Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Dec 13, 2014 6:31 am

That's right, I have an appointment, today, in Jacksonville FL. I will update you with pictures too, later.

What a splendid and lovely drive down Interstate 10 eastbound for 367 miles yesterday.

Engine was flawlessly smooth at 60 mph, interior was clean, windshield and interior panels all new, all headliner dots accounted for ( :cyclopsani: ) , and best of all (so far) the Belle Plaine commemorative front vent window frames allow the vent windows to close fully, no more wind leaks for the first time since I have owned this car. This was the experience of a new 1970 bus from the driver's seat . . .

Image


Oh, and white74westy asked me to help him install his new engine / transaxle and help perform a break in, so he can drive his bus before Christmas.
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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honeybus
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by honeybus » Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:20 pm

Colin, a quick 'hello'.

If you transit through Fairfax (Springfield) VA with a spare day or so, I am in need of your magic, again!.!.!

I thought to take my '78 Westy through Florida for February via the Amtrak Autotrain (Lorton VA to Sanford FL). but I have some nits to pick before I can be comfortable doing the deed.

I am starting my move to a new house this Saturday, just some 24 miles distant, and I will have two garages available, in Springfield VA and in Aldie VA.

If you can spare some time, even if only a drop-by hour or so, I am in need of your skills and encouragements.

Many thanks.

Barry Burneskis 571 235 0795 (text-able!) Springfield VA
Thank you for all the fish . . .

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:47 am

honeybus wrote:Colin, a quick 'hello'.

If you transit through Fairfax (Springfield) VA with a spare day or so, I am in need of your magic, again!.!.!

If you can spare some time, even if only a drop-by hour or so, I am in need of your skills and encouragements.

Barry Burneskis
We could do Sanford FL if Weisswurst needs a timing belt . . . .
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 Jacksonville

Post by Jivermo » Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:21 am

Well, if you get as far south as Sanford, come on down here and I'll commit to 2-3 days, and we'll get my bus back on the freakin' road!

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honeybus
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by honeybus » Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:13 pm

I have a ticket on the Amtrak autotrain, leaving 16:00 3 Feb 2015 and arriving Sanford FL 09:30 4 Feb 2015.

I was hoping to get some understanding on what my VW is trying to tell me.

Colin, you put me together for a previous trip; notably, doing a first time ever adjustment on my hydraulic lifters, did a first time ever adjustment on my AFM, did a first time ever securing my fuel injector-to-gas rail hoses with real clamps. At that time, my heater control boxes were wired wide open to allow maximum heat to the driver's compartment/dash. You offered to connect my (new) cables, but I declined. Loved Florida with my tight heater system, wired wide open. Did a lot of window-down driving! So now, December, in Virginia, I am getting the benefits.

This month, my shifting is suspect, the bus is a bit sluggish (even with a top notch mechanic - not me!- getting timing and dwell where it should be). and can't determine if I have a vacuum leakI

Sometimes it doesn't want to turn over, but if I let it sit some 20 minutes, it will regain strength and turn over nicely, and fire off. Never happens on first start of the day, but only after a decent shopping run. I know, 'hot start' and all, but that's just for getting enough oomph to the starter solenoid. It is sympthomatic of a weak battery, but this I cannot accept (need a second expert opinion).

My extra wiring is getting confusing, and the wires keep falling off the connectors . . . .

Stuff like that. If you are coming back north before 3 Feb, I would like you to spend some time with me.

Barry sends
Thank you for all the fish . . .

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by weisswurst » Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:17 pm

Amskeptic wrote:We could do Sanford FL if Weisswurst needs a timing belt . . . .
Colin

When? When? When?!??
Between Jivermo and me lets lock down Florida, I just need to know when to get time off! :cheers:
Jeff
"I drink, therefore yes ma'am..."

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:12 pm

honeybus wrote:I have a ticket on the Amtrak autotrain, leaving 16:00 3 Feb 2015 and arriving Sanford FL 09:30 4 Feb 2015.

*shifting is suspect,
*bus is a bit sluggish, can't determine if I have a vacuum leak
*Sometimes doesn't want to turn over, but if I let it sit some 20 minutes, it will regain strength and turn over nicely, and fire off. only after a decent shopping run. I know, 'hot start' and all, but that's just for getting enough oomph to the starter solenoid.
It is symptomatic of a weak battery, but this I cannot accept (need a second expert opinion).
*extra wiring is getting confusing, and the wires keep falling off the connectors . . . .
*Stuff like that.

