in amazing condition. Currently I’ve been researching a bunch about fuel injection and slowing rebuilding the obsolete cis system and actually got the system running. They’re pretty simple systems once you look into them. I’m planning on having the car ready for our tannehill volksjam show this August.