Now that skin has healed and Sunny (Joy's 75 Super Beetle Convertible) has a new ignition switch, I'll share a few tips I learned (some of them the hard way).

1st tip - If your ignition switch goes bad on a 72 or later Beetle cutting power to the ignition, there are two ways to get it home to work on it.  You can hotwire (straightwire) it or plug in a replacement switch.  Now here's the tip . . . if you decide you are going to hotwire it by running a wire from the hot wire on the one-wire alternator to the + side of the coil, make sure the wire can not possible short out on anything.  If it does happen to short and set the insulation of the hotwire on fire, DO NOT GRAB THE WIRE WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!  If it's on fire, there is a pretty good chance it's because it's red hot.  It might even be hot enough to cook skin.  If the FBI is looking for you, however, this is a good way to permanently alter your fingerprints.  

The better option is to just reach under the dash, unplug the wires going to the switch and plug in a replacement switch.  Put your key in the old switch and turn it to the "on" position to make sure your steering collumn isn't locked, then use a key, screwdriver, or just about any flat object that will go in the electrica portion of the switch and turn it clockwise to turn it on, fully clockwise to start it, and counter-clockwise to turn it back off.  Drive it home and fix it right.

Once you have the steering wheel and wiper/turn signal switches off you may notice that the steering collumn has play inside the support bearing.  There used to be a plastic bushing in there, but chances are it's crumbled into several thousand tiny bits of plastic by now.  Don't bother looking for a used one, they are ALL bad.  Instead, of trying to locate the proper bushing, you can take a knife and cut about 1 inche of the top off of a 35mm film canister.  It's too big in diameter and just a tad too thin, but if you then cut it to make a flat strip insted of a loop, and wrap it around the collumn before putting the lock housing back on the end of the collumn, you'll find it makes it a pretty snug fit and takes care of the play.

 1- one roll of wire

If you forget this one, just crawl under the car and get some of that wire you have holding your heater box opened.  It's June.  You need to cut the heat off anyway.

 2- some kind of stuff to put a fire out.

Drive around in June with your heat working and you'll have this.  A cooler full of water.

 3- one 35mm camera/ extra film canisters

Leave this one out.  The last thing you need is evidence of you making an idiot of yourself.

 4- one Arby`s oven mitt

Use the extra money you saved by not buying the camera, and get two oven mitts.  If I've got a mitt on just one hand, I'm gonna grab the hot wire with the other . . . about that time, someone is going to snap a picture of me.  So, no camera, two mitts.

 5- a paid up medical Ins. policy to get you into a Burn Clinic

I've got the insurance, but when something like this happens, I'm not going to admit it to anyone, even a doctor, until after most of the wounds heal.

On a serious note . . . water will put out some fires, but it's not the ideal way to fight a fire on a VW.  Mostly because most VW fires are gas fires.  Gas floats on water . . . so water will just spread the fire (NOT that I would know first hand about that   ).  If you don't get a gas fire in the engine compartment out fast enough, the magnizium alloy engine block will start buring.  Once it starts up, water will only make the fire blaze bigger . . . no joke.  I've seen that first hand.  Throw water on a magnizium fire and you'll think you just threw gas on it.

Luckily, by the time Joy had gotten the water out of the cooler in Homer and ran it back around to me the insulation had finished burning up and the fire was out . . . but cold water does do wonders for cooling off cooked flesh, so the water didn't go to waste.   :cool: