Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Sep 27, 2015 9:34 pm

It is embarrassing how both tardy I am on write-ups of excellent visits with good people, and remiss in documenting those visits. It was seventeen days ago that I visited foxmon in Scarborough Maine on a nice summery day. Shot nary a photograph, which is a shame, because these foxmon visits have had some good photographic moments, like that crazy front beam replacement last year with all of those torsion leaves (he's got a good-looking automatic late model bus). This year, we massaged the auxiliary air-regulator and reviewed the cold-starting system and apparently we have better cold starts, but some intermittent cutting out after I left. These cars will do that, they behave when I am there then revert to their old ways after I am gone.

I am getting nostalgic for the itinerary life even as I live it. Drove down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, calling out familiar places to myself, like landmarks I used to drive by when banzai driving to visit my girlfriend in Portland CT from Boston MA on late Friday nights to the tracks of Pink Floyd and ELO, then back to Boston for Monday morning work, courtesy the Road Warrior at 85,000 miles or thereabouts.

Camped adjacent to the Stewart International Air Guard Station in Newburgh NY in an incessantly drumming rain. Woke up at 6:27AM, shot this picture at 6:30AM in appreciation for what a bright white headliner can do for you when it is gloomy outside, at 6:31AM, jumped out into a whole huge new puddle outside of the sliding door. Good morning, sopped socks and sneakers:

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Next up was Captain Adventure, an owner who has marshalled his 1970 bus through the past twenty eight years. This is a bus that has adopted its owner's character, and has that nice easy energy of an original bus that has seen some road:

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We got into some valve adjustment action, timing and carburetion and fell into focused intensity as the issues made themselves known, like front brake cylinder dampness and shifter lubrication/adjustment. Most important, folks, we need to predicate all communication with Captain Adventure with a reminder to eradicate all rust as soon as possible. His longterm relationship with this car depends on it:


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Drove to appetite's house in the scrum of metropolitan New York/New Jersey. Mr. Efficient here arrived at 9:10AM, ready to bask in compliments as to my promptness, then remembered that the appointment was to start at 2:00PM:

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"I a idiot," I said to myself, "let's repack the front wheel bearings on Chloe." So I did. Right there next to appetite's westy:

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When appetite arrived, we set to his engine with a valve adjustment and timing check and carburetor adjustment. After his loose cylinder head issue, I thought it would be prudent to check the compression. His cylinders were all within 5-10 lbs of each other. Happy trails, appetite:

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Drove on out of the New Jersey traffic traffic traffic, happy happy happy to go enjoy some peace in the pastoral splendor of Pennsylvania on my way to oscarsnapkin and his fresh Headflow Masters engine. Pastoral splendor was hard to come by. Cops? Easily everywhere. Apparently, all the land in southeastern Pennsylvania has been accounted for. Here on an abandoned lane leading to a brush pile barrier, I decided to check out Chloe's engine compression and end play and, what the heck, put in new spark plugs for the first time since I have owned the car:

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As the engine ages ever more rapidly, clearances open up ever more rapidly, like this end play. It was .0035" in Pensacola on April 25th, now it is at the cusp of the wear limit, .0055":

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Cop pulls up in a Chevy, then another shows up in a Tahoe, then another cop shows up in another Chevy. I am dangerously dressed in a tank top and tatty shorts.
"Are you carrying a gun? Do you have any drugs? Let's see some form of identification. What are you doing out here?"
After reminding them that criminals generally do not drive painfully slow very obvious vehicles, I suggested that they inform the bank that foreclosed on this property to post a no-trespassing sign so that the police don't have to take on the bank's responsibilities.

Drove further into this creepy, over-decorated, over-manicured, over-running suburban sprawl crawling over the once beautiful hills, and spied a driveway between a gas station and a restaurant. This led to a parking lot way out back near train tracks. Feeling sufficiently out of the way of the rushing New York BMW and Range Rover commuter types, hurrying alongside the diesel pick-up trucks bellowing to all that they have wussy automatic transmissions, I thought it was a good time to paint the gearshift lever:

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Three coats and an hour, that's all I needed, please:

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But cops # 4 and 5, came upon the scene.
"You can't be here. This is private property."
"I saw no posted signs, and I have to ask if the property owner has visited this place in the last several years."
"No, you can't be here. You have to leave."
"Oh, I will, I promise, but I need to put my car back together. That is the gear shifter hanging off the tailgate."
"Why is your gear shifter hanging there?"
"Because I just painted it."
"Why did you just ..."
"Hey look at this thing, that paint is perfect."
"That is a nice van, you restore it?"
"Well, I am in the middle of restoring it, actually. Today was gear shifter day."
"Look, uh, take your time, don't litter paint cans and stuff, can you do that?"
They took off in a procession of gunning engines.

