any old addiction forum OG's?

back before schwim this web address was owned and not so operated by someone else. we had small tight knit group of dedicated users. any users from the old forum floating around here now? JT? Greg?
schwim i recognize your name, you ran the old forum for a while. then the old owner came back and did nothing with it and you disappeared. now it's all new and you seem to be in charge.

Hi there Randy :)

I am indeed that guy that ran acvwa for a short while. While I did my best to fix the myriad of problems with the code on his site, there were many limitations that made it hard to do much good, since I didn't have full access to the code.

When Dylan showed back up with dreams of hopping back into the saddle, I figured all was well and it seems that was not the case :(

I'm sorry you lost your home and even more bummed over the huge amount of history lost. You are more than welcome to use this as a place to hang out if you need a spot and you're welcome to invite the crew if you're able to contact them. I actually have the user's table from 2012 or so, which contains the email addresses of 1,600ish users registered on the ACVWA site by that time so if it were warranted, I could shoot a one-time email out to them to let them know of the replacement haven.

Regardless of the circumstances, it's really good to hear from you and hope you're doing well!

it was weird, one day you just disappeared and i think Dylan made a post or 2, not sure he fixed anything and then disappeared himself and the place just sorda fell apart. im assuming he stopped paying for the domain, i went to log in one day and it was just gone. unfortunately i haven't had contact with any of the regulars sense.
i was the 13th person to register on the old forum, i think JT was in the top 10. the forum was originally fallout from i think it was the Rocky Mountain Motorworks forum (if im remembering that right, it was a long time ago).

and am i remembering things right? is 65VW an old forum OG? cause the name and avatar look and sound familiar for some reason... dudes form Washington right? i think he has 2 bugs that are almost identical (?)

sucks that everything got lost. there was some good info and builds on there. i still remember the thread Greg had for the bug he calls Rusty.
the image gallery had some good stuff in it to.

the only 2 names i can fully remember right now are JT and Greg. idk maybe shoot them an email, let them know its up and running, see if they show up. i know they appreciated the work you threw into the old forum.

Super_Randy wrote:

it was weird, one day you just disappeared and i think Dylan made a post or 2, not sure he fixed anything and then disappeared himself and the place just sorda fell apart. im assuming he stopped paying for the domain, i went to log in one day and it was just gone. unfortunately i haven't had contact with any of the regulars sense.
i was the 13th person to register on the old forum, i think JT was in the top 10. the forum was originally fallout from i think it was the Rocky Mountain Motorworks forum (if im remembering that right, it was a long time ago).

It was a little tough on my end because a lot of the regulars eyed me with suspicion I guess for showing up out of nowhere and having the capability to make changes and the like. I got some pretty off-color comments concerning it and when I saw Dylan come back, I figured everyone would win. Dylan would get what he wanted from the site, the regulars got Dylan and I quit getting nasty comments attached to their requests to do something :)

Super_Randy wrote:

and am i remembering things right? is 65VW an old forum OG? cause the name and avatar look and sound familiar for some reason... dudes form Washington right? i think he has 2 bugs that are almost identical (?)

That's Paul and yes, he was a member in good standing on the original site. A great guy with some amazing examples of some classic VW's.

Super_Randy wrote:

the only 2 names i can fully remember right now are JT and Greg. idk maybe shoot them an email, let them know its up and running, see if they show up. i know they appreciated the work you threw into the old forum.

I'll write a little script to send out a one-time email to the addresses to let them know of the site. I didn't do it before because even though it was clear Dylan was letting it go again, I thought it would be in bad taste to write emails to the members about the site, as it would be akin to poaching the userbase. Now that the domain is owned by a scalper, there's no harm in it and may give the guys a place to hang out again.