If you are coming back north before 3 Feb, I would like you to spend some time with me.

Barry Sends
Hello Barry,
We can conceivably do all of the above in Florida with your bus riding down on the train.
I will not be in Virginia in February.
Usually I do a holiday lap up north, but this year I am too poor, and Chloe needs all of my spare funds for a transaxle rebuild and engine bearings.
Colin
(p.s. try to determine if there is a deterioration in starter speed when warm. That would be our differential diagnosis that clears the battery (worse when cold) and indicts the starter (heat-related resistance)
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 Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:16 pm

Jivermo wrote:Well, if you get as far south as Sanford, come on down here and I'll commit to 2-3 days, and we'll get my bus back on the freakin' road!
Stay tuned . . .
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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honeybus
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by honeybus » Fri Dec 19, 2014 2:44 am

Quick reply: : :

I will plan to meet whomever - whenever - wherever in Florida after 4 Feb 2015 with my 1978 VW Westy.

Regrettably, I will not have full VW resources for recovery capability after the movers come this Saturday. Things will be gone or unavailable or just plain miss-laid.

Colin, can I send some good faith PayPal in anticipation?

Is this the start of the "2015 Itinerary"?
Barry sens
Thank you for all the fish . . .

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Amskeptic
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Dec 19, 2014 11:07 am

honeybus wrote:Quick reply: : :

I will plan to meet whomever - whenever - wherever in Florida after 4 Feb 2015 with my 1978 VW Westy.

Regrettably, I will not have full VW resources for recovery capability after the movers come this Saturday. Things will be gone or unavailable or just plain miss-laid.

Colin, can I send some good faith PayPal in anticipation?

Is this the start of the "2015 Itinerary"?
Barry sens
Yep. Plan on us meeting at your place in Florida under sunny skies. We will zero in on whatever parts procurement may be necessary before then.
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 Jacksonville

Post by Bleyseng » Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:28 pm

Amskeptic wrote:
honeybus wrote:I have a ticket on the Amtrak autotrain, leaving 16:00 3 Feb 2015 and arriving Sanford FL 09:30 4 Feb 2015.

*shifting is suspect,
*bus is a bit sluggish, can't determine if I have a vacuum leak
*Sometimes doesn't want to turn over, but if I let it sit some 20 minutes, it will regain strength and turn over nicely, and fire off. only after a decent shopping run. I know, 'hot start' and all, but that's just for getting enough oomph to the starter solenoid.
It is symptomatic of a weak battery, but this I cannot accept (need a second expert opinion).
*extra wiring is getting confusing, and the wires keep falling off the connectors . . . .
*Stuff like that.

If you are coming back north before 3 Feb, I would like you to spend some time with me.

Barry Sends
Hello Barry,
We can conceivably do all of the above in Florida with your bus riding down on the train.
I will not be in Virginia in February.
Usually I do a holiday lap up north, but this year I am too poor, and Chloe needs all of my spare funds for a transaxle rebuild and engine bearings.
Colin
(p.s. try to determine if there is a deterioration in starter speed when warm. That would be our differential diagnosis that clears the battery (worse when cold) and indicts the starter (heat-related resistance)
Transaxle rebuild and engine bearings? You are just replacing the mains or both the mains and rod bearings. The rods won't need to be rebuilt too at the same time?
Type 2 transaxles are tough to rebuild without the special VW tools....
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 Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:36 am

Bleyseng wrote:You are just replacing the mains or both the mains and rod bearings. The rods won't need to be rebuilt too at the same time?
Type 2 transaxles are tough to rebuild without the special VW tools....
I would farm out the transaxle rebuild.

This engine is running splendidly, I plan on just slapping in bearings to reduce magnesium hardening vibration, i.e. if .002" clearances give me a nice long case service life, and .004-.006 clearances cause vibration that hardens the case within 100,000 miles (the factory wouldn't care and would call this within normal wear limits), I would happily invest the $80.00 for new bearings, $16.95 for the gasket kit, and my time is free.

I can hear this engine opening up as it ages. What sounds nice and tight now only at 40* ambient, I used to get at 80*+. When it is 80* now, the engine sounds pretty thumpy back there.
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 Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Dec 20, 2014 3:10 pm

Soooo, the Jacksonville Appointment!

