pics of other projects

[ARCHINSTL]

Those are some revealing (giggle) photos.
They remind me of thoughts I had waay back when about my '69 Bus. I was doing some work on it when the thought of "What do they do in really dusty/dirty/muddy areas of the world - how are the fins cleaned?" occurred.
Never had to worry about it in MO, but always wondered, as the OM never mentioned anything about brushing/blowing out the fins. I'd guess clogged fins could really have an impact on longevity of the motor, huh?
Tom M.

[Petros]

...but always wondered, as the OM never mentioned anything about brushing/blowing out the fins. I'd guess clogged fins could really have an impact on longevity of the motor, huh?

What? That coarse screen that comes over the cooling air intake does not stop everything?

if it was not leaking oil the fine dust would just blow through, and apparently no one at VW ever thought it would leak oil.

[dlb]

just got back from a big trip and the test drive for the rebuilt VW engine. it was great! the rebuild took a long time due to my parts store accidentally ordering a few wrong things, one head being cracked and needing to be replaced and reconditioned, parts suppliers sending the wrong things--i ordered a luk clutch kit and while the clutch disc was right, the pressure plate in the kit was complete different! this was discovered on the saturday of the long weekend so i couldn't get the right one until we were supposed to have left for our trip. the old clutch was okay, i just figured i'd replace it while i had the engine out, so i just put the old clutch back on.

reconditioned heads:


all reassembled! note ron lurking in the background of the second pic.




got the whole thing reassembled and on sunday got it in place in the vehicle but found the bolt holes for the cross member didn't line up with the bolt holes on the vehicle frame. i then realized that, while not marked or mentioned in the manual, although the cross member looks like it does not have a designated front or back, it indeed does. reminds me of the the whole upside down sway bar issue i had with the terc a few months back, except i don't feel quite so stupid over this because there was no way to know until we got the engine in the vehicle. it sucked, i had to remove a few engine shrouds, the exhaust manifold, and air boxes to remove the cross member and flip it around but i took the time to etch "front" and "back" onto it's faces, respectively. incidentally, haynes manuals can suck but my bentley manual is far worse.

post-etching:


on monday i hooked it all up and got it running. set the timing, found it had a pretty steady backfire through the #4 intake. i took the head off and backed off the intake valve tappet a 1/4 turn and voila! it ran like a clock after that! by this time it was about 8 pm and we had planned to leave on tuesday morning at 10 am. we just missed insuring the van that night but luckily we live rurally so we drove it uninsured on the quiet back roads around our place for an hour just to make sure it was okay with hills and give it some time to show us if it was going to act up. it drove really well though, and although i'm not a fan of taking a vehicle that hasn't proven itself on road trips, i put too much time into this thing over the last 2 weeks to not indulge myself so we insured it and got going.

at one point on tuesday morning when i started the van up i thought it sounded like the engine may have been slow to crank, but figured i was being paranoid. at the gas station on the way to victoria though it was definitely slow and i realized the alternator was hooped. i almost turned around to swap the van for the terc but decided to just swing into the VW wrecker on the way to vic and see if they had an alternator around. they did so i grabbed it for $75 and threw it in in the parking lot. this was actually a big blessing because when i pulled the old alt out i smelled gas and took a look. i found a very slight fuel leak where one of the hoses connected to the injector. i wasn't surprised but am baffled at the design: all the fuel line hoses are clamped at either end, except at the injector where the end of the hose sits over two ridges on the injector and then butts up against a little collar. i thought this was dubious when i replaced all the fuel hoses but figured if that's the way they made it, it must work. WRONG. so we got 4 FI hose clamps off some cars at the wrecker and i put them on each of the injectors. a somewhat frightening note is that 4 of the 5 westfalia vans at the wrecker were all burnt out from the engine compartment. i'm glad i did the fuel hoses but shit, am i lucky we found the leak when we did.