So, I let the gear shifter dangle to dry while I disassembled the clutch pedal and cable and Bowden tube. This is the first daylight that the clutch cable has seen since the Flagstaff event of 2012:

Cobbled Clutch Cable Clevis July 2012

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September 2015

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If you look closely, you can see that the several thousand clutch actuations since Flagstaff have not wallowed out my drilled clutch cable clevis:

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The bolt-come-pin has just a little shine. I recommend Valvoline Durablend Semi-Synthetic molybdenum disulfide grease. Reassembled with a new slather charge of grease and a clutch pedal free play adjustment. It made me feel a lot better about all of the endless traffic jam and mountain pass double-clutching not wearing my poor car out.

What the heck, let's shim the wiper shaft retaining nuts so the plastic caps can reach the nuts. After a long rummage du washer bague:

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Maybe that water I spied on the floorboard after the pounding rain up in New York was because the wiper arm had loosened the retaining nut. We shall see. :

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Beautiful church in the evening light as I arrived in the burgh of oscarsnapkin in Pennsylvania, yes? Only 12 hours til the next round of cops . . .

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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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wcfvw69
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

Post by wcfvw69 » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:49 am

It's nice to see you lathering all that loving attention on the clutch, wipers and engine... Somehow, I suspect your brakes/brake fluid is feeling neglected.. BAHAHAHAHAHA.... :thumbleft:
1970 Westfalia bus. Stock 1776 dual port type 1 engine. Restored German Solex 34-3. Restored 205Q distributor, restored to factory appearance engine.

Jivermo
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

Post by Jivermo » Mon Sep 28, 2015 2:18 pm

Great catch up-write up. Yep, we got cops and officials all over the place, now, making sure you don't trespass anywhere. My son and I went out to see the eclipse last night, and I went down to a place where I went as a kid, on Biscayne Bay. The county now owns it, and they had a guy there to keep out the people who might want to walk down for a rare, open water view of the moon. My son asked me why I got angry with the guy. It's not the guy, I told him, it's what this place has become.

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Amskeptic
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:57 pm

The next round of cops was on oscarsnapkin appointment morning. I was already creeped out by the relentless scrum of human activity from Maine to New York/New Jersey, I was disappointed by the paving over of Pennsylvania with clogged roads and McMansions, I was irritated by the uptick in police monitoring, I was suffering generalized fatigue from being on the road straight since you all last celebrated Easter, and I was shaving at a very closed shop parking lot in Southampton PA at 7:15AM, when a curious little Jack Russell terrier came up to sniff me out. I waved to its owner, who said "good morning" and called the cops. The cops arrived while I was re-packing my toiletries bag and tidying up the interior.
"What are you doing here?"
"I am tidying up my car."
"Why here?"
"This is where I pulled off, AWAY FROM ANY OPEN ESTABLISHMENTS WHERE I MIGHT BE IN THE WAY OF OTHERS."
"License and registration."
"Sure, this is an old license, I lost my current one in Los Alamos barely a month ago."
"Well, you can't be driving with an old li..."
"... and here is my temporary license while the replacement gets sent to me."
"Where are you going this morning?"
"Nowhere."
"What do you mean, 'nowhere'?"
"Nowhere as long as I stand around here talking to you, I have an appointment here in Southampton in barely an hour."
"What sort of appointment?"
"An Itinerary Appointment."
Thankfully, his dispatcher pulled him off of this most boring interview ever. I was warned not to pull off in private driveways that look like closed business establishment driveways because although it looks like every other business establishment driveway for the entire 84 miles of packed urban zoning in each direction here, whether there is or is not a "no trespassing" or even "closed" sign to alert me, I could be charged with "trespassing" or somesuch.

See, oscarsnapkin, I really am polite under pressure. The pressure of his visit was that we had another Headflow Masters engine with damn close to less than 100 miles on it. Right out of the box, our valve adjustment got screwed up with hydraulic lifters that acted like solid lifters. There was no pressing the plungers down when attempting to get to the 1 1/2 turns of the adjustment screws to reach sanctioned preload. No, the valves would just push open. You can't allow that. We finally adjusted the valves to "0" and the engine ran fine, and a call to Adrian was suggested to reconfirm Adrian's suggested adjustments.
"Make sure to ask him if he actually installed hydraulic lifters . . . oh, and does thing have an unauthorized performance cam?"
We did the AAR adjustment, we checked for a possible exhaust leak (naah, it is the sound of a performancy muffler), and somewhere at the end of the day, I said something like, "hey, let's replace the ball joint boot replacement on the left front suspension."
And so we did . . . using delicate little plastic ties for boot retainers.
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

tewa3240
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings NE to SE

Post by tewa3240 » Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:07 pm

Wish i could of heard the radio call on this one.....
....(squwak).....perp is one shifty character, working on his shifter....
...seems surly, desperate to be on his way.
Your people skills won the day! :salute:

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