Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Oct 08, 2016 8:00 pm

Like the end of the 2014 Itinerary thank-you-BobD-final-car-wash .. .. ..

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.. .. .. this was to be the end of the 2016 Main Lap at 64,444 miles, this thank-you-NaranjaWesty-car-wash:

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Then I was going to take either the BobD or Chloe out for a little fall exercise to Tennessee and North Carolina and back to Georgia. Yeah, but guess what? It happened . . . against my most strenuous efforts to hate this damn camper layout, I decided that I liked the convenience of this damn camper layout. So, I washed it, visited my brother, watched a couple of back episodes of The Good Wife, and hit the road with the damn camper to the tnjed ii appointment in Knoxville. You may remember our unusual spring appointment:

viewtopic.php?f=70&t=13016#p220425


Well, we got to endure another doozy episode under our belts. The presenting symptom was an alternator light that would not go out on Penny Lane, the '75 Orange Westy. I knew that would be easy. Just check for twelve volts to the lamp socket from the ignition switch and then make sure that there is alternator's juice coming up the blue wire from the regulator, and presto, lamp goes out.

OK, ignition-supplied voltage at the dash.
OK 12 volts from the alternator as soon as it is spinning coming up the blue wire to the lamp.
So, lamp goes out. NOT.
WTH.
Tore up the dash and indicted the fuel gauge idiot light cluster and cleaned and cleaned the instruments and the glass and the heater levers and reassembled all pretty, but that light still lit. Finally decide that the test lamp is lyin or sumpin. Get the digital voltage tester out. Get testy with my fellow tester since tester can't test with intermittent contact with the tester against the terminals. Battery is an insolent 12.3v with the engine off, 16-17 volts with the alternator spinning. Finally we have to conclude that the alternator SURE DOES WORK GOOD with all those volts, but the damn alternator light sure doesn't think so. Replace the voltage regulator with another one off the "crusty" bus. That'll rein in those excess volts. NOPE. Still 16-17 ripping into the vehicle's wiring, 8 volts into the blue wire, 16 volts coming out of the ignition switch, that is enough differential to turn on the idiot light, idiot. Never have I run into such a frisky alternator that ignores the voltage regulator. Crusty bus yields its alternator and we stick it in, an old original Bosch alternator that hasn't seen rpms since dirt was invented. Problem solved.
Old Original Bosch Alternator 1
New Rebuilt Bosch Alternator 0

Wasted almost a whole day too. I saw it in Anthony's eyes. 4:45PM, "so . . . what else on the list?" I ask brightly.
"Well, I have the center pin kit still, you said I needed a new center pin kit."
And he did, and we did.

Then I drove off into the night to here:

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Phoenix64bug up on Signal Mountain in Tennessee had a bus that barely could get out of its own way. Old clattery engine for one. Well, we diagnosed a cylinder cutting out under load, and diagnosed perfectly acceptable compression and only found a #2 spark plug blackened to a coal blackness and a #4 intake rocker arm about touching the valve spring retainer. We shimmed the rocker assembly and put #2 plug in #3 cylinder (to clean it) and tried to diagnose an injector leak by swapping it with #4 cylinder's injector, but the cutting out behavior remained consistently at #2. Cleaned up some details on wiring and timing and mixture, but we are still trying to figure it out.

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So, I left a real Volkswagen aficionado swimming in details and hightailed it to Georgia . . . here:

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This is where I first painted the side ceiling panels back on April 27, on a bluff overlooking Fort Oglethorpe GA.

viewtopic.php?f=70&t=13011#p220383

Crickets, city lights, far below traffic sounds, crescent moon, Georgia firs, perfect. Perfect place to rip down the left heat exchanger too:

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Turns out, I have been slowly pulling out the #3 inboard exhaust stud. I first saw it when I reconditioned this heat exchanger at the Homosassas Farm Fowl Hootenanny round about February 15-ish, 2016.
See? Head thread side of the stud is not visible:

FEBRUARY
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Oh, but here, it surely is:

OCTOBER
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Since one of my customers, ANTHONY or JOHN, stole my red dot 13mm box wrench, I was in a pickle here. I had to muscle this stud out of a confined space. Double nut removal wasn't working with my little adjustable wrench and 13mm socket. Eventually removed the front intermediate tin to get sideways access to the stud:

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So very gently persuaded the stud to give it up with loosen/spritz/tighten/loosen/spritz/tighten/loosen. Here is the extraction at the halfway point:

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Fresh off the engine:

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Laid out the repair strategy, depth-marked 21/64 drill bit, 10x1.25 tap, new straight 8 stud, helicoil, helicoil driver, refreshing Diet Coke, and some brake cleaner:

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DRILLED
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TAPPED
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INSERTED HELICOIL
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see the little driver tang? You pop it out with a hammer hit when you are sure it is seated where you want

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Did you notice that the port/seat/valve hardly look any worse for wear after 20,000 miles of deserts and highways and 444* CHTs?
Me too . . .

