Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Aug 26, 2013 2:08 pm

Well, truth be told, I am missing the west. Still, this sight on I-20 eastbound has always given me a little jolt, Atlanta, Georgia, Under The Southern Summer Sky:

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Chloe, as ever, just trundles along in the right lane at 57 - 60 mph, past city skylines one after another, through sandy deserts to scrub brushy rockscapes along meadowy fields over tree-clogged lanes to vine-festooned tropical lushlands, we are at mechanical homeostasis. Haven't touched the breaker points since, oh I don't know, I think it was last year, the last timing adjustment was a little rap on the vacuum advance can as I slowly came down off the mid-continent plateau after the Curtis4085 appointment, and this engine has spent hour upon hour spinning along back in that engine compartment, sitting there looking the same as ever when I check the oil, I added some once. With the odometer error at .81 recorded for every mile, the odometer now says 22,100 miles, that is 11,500 recorded miles since I left Pensacola back in May, but the real mileage on this itinerary is 14,197, so far.

What an unassuming little trouper this car is, parked alongside any number of blingy Suburbans and Rams and Expeditions and Land Rovers, you wouldn't guess that thing has eaten up the roads of this country and half the dirt paths too. Just yesterday morning, an amorous Alabama couple came up around the bend and stared dumbfounded at my bus while I color-sanded the rockers . . . the trail up was so badly eroded from torrential rains that the gate at the bottom had been knocked sideways, and the tire ruts were a good two feet deep.
"How did you GET up here?", the guy asked.
"Drove around the gate."
"But how did you GET here?"
"Avoided the trenches, lucky I guess."
"We was just going up for a . . . picnic."
"Sure, bugs are pretty bad though."
"Yeah, we live around here, figured as much."
They went up the overgrown hill for about five minutes, when I heard her coming back down.
"No WAY, stupid bugs there's a SPIDER WEB, eww eww eww . . . "

Visiting zabo + clutch in an hour if the traffic will allow. See, here in Atlanta, I do a Google Search for Atlanta Traffic and see that I-20 eastbound is red red red. Construction. Closed every lane but one.
Welcome to the New South, same as Ol' L.A.
Colin

Image
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 Greetings From Atlanta

Post by brandt » Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:33 pm

Great photo! Sure looks like Valley of the Gods and Utah Hwy 163 in the background.

If I were back east (anything east of Denver) I'd be missing the West, too.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by aopisa » Mon Aug 26, 2013 7:17 pm

I miss the West almost every day especially in the summer. For years August was the month I would make the pilgrimage, through the Bad Lands, the Black Hills, Buffalo, Cody, Sheridan, Red Lodge, The Beartooth Pass, Cooke City and beyond. Or over US Route 2 at the top of the continental US looking for ICBM missile silos in North Dakota and dipping in and out of Canada at some obscure boarding crossing whenever I felt like it.
1977 Westy 2.0L F.I.

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. - Chuang Tzu

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by zabo » Mon Aug 26, 2013 7:37 pm

Well Colin just left. It was great to see him again and I really appreciated the visit.

When he arrived we looked at my clutch disk and then we looked at the clutch disk it had replaced.
The new one that had been chewed up was an OE brand and on inspection was thinner than my old 7yr old sachs disk.
Colin then stood on the pressure plate using his weight to make sure it had even spring all around.
Everything checked out good so we decided to reuse the old parts.

After some sanding of the pressure plate, clutch disc and flywheel everything went back together.

The fun began when we tried to get this little 40 horse into my slightly crumpled engine compartment.
After a good 30 min of finagling and cursing at my derelict hydraulic jack and some added energy instilled from a tall boy diet coke we finally eased it into place.
The car started right up and the test drive went great with another nice lesson on proper shifting procedures.

Thanks for a great night colin- hope to see you again soon
Image
60 beetle
78 bus

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:01 pm

zabo wrote: The fun began when we tried to get this little 40 horse into my slightly crumpled engine compartment.
colin- hope to see you again soon
I love those early VWs, and was grateful that your 40 horse was still a svelte 198 lbs, unlike the big 253 lb pigs found in the later buses . . . all we had to do was gently kick the derelict around and everything pretty much went together, remember "middle of the middle"?