It would be nice to see the crew again, if for no other reason than to catch up with all the cool stuff they've been doing :)

schwim wrote:

It was a little tough on my end because a lot of the regulars eyed me with suspicion I guess for showing up out of nowhere and having the capability to make changes and the like. I got some pretty off-color comments concerning it and when I saw Dylan come back, I figured everyone would win. Dylan would get what he wanted from the site, the regulars got Dylan and I quit getting nasty comments attached to their requests to do something :)

it's weird when someone you've never seen on the forum before just shows up out of nowhere with admin powers. it was never explained to us what was going on, who you were, or where you came from. we thought you were some hacker that commandeered the site. not having any info from the site owner made it seem super sketchy from our side, it was like a security issue. after we figured out you weren't a threat it was ok. then the site started falling apart, we were then under the impression you were the new Dylan and when things continued to fall apart, not knowing you had limited access to repair and update, we took our frustrations out on you. again, it was the lack of transparency on the situation from the site owner. what was funny was after Dylan "came back" and you had left, we started to miss you cause you actually handled stuff, got rid of spam and stuff. we figured Dylan was going to fix it, i don't think he ever did a damn thing. at which point we were like man, wish we had that schwim guy back. :lol:

Yeah, I totally understood that it was all caused by the frustration of a site that cool being abandoned. I had really hoped that Dylan was going to stick around and put some wind back in the sails of the site. It's terribly unfortunate, but pretty common for it to go down the way it did. Life gets in the way, interests shift and everyone is kind of along for the ride along with the site owner whether they want to be or not. It's just sad all around when a site dies.

I know Paul(65VW) even contemplated starting a site for the regulars to move to, as he saw the direction it was going towards as well. I guess it was getting to be pretty obvious towards the end.

Maybe we'll see some of the crew shortly. That would be pretty cool. There were some fantastic personalities.

Such as me? If greg were around he'd remember my stupid a** (i sold him some Western Bullet mag wheels that ended up being a bum deal) :lol:

I can't remember if i was vwfan4life or vwfan4life68 there, but either way i was a regular there

Some may have not like what you are doing but I thought it was great you put time into keeping the site going.

Hey Randy, hope you have been well and hello again Json.
I am still around and up to 3 Bugs and a Notchback and a 1962 Ford Fairlane.

Recently I have been fixing mechanical issues on my first Bug and have a new muffler to install on it.

I go on cruises with my VW's and to local shows with different VW's depending on the type of show and just to drive them around. No more major restores for me at this point.
I did copy off my entire build thread before ACVWA went away.

I see Nate at the shows around here and we keep in touch via email, or more accurately I bother him with VW questions once in awhile.

Lots of crappy changes for me over the past 8 years but I am hanging in there and becoming old and grumpy.

:)

vwfan4life68 wrote:

Such as me? If greg were around he'd remember my stupid a** (i sold him some Western Bullet mag wheels that ended up being a bum deal) :lol:

I can't remember if i was vwfan4life or vwfan4life68 there, but either way i was a regular there

You were vwfan4life but we can call you anything as long as it's not late for dinner ;)

Very glad to see you here, be sure not to be a stranger!

65VW wrote:

Some may have not like what you are doing but I thought it was great you put time into keeping the site going.

It will be interesting to see if it grows any legs. If some peeps decide to hang out a bit, I'll put some time into features & improvements. Being the only active member, I didn't require any bells and whistles :D

65VW wrote:

I see Nate at the shows around here and we keep in touch via email, or more accurately I bother him with VW questions once in awhile.

If you see or talk to him again, tell him I said hi. He was a font of information and a pretty great guy to boot.

65VW wrote:

Lots of crappy changes for me over the past 8 years but I am hanging in there and becoming old and grumpy.

We're all moving toward that end of the spectrum, I think. I'm going down kicking and screaming though, so I feel I'm at least fighting the good fight!

Well, 1,700 emails were sent and it looks like about a dozen registrations from it. So many email addresses from 15 years ago are no longer used, so not a whole bunch of successful deliveries.

There's still about 300 microsoft accounts to send an email to(hotmail, msn, outlook). Microsoft doesn't trust unestablished domains so I had to jump through some hoops to get mail delivered to those accounts. Even now, I have to limit the mail to just a few an hour so they don't decide to block the server again. Maybe we'll get a few more of the original crew from the remaining email addresses.

Wow 1700!?! There were that many registered users?

Glad a few did actually register out of that, my guess is it is people like me who do not like FB as a format for information exchange/help.

