Itinerant Air-Cooled

hambone wrote:Philbin no longer sells rebuilt VW distributors but they will now rebuild yours for $200...not what they used to be. "Those old VWs aren't around anymore" Tony told me...didn't want to argue.
Trying to find one for a '71 bus, screw Pertronix crap with the wrong curve.

205Q, hambone? Host a camp closer to me and I might just have to give you one.

The Q! Or D or AH, same curve.
If you have a workin' one, let me know how much you want for it, I need something in the next week...
This Chinese 009 makes for hot running and poor transition from idle, I won't trust it in the mountains with a 34 pict. It's JUST NOT RIGHT and driving me crazy trying to make it right. It came with the engine, yeah I know.

It would be great to meet you, where the hell in CA are you??? We've always talked about a camp between the states somewhere.

hambone wrote:The Q! Or D or AH, same curve.
If you have a workin' one, let me know how much you want for it, I need something in the next week...
This Chinese 009 makes for hot running and poor transition from idle, I won't trust it in the mountains with a 34 pict. It's JUST NOT RIGHT and driving me crazy trying to make it right. It came with the engine, yeah I know.

It would be great to meet you, where the hell in CA are you??? We've always talked about a camp between the states somewhere.

205Q, working with a spare advance can. (Slightly less vacuum advance than the others.) I've spent HOURS on it for the old engine, but the old engine was built so poorly it didn't run well unless I took the total advance WAY down, and that 15-20*ATDC idle was just not cool, man.
What carb are you running? I wasn't aware you had a '71. Solder the butterfly hole shut and enjoy a nice 009/34pict3 combo like I did for years? PM me about it if you want it.

San Diego currently, but will travel. In fact, I'll be in Central CA camping next weekend. I was SUPPOSTA be in Portland on 7/17, but it's been cancelled for now…

Collin just visited me 7/22/15 and let me know that my 76 bus 2.ol f/I bus has the wrong distributor on it ,it is supposed to have a SVDA, in any case, I'm removing the DVDA distributor and replacing it with a SVDA.That being said if anyone is looking for a DVDA,get in touch with me,I'm in California and it has been taken apart,lubed and tested.Thanks

Hi VWnBlood, and welcome!

Yes the later fuel injected buses removed the DVDA setup when the combination of equipment like catalytic converters and fuel injection rendered them less-polluting than the carbureted brethren.

What SVDA are you going for? There doesn't seem to be a really great quality one on the market these days.

Do you have the part number from your DVDA?

Thanks, and welcome,
Robbie

VWnBlood wrote:Collin just visited me 7/22/15 and let me know that my 76 bus 2.ol f/I bus has the wrong distributor on it ,it is supposed to have a SVDA, in any case, I'm removing the DVDA distributor and replacing it with a SVDA.That being said if anyone is looking for a DVDA,get in touch with me,I'm in California and it has been taken apart,lubed and tested.

Secret sauce for converting your DVDA to an SVDA: Disconnect the vacuum retard hose (and plug the hose to avoid the resultant vacuum leak, of course). Then time as you would an SVDA (ie. with hoses off).

The vacuum retard side only comes into play when there is no vacuum signal at all on the vacuum advance side (which ought to only be at idle). You can confirm this yourself with a bit of investigation with a Mity-Vac. Apply a large vacuum to the retard side. Hold it there. Apply even the slightest vacuum to the advance side and the retard side should be completely overwhelmd, negated. The amount of advance provided by the advance side of a DVDA can should be very close to that of an SVDA can. Check the Old Volks Home distributor list to confirm.

If you're still not comfortable with this, then you could instead swap out the DVDA can for an SVDA can on your existing distributor (that's what i'm runnning right now, thanks to aircooledchris' suggestion). The DVDA can, if functional, should fetch a decent price on the Samba.