Here is the "OE" clutch disk, "OE" stands for "obvious errata", not "original equipment". This disk barely exceeded the 7mm minimum clutch disk thickness wear limit:

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Here is the seven year-old Sachs disk ( no way the 7mm open end wrench would ever fit over the edge) that still had the lettering visible on the friction material . . . before I washed it with carb spray and rendered zabo's property a Superfund clean-up site:

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Is this a classic summer afternoon shot or what?

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I will be doing my transmission up here in Atlanta, jivermo and I can't get the machinist synchronized with my schedule before Labor Day, so I wuz thinkin' Wednesdays are AtlantaWagens nights, right? August 28th or September 4th?

I will exercise the BobD while Chloe's transmission is out.
Colin

Image
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 Greetings From Atlanta

Post by zabo » Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:19 am

we could do the 4th. If you need a extra hand with the trans let me know.
60 beetle
78 bus

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Aug 28, 2013 5:46 am

zabo wrote:we could do the 4th. If you need a extra hand with the trans let me know.
Pizza Beer The 4th.

Off to take out the transmission . . .
Colin
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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Bleyseng
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Bleyseng » Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:04 am

What's wrong with the transmission?
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:11 am

Bleyseng wrote:What's wrong with the transmission?
All those mountains upon mountains and dirt trails up sharp inclines on this poor delicate original 002 that has been missing shifts into 3rd since the day I bought it, recently, it has begun to pop out of 4th in the middle of nothing unusual.
In both 3rd and 4th gear, you can feel acceleration application or release through the gearshift. That means the mainshaft is banging back and forth, nose cone is getting wallowed out.

I am installing a Long Enterprises steel bearing retainer plate and will be razor-milling the nose cone .040" to absorb the steel plate thickness and clean up the bearing bash marks.

Then we will see if the 3rd and 4th synchronizer assemblies can hang on to their respective gears.
Colin
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 Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Jivermo » Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:15 am

That's good news...I guess you were able to talk with Mr. Long despite their remodeling disruption. I hope we are treated to a photo essay of this project.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:02 pm

Jivermo wrote:That's good news...I guess you were able to talk with Mr. Long despite their remodeling disruption. I hope we are treated to a photo essay of this project.
Rick Long is a good guy. We had a famously too long haha get it? conversation for my cell phone bill.
Based on our 2nd Day Air ship, I opened the engine compartment at 1:30PM and took the hatch seal out once again, which is the warning sign for Chloe that the engine is next:

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Drained the transaxle. My drain plug looked pretty good after a cross-country mountain-climbing marathon:
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At 3:30PM, I had the engine and transaxle out of the car:

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Spent the next TWO hours scraping off the stupid ASPHALT UNDERCOATING from the top of the transaxle, what a pain, I had such a clean work area until that explosion of black tar crusty junk. People, tell your undercoating applicator professionals to STAY AWAY FROM THE MECHANICALS!!!! That poor transmission needs a clean magnesium surface to cool properly!

Then I cleaned the nose cone mating surface very carefully, no contamination! Removed the nose cone and found, as expected, quite a bit of bearing movement on the input shaft:
Image

Tomorrow will be another famous Itinerant Scissorhands Event, I must perfectly mill the nose cone surface deadnuts evenly down a good millimeter, to make sure the surface pounded out by the outer bearing race becomes the new perfectly flat nose cone mating surface. Yeehaw, bring it on . . .

Image

I will scribe the outer perimeter of the nose cone flange with my awl along my steel machinist's ruler. This will make a stripe exactly 1mm above the current flange. Then when I have milled it down to the scribe line, I will finish sand it on a piece of glass and make super sure that it lands on the scribe mark all the way around. That's the "plan" . . . :geek: :compress: :pale:
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 Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Bleyseng » Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:26 pm

I'd use a router or atleast be temped to use one to mill a millimeter off...

Good luck Edward! :thumbleft:
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Jivermo » Thu Aug 29, 2013 5:51 am

Thanks for the detail, Colin. This is very informative information for us all, and the pics really tell the story.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:05 am

My last reply to this thread occurred at McDonalds with the BobD sitting out there.
"That your van?"
"Who owns that cool Scooby-Do van?"
"That thing looks original!"
"It is."
"It is?"
"It is."