Forums seem to be drying up and several local ones in my area went away over the years.

I will send Nate a note about this site and he does have a lot of VW knowledge.
He built a racing squareback his son is now racing in.

Did JT (or was it TJ) respond? He seemed like a good guy.

65VW wrote:

Forums seem to be drying up and several local ones in my area went away over the years.

It's a dying format but just like all the other dying formats, there will be enough holdouts to populate a cozy spot. It's no longer a viable method of making your millions via advertising monetization but for a few guys to stand around the barrel and share VW stories, it's as good a time as any.

65VW wrote:

I will send Nate a note about this site and he does have a lot of VW knowledge.
He built a racing squareback his son is now racing in.

I've read some amazing threads of his over on the Samba. He's an absolute dynamo and his projects are a blast to follow.

65VW wrote:

Did JT (or was it TJ) respond? He seemed like a good guy.

I never heard back from JT and if I remember correctly, his email bounced(it's hard to keep track of that many bounced emails :D). A fun little nugget of trivia, he was the 4th person to register over at the old site and that's including the two admins of the site. He's about as salty as one could get :)

My hope was that the few I was able to tap on the shoulder would know a guy who knew a guy who.... that sort of thing.

It will be fun to see where it stands in a month or so when the dust settles. Maybe we'll have assembled a workable sandlot team.

Glad to see someone managed top drag this rusty old site back from the brink schwimm, nice work

I'm in the same boat as 65VW, still hanging in there, although i haven't been able to drive my VW at all over the last 7 or 8 years; i think i was out once in it about 4 years back, but since then its been sitting gathering dust in both my storage garage and now my actual garage, since i bought a house

Does that mean i'm getting rid of it? Nope, i just have a couple of slightly more pressing projects before i can get it at least driveable again.

And i'm also getting grumpy and old; don't go to many car cruises anymore since they only attract a bunch of stupid kids in flashy rice burners, and since the law watches every street now i can't exactly take them to school at a red light :lol:

I'm a bit more under the gun as I don't have a covered storage space for Zippy so it's sort of a race against the earth reclaiming him :)

I try not to move into the "get off my lawn" phase of life too early. I try to keep a "live and let live" mentality and hug a millennial once a day right after I take my multivitamin.

hell iv been waving a rake and yelling at people to get off my lawn sense i was in my early 20's.

seriously, don't make turn on the sprinklers!

the alien in my avatar should be giving the finger. lol

Super_Randy wrote:

hell iv been waving a rake and yelling at people to get off my lawn sense i was in my early 20's.

seriously, don't make turn on the sprinklers!

the alien in my avatar should be giving the finger. lol

Damn kids quit parking along my side yard!! Grrrr. haha
I have to try not to be too crotchety too at times.

The VW Bug comes and goes but its a nice hobby and I don't usually think of things that bother me when I am working on the Bugs or driving them around.
I also feel better after I get something done, like I just replaced the front tie rods and front brake slave cylinders in a Bug and I feel great that its done and even better that I did it.

Also charged up my 1992 Ford Explorers AC with a quick charge kit yesterday and I now have AC again!!!
That is one easy recharge kit to recharge an R12 system and it has been a few years since my AC worked.
Messing with cars/VWs is just enjoyable.

Wow, R12 kits are getting as rare as hen's teeth and pretty darned expensive! Have you been sitting on some? My 79 Bronco's A/C needs some love but to be honest, I don't want to pay the crazy cost of R12 on top of whatever's wrong with it and I have too many projects to add a retrofit kit onto the list of things I'm getting to way too slowly.

I always feel great after getting something done on the bug but I have the worst mission creep of anyone I've ever known. I tried to build a blast cabinet so I could clean up the rims, seat frames and stuff of that sort but the build was an epic failure so I bought a cabinet, built a dust collector and am now in the process of improving the lighting, making the glass a quick-change affair and wiring the back of the basement so I don't have extension cords everywhere. This was all to do some rims and seat stuff, which still hasn't gotten done :)

All in due time and I remind myself that it's the projects that give you all the memories and not so much the finished car.

Well, that's what I tell myself :D