glasseye wrote:All that techie stuff aside, HOLY CRAP that is a beautiful photograph. (the "night" shot)
I know, I know, this technical goddledegook is missing the parade of life by a mile, we HAVE a technical section for that.
Are you talking about the BobD green against that sky? It was gorgeous in real life.
Today, I take the engine and transaxle out of the BobD, and take out the spring-loaded selector, and "mill" down the nose cone as necessary. No Long Enterprises retainer plate today, just a razor blade and a steel hockey stick ball.
This is a "modification-by-deletion" on an original VW bus. I have some reservations about it, but I am very familiar with the Volkswagenwerk engineering decisions that led to this spring-loaded gear shifter, and I have decided that they missed an important aspect to fitting it to the bus.
In 1975, the Golf was introduced to the U.S. market with an infamous rubber ducky shifter mechanism that had to translate the longitudinal movement of the gearshift to transverse for the transversely-mounted transaxle. It worked beautifully on the new car, but as soon as the bushings got the least bit worn, all unselectable hell broke loose.
In 1976, across the entire model run, Volkswagenwerk introduced the spring-loaded neutral gate. The 1st/2nd position was unloaded, you had to overcome spring tension to find the 3rd/4th gate and the reverse gate. This was helpful in all VWs with a short path to the transmission.
For the bus, however, that spring-loaded neutral gate worked against the 12 foot distance from the gear shift and the transaxle.
If there is a spring resisting your twisting the shift rod to the 3rd/4th gate or the reverse gate, any slop (imagine a garden hose instead of a shift rod, NOW) prevents you from finding your gear.
I have driven several late model buses where we had to relax the stop plate adjustment so people could catch all of their gears, as the coupler and the hockey stick ball and the front bushing all wore. Phooey on that spring-loaded gate in the bus!
Chloe is the best shifting bus I have driven, light, relaxed and precise. BobD is going there, TODAY. Photographs to follow . . .
ColinHappyLABORDay