In fact, it has been quite a month, a month of exercising strenuously in most every category of existence.
I howled at God for days when the eclipse was eclipsed by sullen cloud cover.
We have had family dramas here at my brother's house in Atlanta.
I have had mechanical dramas with Chloe's engine.
We had a gate drama at the storage unit where I was perched on the sharp tines atop the gate,
"Hey, what are you doing there!"
And today, I am to buy a 1977 Westy that I don't want to keep.
Thirty two days ago, I drove through Baltimore Maryland, street after street of hard-lived houses:
I'll say this, there was actually energy on the sidewalks, people interacting with people, some loudly, some relaxed in the early afternoon:
There were some rough neighborhoods, I imagine that the nights could be tense:
This is the local high school, a beat building, trembling under the daily bashing of students with nary a hope of "maintenance":
Soon thereafter, as Chloe's shock absorbers began to gasp with frothed oil from the incessant potholes, I found the beltway. Pow! Smooth as glass, beautiful stripes, manicured shoulder grass, why, we must be in the Congressional Legislator Commuter Zone. In heavy traffic, I took this shot because it looked so other-worldly:
I had an appointment with cheesehead. I always go straight to the coffee for a double expresso and sit at the kitchen island and take in that lovely house. We did valve adjustment, timing check, annual tea cup portrait (folks, I think I shall look 95 years old by the age of 60 - FINE! Let's All Get Old Together):
It is a good little Raby kit engine, and we spanked it just a bit in the surrounding dense traffic as I checked for a balky shifter, then did a stop plate adjustment in a parking lot up somewhere. We ended the day with an as usual excellent little dinner:
Down to Woodbridge VA to visit with jnj77bus, another hopeful hardworking VW aficionado with a beautiful bus. Alas, under the lovely blue/white paint, yet another engine tragedy lurked, a recent rebuild that needed to be torn down. I sure don't want to ever indict an engine, recommend removal and disassembly, then find nothing wrong, but I was driven to that conclusion in short order. Here was the presenting symptom:
The engine was a GEX rebuild in 1998.
Since 2014
New jugs New Pistons New heads from GEX New dual weber 44's
The valves have been set on the heads to .006
Timing has been adjusted
Here's my problem. No power.
When I get going up a hill, I press the gas, it goes to the floor and I lose speed.
If the hill isn't too high, I lose speed, but make it over the hill.
Once I'm over I can get back up to 55-60 mph.
Flat road is fine, but no big hills. I've been stranded before and the engine will not start.
It's as if it gets too hot or something.
I have gotten this bus engine as far as I can go. I need some professional help,
This recently rebuilt engine had a tragically fatal problem, yet a such a willing heart. The above quote straight off my customer is a warning flag for all of us. I have mentioned this before, low power must be investigated!
So, I was there investigating. Had to drive it. Had to experience this low power. Had to hear with my own ears the sound of this engine suffering from detonation under load.
Although we performed the full tune-up and got the timing and mixtures to within survivable parameters, the engine none-the-less had low power, detonation, and overheating.
Thus, I declared that it was architecturally unsound, and needed to be disassembled, thus increasing the number of Doctor Death diagnoses to five this summer alone.
As soon as I have theSamba link to this unfortunate saga, I will edit/post it here.
( edit p3 - http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewto ... highlight= )
Way back on October 2nd, I dropped Chloe's engine to do a simple end play reduction:
I had my camera out and I was going to make almost a Procedure, so simple and straightforward a job was expecting:
.008" end play is just not acceptable to me, I can feel the magnesium getting pounded. A whole summer of wear on the pressure plate hadn't even taken out my cross hatches of last November:
All hell broke loose when I got lost with the indexing. My center punch had only made a shiny dot when I thought it had made a dent that would survive cleaning. You can see the dot on the bottom dowel:
The shims showed some odd wear marks, either two rings at the edges, or one stripe of wear in the middle:
Got the end play down to .0035" and tore the top off the engine to see if I had an oil leak beginning to develop at the oil cooler seals:
Naaaaaaah, it's the case, the weld-repaired case, poor thing:
Hey, gotta go, I will be back . . .
Colin