Itinerant Air-Cooled

Posted this three years ago to the day:

viewtopic.php?t=12763#p217041




I look at the photographs of that "pristine 41,836-mile Westy" in that thread, and they remind me that this has been a long journey to the car it is today, at 93,660 miles. It is a better car in almost every way. Just two days ago, I got the sink to actually work. It was ridiculously easy. A single broken wire near the pump:




Decorated the faucet switch for idiot-proof operation:




The Lionel Kid and I were beside ourselves:




Yes, I was that excited when water gushed out of the faucet, running water!




Then I cleaned every single square inch of that Westy,




I haven't seen this car fully emptied out of Itinerary accoutrement. It looks nice and drives lightly:




removed and washed the curtains,




shampoo'd the upholstery and carpets,








touched up the wood paneling,




painted each door at the seal contact surface,




we're talking an immaculate car:

























Now you can see the results of all that color-sanding throughout the summer, the reflectivity of the paint is double what it was when I bought the car:.

October 2015




October 2018




I feel like a Lionel Kid:

THAT is hilarious....I nearly showered my keyboard with coffee.

Amskeptic wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 29, 2018 10:06 pm

I feel like a Lionel Kid:

And, the Westy is looking mighty fine. Congrats on another itinerary in the books.

Looks like it’s ready for next year. Get some rest and enjoy the downtime. I’ll be looking for next years schedule in a few months.
I’m slowly tucking mine in for the winter too but still driving them on the nice days (like today).

Mighty fine, mighty fine. We'll make a Westy lover of you yet.

As I try to settle down here in Pensacola FL (difficult this year! I want to hit the road until I look at weather forecasts for let's say, Deming NM "32* high, 21* low", are you KIDDING ME?), I bound out of my chair with all of those receipts scattered all over the place, and go find restless little projects in the garage. There have been many. They have been delightfully tiny in scope. Just little burnishments like removing the *passenger side* jalousie window, finding precious little rust, yay! and accidentally nailing a perfect paint match for the window frame:




Now, here are two photographs from January 2016 to remind you of the horrendous overspray that was in every door opening:






The Fred Overspray® was especially horrid because it was a dark greenish rough transition from the brighter yellow on the expterior to the car's original orange. Over the past three years, I have managed to eradicate every bit of the overspray in the door openings and elsewhere . . . but not behind the front emblem. Seriously, Fred The Oversprayer® wasted more time taping the emblem than what could have been a simple pry-off. The overspray had original paint just under the circle and the V and the W, and a gross circle of greenish rough overspray all in between. Well, the day before yesterday, I did peel off the emblem and I brushed the entire circle with a concoction of orange/yellow/dollop of BobD green/white, then waited a day and color-sanded it down. Decent match under flourescent lights! Could be terrible in the sunlight! Huge east coast cloud event, must wait for final critique:




Then I got cocky. You know why? I was listening to NPR slowly dole out that the blue wave actually occurred and Stacy Abrams and Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson and Kyrsten Sinema and Jon Tester had clawed their way into contention if not office. So, I couldn't leave the garage radio. Took the sun-bleached stripey curtains off the tailgate, washed them, then paper-towel-blotted the bleached areas with the above yellow and orange and GumOut carb spray. Yeah, I did that to my original curtains. Upper is post-blot, lower is pre-blot:




It was not perfect, but it blends in nicely with the light effects that occur naturally at the pleat folds:




Did I mention that I need new cylinder heads? I need new cylinder heads:







These are perfectly good functional original cylinder heads with 94,000 miles but the exhaust port stud boss on #4 exhaust is pretty much shot. My last compression figures were fine, here notated on my new deluxe floor mat with real plastic foot pad.




17 mpg spark plugs after a 3,000 mile four day blast look like these:




It is Len Hoffman time. You know my demand letter was pretty fierce, too.
Colin

P.S. I scarfed this advertising shot off the VW Westy camper bus Facebook page, who had in turn scarfed it off theSamba "Press Photo" page, and the dialogue just wrote itself . . . .

How do you keep the front driver's seat from wearing out? I do this gingerly dance when I get in; leverage foot and arm on the steering wheel to ensure I don't rub the outer edge, but alas, it has gotten worse since I bought mine. ok. I do have 2x the miles...but still.

TrollFromDownBelow wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 14, 2018 8:15 pm

How do you keep the front driver's seat from wearing out? I do this gingerly dance when I get in; leverage foot and arm on the steering wheel to ensure I don't rub the outer edge, but alas, it has gotten worse since I bought mine. ok. I do have 2x the miles...but still.

There is no contact with the seat until I am coming straight down (learned from owning a Lexus with pathetically skinny leather bolsters). I repair the piping with Superglue should it show any signs of coming free of the seam.

The 1977 Westy allows me to swap seats from side to side much like the BobD allows me to swap seats side to side every 20,000 miles or so.
Colin

Reverting back to the original topic...are you going to get the ceramic coating Len offers, or are you going nekked.

TrollFromDownBelow wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 16, 2018 2:44 pm

Reverting back to the original topic...are you going to get the ceramic coating Len offers, or are you going nekked.

I prefer "nekked" but I will try the ceramic. You know that heat has to leave and get into the environment, right? There is no avoid the Laws of Physics. Burning gasoline/air creates X amount of heat regardless of the barriers or enhancements to conduction/convection, and it has to leave.

So, if we have "X" amount of heat being generated, good ol' perfectly unavoidable "X" amount of heat, then our heat dispersal techniques can go down innumerable paths of individual choice.

Strangely enough, I like the thought of heat X leaving through every possible path at all times.
If you barricade the heat in the combustion chamber with a ceramic coating to "protect" the combustion chamber ceiling, then your exhaust gas is going to be on a whole new level of hot through the priceless oem downstream exhaust components, yaah?
(I'll let you know Len's answer)
Colin

Interesting thoughts. I know Len even recommends an EGT reading over a CHT reading if you can only have one gauge. (Anybody have one of his packing slips with the details on it. Tom? Andrew? Other Tom?) X amount of heat is created, yes, but its efficiency at dispersing can be affected by color. VW demonstrated this on the Arctic Beetles, with their chrome oil sump and chrome valve covers. (Keep the heat IN with chrome, because over-cooling is dangerous too!)

Robbie

asiab3 wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 18, 2018 1:26 pm

A) X amount of heat is created, yes,

B) but its efficiency at dispersing can be affected by color. VW demonstrated this on the Arctic Beetles, with their chrome oil sump and chrome valve covers. (Keep the heat IN with chrome, because over-cooling is dangerous too!)
Robbie

Robbie,
a) and the hypothesis of my prior post: does ceramic coating cause a hotter exhaust stream that damages downstream exhaust components?

b) yes, and answered exhaustively and discussed exhaustively (did ya get the pun, sure you did), and I do refuse to paint the cylinder heads with paint, though I will paint the cast iron cylinders, though I won't paint the crankcase, though I do paint intake manifolds, but never transaxles.
Colin