Image

Camped at the storage unit. It was like a sensory deprivation chamber, zonked in a box inside of a box. Woke up and it was perfectly dark. My brain is jumping, there is work to do! My suprachiasmatic nucleus is convinced that it is still the middle of the night. On faith, I roused and opened the storage unit door. The sunlight! the noise of the morning! all was an assault.

Decided to have the nose cone professionally milled. Took it to Larry's Machine Shop in the BobD. No Larry, nobody, phone message machine was full. Stopped at some open garage.
"I need to mill my shift extension housing .040"
"Wow! Is that original?"
"It is."
"It is?"
"It is."
"Take it to Hamby's, I've known Shorty for over twenty years. Ask for Adam."

Drove the BobD to Hamby's. Man, this bus really IS original, quiet, tight, and peppy, and the tippy-toe power brakes are a revelation after a summer of leg presses. Parked in the service lot. Found Adam, who referred me to Bobby. Looked around. Perfect old time garage in constant operation since 1945.
There were photographs in the waiting room of Shorty and wife and the unfolding of their lives with kids and fiddle jam sessions and family picnics and the wreck of that 1950's family car.

In the service office, Corey Clark is giving a pitch to the employees about "Legal Shield - worry less, live more". If you pay a monthly premium, they give you legal representation for speeding or drunk driving or mild infractions any time anywhere for free! - "except if you rob a bank or murder somebody." After I get good and bored, I bolt from the waiting room through the service office.
"How are you doing?" booms Corey Clark at me.
"Well, I was interested in your plan until I heard you say that you don't cover bank robberies."
$25.00 later, I am on my way back to Chloe with a slightly chewed up-but milled nose cone (it got banged around in the pressure washer by a Ford diesel intake manifold . . . . :silent: ).

With the sort of timing you see only on Law And Order SVU, UPS shows up with the bearing retainer plate, new bushings and a new seal from Long Enterprises not five minutes after I get back from Hamby's Garage. Laid out the parts:

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I am religious here. I adore VW transaxles, they are Porsche the brilliant designer offspring. This early 002 here, I shifted all summer all over as carefully as I could, but I could feel it getting old under my right hand. Used pliers to twist out the outer bushing/seal assembly:

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Tapped the inner bushing out with my rear axle bearing drift punch, no photo.
Tapped in the new inner bushing with a 10mm socket whose fluting served to drive the bushing without distortion while the socket end kept it piloted, same with the outer bushing:

Image

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Gave the hockey stick a good cross-hatch across the bushing surfaces:

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The instructions said to grind away the two little tabs (marked in black in the photograph) that help retain the output shaft bearing on late 091 transaxles, if you have the early 002 transaxle:

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I am an unquestioning sheep, so I did:

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Cleaned everything seriously thoroughly. I did not use the grease recommended in the Bentley for the hockey stick seal/bushing. I saw a blackish paste up in there, and it looked like it was accelerating wear. I used a nice dip in gear oil, instead. Since this is not an official procedure, I won't go into the minutae of assembly technique, suffice to say that it is all logical. Here is the assembled nose cone, you can see a little gold cad plating on the bearing retainer plate. I used some Lanval Commemorative Vanagon Cylinder Head Sealing Compound as my bearing plate/nose cone sealant. I also re-torqued the nuts several times because the bearing retainer plate was slightly bent ( in shipping? ) and it needed time to settle in or something . . . the torque value is 11 ft/lbs:

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I just HAD to paint the nose cone mount:

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Slipped the engine in while trying to talk with two Mexicans who were more curious and enthusiastic than my piddling Spanish could keep up with.
¡Wow! Es la original?"
"Si, lo es."
"¿Es?"
"Si, lo que realmente es."

At 8:00PM, after a full very hot day of gear oil and engine transaxles wobbling on my LEAKY AGAIN floor jack, I drove Chloe with great trepidation into the humid night. How was it?

A very worthwhile procedure!
My usual grindy cold 1st/2nd gear synchro action has improved ?!? (will confirm at next overnight cool-down)
3rd/4th gear much more positive engagement now that the input shaft doesn't move away from synchronizers attempting to engage.
Gear shifter is more precise.
ColinMustDoLaundry
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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Bleyseng
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Atlanta

Post by Bleyseng » Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:27 am

Nice, was there are whining that went away after this?
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

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