I arrived at my Jacksonville appointment at 9:30AM because I don't know about no east coast time zone. There's math in that.

Straight to the coffee machine went white74westy and I, so I could show him that I did not even have the mental acuity to figure out how to make a lousy cup of coffee. "I don't drink the stuff," he tells me.

I noted that we had a transaxle on the ground, the engine listing severely at an angle on the engine stand, and oh yeah, no seats, no dash, no lower windshield channel, no windows, but there were two bumpers in there. Me thinks we won't be driving so much.

The day begins at the end of the prior night's stymie, what to do with the overly long muffler studs?
"Cut 'em off."
We had a major high-torque Makita grinding wheel that made short work of those studs and anything else that got anywhere near.

Here he is wire-wheeling the heater valve riser pipe:

Image



Muffler on, now we had to address the upside down engine on the Leaning Tower Of Engine Stand. The engine was at such an angle, that we could not even rotate the yoke without the engine carrier bashing into the chassis of the stand. Engine stand engineering . . . a dying artform. Finally, we pulled the safety pin and partially unbolted the engine from the stand, much to white74westy's consternation, and sort of dead-lifted/heaved the engine over the stand's chassis right side up .

Image


We then came up with such a rickety assemblage of plywood and wood remnants teetering on a floor jack that we hopefully hoped to land the engine on as it poured out of the Leaning Tower, that his consternation actually reached the recesses of my time-zone addled brain. "Let's use the motorcycle jack." His visage brightened considerably at the relief that I was dimly aware of the obvious. Yeah, whatever, leave me alone, we got the transaxle bolted up to the engine, and slid the whole motorcycle jack big whoop over to the car and managed to skate it under the rear apron and eventually get it hooked up. Sure, that was Day One.

Next day, we dug into the ancilliaries, wires and fuel hoses and the fuel pump and grounds (he welded a new ground strap stud on the left diagonal arm support, pretty trick! ) and Bowden tubes and clutch cables and accelerator cables after the accelerator link was dislodged from its jam on the accelerator pedal, and everything and stuff, where's the gear shifter? We need that to shove the shift rod rearward to engage it with the transaxle's shift rod. That was a most interesting occasion, to not have any point of reference to set the transmission into the gear we needed to assemble the shift rod/coupler and then do the stop plate. I did a bang-up job of making sure that you could never shift from 3rd to 2nd without pressing down firmly on the gear shift knob. Safety, you know. Eventually, it was reverse that was properly locked out.

No running or turning over the engine allowed without idiot lights, so we stuck the factory sender on the hose for the big gauge display's sending unit, we had to make a terribly hack ground wire to ground the factory sender which was expecting actual engine case grounding. Beginning to look a little HACK around here, well, we're running out of time, plastic tie the fuel pump to the frame, done! plastic tie the horrible three-pleat useless Rockford CV boots, done! squish a cheap Chinese ring terminal on the end of the alternator feed wire, not done! (he found a pretty decent heavy-duty ring terminal instead), our wiring of the fuel pump looked pretty HACK, but you know what?
I didn't care.
All of his work was first-class careful and thorough, I only wanted to execute his Main Goal:
Make it run for the first time in 17 years.
We did it. We made it run.
Now he has to go re-do our tackytastic crapimprov show up to first-class careful and thorough. And he will.

It was a total pleasure to meet you and your beautiful family, white74westy.
Colin

( tell your stupid sprinkler system THANKS A LOT for showing me that my windows all leak. They all have to come out, AGAIN. So does the windshield. It leaks, too)
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 Jacksonville

Post by Bleyseng » Sat Dec 20, 2014 3:18 pm

"horrible three-pleat useless Rockford CV boots" So I have to buy two new CV boots and what are the ones to buy if these are crap? Mine are 3 years old and torn bus depot ones.
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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Amskeptic
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Jacksonville

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Dec 20, 2014 3:27 pm

Bleyseng wrote:"horrible three-pleat useless Rockford CV boots" So I have to buy two new CV boots and what are the ones to buy if these are crap? Mine are 3 years old and torn bus depot ones.
Rein has four pleats and pliability even. Those Rockfords were rock hard, refused to comply with axle movement, and even after pumping air into the pleats, would not un-dimple due to the angle of the driveshaft. Utterly useless.
Colin
(useless, I tell ya . . . white74westy, got photo?)
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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