after that, all was well. drove the van to salmo, BC and partook in an insane 3-day rave festival (most of the music sucked) called shambhala. 10,000+ people, pretty crazy. once we set up camp i noticed some SR5 trim peaking out from the jungle of vehicles so i tap danced over and met board member simon84! it was an uncanny and awesome stroke of luck to meet another enthusiast and we spent way too much time talking about tercs. we blew some peoples minds with our love of the 'lil devil. simon, get back on the board! show them your latest acquisition!

anyway, the van drove great all the way there and back, about 15,000 kms. i've got a laundry list of little things to fix now. we have to finish painting it (jenn sanded it down and just spray painted the exposed metal to prevent rusting so it looked like ass for the trip but it looked like ass to start with so whatevs), the heater controls are messed, the speedo was iffy, the km counter didn't work, etc. etc. above all else, one of the CV boots was torn when we got it but i didn't have time to get to it before we left so i used zip ties and a ziploc bag that i cut down the sides to wrap it up for the trip. it's still intact now and there's no noise coming from the joint but i'll take a good look at it and see if i just have to replace the whole damn thing. not a big deal.

the makeshift CV boot:


my crotch after wire-wheeling the rims for paint prep. thank god for my chastity belt:


camping! you can barely see the black/purple colour scheme in the grill and headlight grills. it's gonna look rad when it's done:


stopping for milk shakes in grand forks BC. note the interim paint job:


this little bastard had me confounded. it's one of the engine to transmission mount bolts and the nut for it sits inside the engine bay. although difficult to reach, i cracked the nut and started to thread it off the bolt but after a while i noticed i wasn't getting anywhere and found the bolt was spinning. i grabbed a 17 mm wrench, crawled underneath the vehicle, hugged the transmission to reach the bolt head, and tried to put the wrench on it. as you well know from the photo, this didn't work at all. i couldn't figure out what the hell was up with the bolt head but eventually i realized that if i pushed the bolt all the way down and held it in place, it would lock into the transmission housing and jenn could unscrew the nut. we finally got it out and once i took a look it made perfect sense, but it only made me ask once again: why does VW do such stupid things?


we should have it painted in the next week or two so i'll post some pics of the finished product then.

[dlb]

finished painting the van. like i said in an earlier post, i learned a lot. the biggest one was this: if your fiancee uses 60 grit sandpaper it'll leave a very, very, very rough finish, and if she only uses it on SOME parts of the vehicle you will also get an inconsistent finish! to be fair though, i didn't realize what a difference the heavy grit would make so although i would have followed all the online advice i found and used much lighter sandpaper, i don't entirely fault her. once i realized what was up (after not understanding why there were bumpy areas, smooth areas, and in between areas all over the van) i understood the root of the problem. it was a tough first paint project due to the initial hippy paint job having to be sanded off, regardless of my lack of experience with sanding and painting. it's fine though, it still looks way better than originally. if i get really bored one day i might sand it ALL, very thoroughly, with 400 grit and redo it, but i highly doubt it. i'll most likely take the learning experience and move on.

before:




after:




i'm still undecided on using a roller to highlight the vanagon and volkswagen logos on the back of the vehicle. i quite like the raised all-black lettering as it is though:


it's tough to really tell with the photo but the painted door handles look much cooler. you can just see the caliper here, which i also painted purple, along with the drums. the rims don't show these off at all but whatevs, i just wanted to try it out:

[Petros]

60 grit sand paper to prep a car for painting?!?! 100 grit is considered too rough for most body work except for a first pass. You should do a bit of research, there has got to be plenty of good hobby car painting web site, and even a lot of info on this list.

400 might be a bit too fine, I seem to recall 220 as prep for painting, but it has been a long time since I have done any body work (I do not care for it much, would much rather turn wrenches).

[dlb]

oh no petros, I know that 60 is too heavy! i had read a bit about paint prep but this van is a joint project between the lady and me and she really wanted to help so she sanded while i worked on the engine. i had given her 200 grit initially but she's really impatient so that's why she went to the heavy stuff after using up all the 200. i was bummed about it and told her not to use it... but joint projects, you know? oh well!

i had some troubles painting and used 400 for smoothing out sags and such, it worked quite well and left a nice smooth finish... too bad that was only in a few spots.

[neddflanderz]

looks like a mighty fine paint job from here