Which brings up anothr thing: before you even get into this, check to make sure that the retard side of the can even works (holds vacuum and moves the rod). Many of them are broken and actually represent a hidden vacuum leak in your engine.

hambone wrote:The Q! Or D or AH, same curve.
If you have a workin' one, let me know how much you want for it, I need something in the next week...
This Chinese 009 makes for hot running and poor transition from idle, I won't trust it in the mountains with a 34 pict. It's JUST NOT RIGHT and driving me crazy trying to make it right. It came with the engine, yeah I know.

It would be great to meet you, where the hell in CA are you??? We've always talked about a camp between the states somewhere.

I recently found a NOS 025-905-205B DVDA with Hall sensor in the box in the Samba classifieds for my '79 CA FI Westy which I just installed this morning. It works fantastic! I had replaced the Hall sensor in my original dizzy earlier this year and it was working pretty good but the mechanical advance wasn't quite right. I could only time it to 24* BTDC without the idle getting too fast. Now I've got it at 28* and the idle is perfect with plenty of adjustment available each way. The power up the hills is so much better at 28* and my CHTs are better.
The vacuum can on my old dizzy didn't seem to be working either. This new one definitely does work. The retard with the vacuum lines attached made me have to speed up the idle quite a bit after setting it at first with hoses off. With my old one there was no effect.

I haven't been able to find any information about this distributor online, not even on oldvolkshome.com. A couple of parts reference websites I found said it was for a Vanagon. It looks exactly like my original.

THall wrote:

airkooledchris wrote:Philbin has had my CA spec distributor for 9 months now - don't be tempted to send yours to them for repair. They don't have the correct vacuum can in stock and whomever is doing the VW distributors starts to sundown around 11Am.

Hmmm....I had Philbin do some work on my 022-905-205S distributor this past November. Turn around was about 3 weeks and the communication was very good.

im still waiting to get mine back. a month ago Tony said it was fixed and ready to go, he just needed to test it. he would call me back the next day.

out of the dozens of times ive been told someone would call me back from there, they have yet to do so. it's become comical. it's been a year and a half now.

I feel better reading this because I had a bad experience with Philbin myself. I am using the dizzy from the 1.9 WBX in my California ''81 aircooled. I sourced the correct dizzy for my California aircooled and sent it to Philbin. It was a disaster. It took 3 months to get it back. The dizzy would not advance (centrifugal) when I sent it to them...it returned the same way. I sent it back for them to rebuild it again...it came back the same way-not working. Luckily, after a few phone conversations, I was able to get my $200 back.

So, now it sits on my shelf. Where can it be rebuilt properly?

VWinVT wrote:I feel better reading this because I had a bad experience with Philbin myself. I am using the dizzy from the 1.9 WBX in my California ''81 aircooled. I sourced the correct dizzy for my California aircooled and sent it to Philbin. It was a disaster. It took 3 months to get it back. The dizzy would not advance (centrifugal) when I sent it to them...it returned the same way. I sent it back for them to rebuild it again...it came back the same way-not working. Luckily, after a few phone conversations, I was able to get my $200 back.

So, now it sits on my shelf. Where can it be rebuilt properly?

PM 'TASB' on The Samba. He's rebuilt ton's of these aluminum, Bosch distributors.

wcfvw69 wrote:

VWinVT wrote:I feel better reading this because I had a bad experience with Philbin myself. I am using the dizzy from the 1.9 WBX in my California ''81 aircooled. I sourced the correct dizzy for my California aircooled and sent it to Philbin. It was a disaster. It took 3 months to get it back. The dizzy would not advance (centrifugal) when I sent it to them...it returned the same way. I sent it back for them to rebuild it again...it came back the same way-not working. Luckily, after a few phone conversations, I was able to get my $200 back.

So, now it sits on my shelf. Where can it be rebuilt properly?

PM 'TASB' on The Samba. He's rebuilt ton's of these aluminum, Bosch distributors.

Thanks!

I did finally get my distributor back, and mine does appear to be working correctly now. They apparently found someone to rebuild the vacuum can, which does work but looks ugly where it was hammered back together.

Maybe they did good work in the past, but those days are long gone.

I will also look into this other rebuilder to see about going over my spare unit.