Itinerant Air-Cooled Adventure(wagen)

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air-Cooled Adventure(wagen)

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:49 am

Had a strenuous couple of days with Adventurewagen overcoming a series of obstacles of almost comical proportions. But the results we were striving for were well worth the efforts. . . to hear a rescued-from-the-weeds bus burst into song after a five to seven year sleep.

Engine was sitting forlornly on a couple of 4X4s with a head off. Parts were scattered willy-nilly except that the willy-nilly was actually a carefully-crafted chaos of pretty damn expert parts retrieval, I was never delayed more than a minute by any request for a nut or bolt. Adventurewagen would disappear for a brief spell and there it would be.

We had to do an emergency streetside head refresh on the internet-procured 1700 head with gaping air injection ports (ask Deschutestrout about the sound of those things inadvertantly left open) and we had to disassemble the valves to clean the intake and exhaust ports and seats. We also decided to tighten up the end-play a bit from .007" to .004" and asked for some shims from a local VW purveyor (woof! woof!) who declared we were getting in over our heads, "it's more complikated-like than you think! we run 'em at .007" even .012" never had a problem. . ." yeah well thanx for your coughcough "input". . . fellas. The pressure plate and clutch looked like they were coming from some old ruins, but much sanding later, they looked presentable enough.

Drove down to the local FLAPS for some 'merican fuel hose and got all tangled up on the sidewalk due to the local rush hour traffic race, I couldn't back up to catch the parking lot, so sidewalk it was. New York plates are my handly excuse for driving or parking like an idiot.

Cleaned this lonely little engine's rusted cylinders as best we could and oiled the barrels and tenderly proferred the head to the cylinders with some mandatory cylinder shims (yes, the internet head had the typical over flycut spigots and would have left Adventurewagen with leaky cylinders without the sealing rings). Had to file the heck out of the exhaust manifold to clean up some gas-eroded flanges. "Am I done with this filing here, yet?" asked Adventurewagen. "No, not yet," said his relentless taskmaster.

T'was late when we installed the engine with a tight brake spoon wedge to get the studs into the bell housing. Honestly, we Type 4 engine buses should just drop the bell housing 6" and it all is soooooo much easier. Oh yeah. Gas cap is stuck on with nary a key. We ground the rivets off the chrome outer portion of the cap and attacked the stubborn remainder of the cap and finally wrested it free of the filler. Shocked, I noted that no one asked what we were doing trying to steal gas from this car. Adventurewagen told me that he has softened up his neighbors' incredulity over the years, no one would bother to ask. Finally got some gas in the tank. "What's that smell? Woo, what's that smell?" Just a slightly forgotten replacement fuel hose by yours truly.
"Hey," I sez, "that'll help flush the tank, can't be too thorough. . ."
So let's fire it up! Ahhh, no. The ignition switch is not really. So we hot-wired the heater relay plug to run the coil and ran a wire from the starter to allow us to start the engine from the back. Engine turned over and fired quickly, but stalled. Battery said, "I'm done." So we used my bus as a jumper. It started/stalled about three times in succession before it got its act together and burst into a throaty clattery song. Not bad. Another Type 4 engine shows its toughness and desire to live.
Colin
(an aside, when I started my bus to pull it back into his driveway, the oil light would not shut off! Checked oil, the slope of the driveway didn't give me any hope of an accurate reading, but it had some oil registering on the dipstick . . . . checked idiot lamp wiring , it was fine. Started engine, oil lamp would not go off! Backed car into driveway quickly and shut it off. WTF? Added 1/2 quart of oil. Phew! Oil lamp went out. So, what was that about? I think the pump lost its prime due to severe angle of driveway when we were jumping his battery)
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Adventure(wagen)

Post by Adventurewagen » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:04 pm

Amskeptic wrote: Had a strenuous couple of days with Adventurewagen overcoming a series of obstacles of almost comical proportions.
I don't know about you, but I'd consider most of it comical. Although the stars did seem to align as every problem some how melted away throughout our two day MEGA session.

Amskeptic wrote:Engine was sitting forlornly on a couple of 4X4s with a head off.
First off I'd have to say that while the engine looked forlorned sitting in the middle of my driveway under a tarp it was actually much happier than the fir tree it sat under for the last 7 yrs (paperwork is indicating 7 from the looks of it). And Hey! Them was some nice lumber that thar engine was sittin on :pirate:

I'd also consider the engine out a good head start :) Check out this pic of the engine when I picked it up. Best close up of the grime. I did actually do bit of cleaning before you arrived :) No excuse though for the rest of the dirt laying around.
[albumimg]1270[/albumimg]

Maybe some day I'll have a big garage, but I can say it was a vast improvement over sitting on plywood on a gravel patch barely off a busy street. Should of visited me a couple years ago :) Only slow down was when the cops would harass me about tearing an engine out on the side of the road! So we were working in plush quarters :cyclopsani:
Amskeptic wrote: Parts were scattered willy-nilly except that the willy-nilly was actually a carefully-crafted chaos of pretty damn expert parts retrieval, I was never delayed more than a minute by any request for a nut or bolt. Adventurewagen would disappear for a brief spell and there it would be.
What you never saw was that I wasn't actually getting the parts, it was my dog :drunken: I'd have to say my chaotic method has been self crafted over the last few years working on my vw's out of apartments where my shop consisted of a toolbox and a card board box I'd have to lug in and out of the apartment. I got pretty good at just sticking nuts in this little box here and bolts there and setting them all in one big box. Keeping things transportable has been the key.
Amskeptic wrote: Gas cap is stuck on with nary a key. We ground the rivets off the chrome outer portion of the cap and attacked the stubborn remainder of the cap and finally wrested it free of the filler.
Don't forget to mention the cap was some crazy cap that didn't really fit and that we got it off finally only after a million and one attempts to get the catches to release. The PO sure did a number on a couple of things like a gas cap stuck on the bus without a key or an ignition switch half drilled out also without a key!
Amskeptic wrote: Shocked, I noted that no one asked what we were doing trying to steal gas from this car. Adventurewagen told me that he has softened up his neighbors' incredulity over the years, no one would bother to ask.
I wouldn't say "soften", more like shock treatment. :cyclopsani:
63 Gulf Blue Notch
71 Sierra Yellow Adventurewagen
DjEep wrote:Velo? Are you being "over-run"? Do you need to swim through a sea of Mexican anchor-babies to get to your bus in the morning?
:wav:

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