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Stuck the RandyInMaine Commemorative LM-1 Exhaust Analyzer in the tail pipe:

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Got out my three spare air flow meters:

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. . . and hit the road east to North Carolina into the promised hurricane:
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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dingo
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by dingo » Sun Oct 09, 2016 11:47 am

so the Field was receiving too much Voltage somehow ? short somehwere on the rotor ?
'71 Kombi, 1600 dp

';78 Tranzporter 2L

" Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."

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Bleyseng
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by Bleyseng » Sun Oct 09, 2016 12:01 pm

Look how rusty and grimey the bottom of the engine is. Time to strip off the bottom tin and paint it along with pulling the pushrod tubes and re gold anodizing them in the field in 12" of snow...
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 The SE

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Oct 10, 2016 7:27 am

Spent way too much time trying to restore a smooth speedometer needle:

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Hated breaking the wax seal at the EGR counter, but I had to twist the outer cable sheath 180* to see if I could have new wear surfaces inside to allow the cable to glide. VW Audi on that thar . . . :

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After about two hours of cleaning and lubricating the cable and getting it reinstalled with only a little crack visible at the wax seal, I have a newly noisy speedometer cable with a dancing speedometer needle. Well, it was a nice day anyway.

Then I drove into a not-as-nice day:

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I could see the outer edge of Hurricane Matthew from Knoxville, and bravely drove forth into puffs of breeze and splats of showers:

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It said "remove sunglasses" just before entering the the Interstate 40 tunnel in the Smokeys:

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Uh, OK:

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Got to Snow Camp, NC to visit with markannenorton, whose green Westy (a member of the family for years) was stalled in the restoration process by a rebuilt engine that did not want to run. We got it to run and drove it down the gravel driveway and around the neighborhood. Then we replaced the front shift rod bushing and got all tangled up in getting the steering column bracket to sit higher on the column so he could enjoy the freshy resurrected horn and newly cancelling self-cancelling turn signals. It is a good bus and it will be an excellent one when all is back together after my continual hounding about "adjust and lubricate everything."

On my way to Buford, Georgia. My next customer asked in an email, "are you showing up with your own tools?"
Colin

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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

Jivermo
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by Jivermo » Mon Oct 10, 2016 8:25 am

"are you showing up with your own tools?"


Next Customer

Well, probably most of them, anyway. Minus the assorted, "Trail of Tools" that litter the Itinerant path, to be gathered up by clients and returned the following year.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by airkooledchris » Mon Oct 10, 2016 8:50 am

Jivermo wrote:
"are you showing up with your own tools?"


Next Customer

Well, probably most of them, anyway. Minus the assorted, "Trail of Tools" that litter the Itinerant path, to be gathered up by clients and returned the following year.

they should be mailed to the customer 3 appointments down the road!



confused by the alternator "issue" - was there a real problem with how it performed, or was swapping done just to appease the dash light?
1979 California Transporter

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by Jivermo » Mon Oct 10, 2016 9:57 am

My haul, over the years, has been a beautiful, 40 year old socket drive, a quality U.S. made Craftsman screwdriver, a small brake bleeder metric combination wrench, and a nice sweatshirt! My barn workspace is so well organized, I don't understand how they ever got misplaced.

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Amskeptic
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From The SE

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:30 pm

airkooledchris wrote:
confused by the alternator "issue" - was there a real problem with how it performed, or was swapping done just to appease the dash light?
It was a real issue, and the battery was being stressed by a serious overcharge. You could smell hydrogen gas back there.

So, I was tricked into replacing the voltage regulator to "rein in" those excessive volts. And absolutely no change in symptoms was noted. Now that is goofy.

I had about 8 volts coming up the blue wire when the alternator was spinning, and a correct ground path when it was not.

Who would have ever thought that sixteen! volts was coming around the other side into the ignition switch to the dash cluster and into the shell of the idiot light, and give us enough voltage differential to light the light?

There was a little scream emanating from the newly rebuilt alternator that made me suspicious. When we swapped the old crusty alternator in, I had to swap the cooling cover plate over, and the rebuilt alternator looked absolutely fine, under the cooling cover plate, no smoked looking diodes, no burnt B+ terminal.
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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