Itinerant Air-Cooled

Colin arrived Saturday morning to the IFBwax Douglas Fir Research Lab and immediately sat down to work, explaining the inner workings of hydraulic lifters and the heat peak curves of different VW engine components.

We then started to work on Charlie. Since last Thursday he started exhibiting some strange symptoms. Unlike humans who miraculously get well just before seeing the doctor, Charlie decided to show his ailment at the very time he'd have the best chance of getting a cure. I noticed while in a certain RPM range in second.. going about 25 MPH the bus would kind of hiccup for a few seconds. Lurch or buck is too strong a word.

Well we moved right to tuning and setting the timing and when Colin removed the vacuum off the can of the distributor the idle went way down. Immediately Colin thought that was a bit strange and after a few minutes realized that someone (not me) had installed the vacuum hoses incorrectly. As I understand it, someone tied the fuel pressure regulator in with the vacuum advance nipple at the throttle housing.. instead of the intake manifold nipped at the 1/2 runners. Right Colin?

Well after making the adjustment we found that Charlie had been running retarded by 5 or so degrees.

We made the adjustment after checking dwell, idle and all the rest, then moved to fuel mixture.

It was great watching Colin do the little dance with the AFM taking his time and listening very intently to what the engine wanted.

After making all the adjustments we were just about done and close to solving why Charlie was running hotter than I'd like.

Then he noticed the spring on the engine flaps wasn't engaged all the way... meaning the flaps weren't opening all the way. Doh!!!

He fixed that lickity split and then we took Charlie for a ride and saw the temps much cooler now on the 400 mile engine. It also had much more power!!!!

No mure hiccups!

Now to the Party Pickle (Keep in mind I only had Colin for a half day).

First order of biz was fixing an exhaust leak between the headers and muffler.

We worked quickly and got that taken care of, then took Pickle for a ride.

Well, once again we found some problems with the vacuum hoses and then after adjusting the timing and fuel mixture, Pickle had even more power and ran even cooler!!!!

Colin really earned his money in the short time he was here. Although I don't think he liked my coffee as he only had 2 cups!

Thanks Colin.. see you next year!!!

Wayne

IFBwax wrote: when Colin removed the vacuum off the can of the distributor the idle went way down. Immediately Colin thought that was a bit strange and after a few minutes realized that someone (not me) had installed the vacuum hoses incorrectly. As I understand it, someone tied the fuel pressure regulator in with the vacuum advance nipple at the throttle housing.. instead of the intake manifold nipped at the 1/2 runners. Right Colin?

Almost, Wayne.

Charlie had the vacuum advance unit connected to the intake plenum, giving full vacuum advance at idle. This would make any timing adjustment to the 7.5 BTDC mark at idle woefully too retarded up the rpm map.

Party Pickle had the fuel pressure regulator plumbed to the throttle body vacuum advance nipple, giving you too much pressure at idle. That then led you and Jasan to adjust the fuel mixture on the Raby engine too lean.

Charlie had the completely disconnected cooling flap fail-safe spring. Not only were the flaps in a half-closed position when warm, it also prohibited the left flap from sealing against the oil cooler duct. Ouch.

Both buses were a pleasure to drive when we squared them up. Charlie Brown particularly has the fresh feeling chassis and glorious steering. Let me know what you find with our research questions. . . .
Colin

Wayne, were you not set up like this?

Randy in Maine wrote:Wayne, were you not set up like this?

No, he was not. We TOOK CARE A IT, ARIGHT??
Colin
(even the Raby engine, Randy. I tell ya, you gotta do it yourself if you want it done right. . . . )

That's ridiculous to spend that much cabbage on an engine and not have it perfectly dialed in. TURNKEY, right?

hambone wrote:That's ridiculous to spend that much cabbage on an engine and not have it perfectly dialed in. TURNKEY, right?

Now now now, it is a part of the human condition to have little errors here and there, all the way up to a multi-billion dollar shuttle program that keeps blowing foam chunks at every stinking launch thus damaging every single shuttle that has made it into space.

You get a nice $5,000.00 engine and you check it out. You get a nice $346,289.98 Formula One engine, you check it out. You get a free lawn mower engine and you check it out. I do not know who or why anyone would attach the fuel pressure regulator to the vacuum advance port, but it was easy enough to spot.
Colin

I'm sure they ARE very nice engines once they get properly set up. But for all that hype and cost...they should just work. I dunno, it sort of goes against the spirit of an aircooled bus.

I'm with Colin on this. Hambone, if we were perfect we'd be walking through walls and omnipotent, thereby relieving us of the need for terrestrial transportation.

******OM******

I guess the question is, what kind of "bad stuff" would have happened to that engine if the problem hadn't been discovered and corrected so quickly? Would it run poorly or would it slowly cause damage to the engine? Yes, human error is inherent...but for a $10k engine, I'd be expecting all to be hunky-dory...if I knew every little thing that needed to be "confirmed" to make sure they did the job right...I'd likely know enough (which I don't) to build my own engine to start with. Just my humble opinion.

deschutestrout wrote:I guess the question is, what kind of "bad stuff" would have happened to that engine if the problem hadn't been discovered and corrected so quickly?

Well, I don't think anything catastrophic would have occurred, unless they (Jasan and Wayne) hewed very closely to stochiometric ratio. Then a lean condition would have eventually annoyed a valve or softened a valve seat, and Wayne would not have noticed a thing because the engine was still putting out more power lean, than most engines dialed-in.

There are no more "should have"s in this world. Expect incompetence and you will not be disappointed and you will be properly forewarned to check everything. For example, the four-wheel computer alignment I had done to back-up my eyeball alignment did a damn fine job of tearing up my front right tire. "It ain't our computer," they would have told me, "it's your car, are you sure you didn't slam into a curb a 70 mph sideways?" I saw the readings on their monitor with my own eyes. (Caster was out of spec and there was nothing we could do about it, bent torsion arms from Bus Boys?)
Fact of the matter was, the car was too laden down with my travel crap, so the readings were skewed. Oh well. . . it was my responsibility to my car to remember to establish factory ride height and walk him through the Bentley specifications even though it was his responsibility to know what he was doing.
Colin

See ya tomorrow Colin