Irvine Adventure Part I
Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 5:56 am
After Colin left, I was musing to myself about what image might encapsulate what it's like to be with the man; I finally landed on this: Imagine the Sistene Chapel, and the creation of Adam, as here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... Chapel.png
Only instead of God reaching out and touching man, it's Colin reaching out and touching a VW engine. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Due to the constraints of work, I could only manage a half-day with Colin (this means 2-7pm) and I felt guilty at that, since I didn't really have anything for him to do. The air-cooled Vanagon that I've had for the past several years has served it's training purpose, and taught me all that I needed to know about Vanagon ownership. It's now rusty body, and some other issues led me to decide that my '82 had reached the end of a useful life when I discovered that the transmission was dying, and the cost of replacing said transmission was substantial.
So the man arrived in timely fashion, and a wide-ranging discussion ensued, about the nature of current politics and the malaise that threatens our democratic experiment, education and my own slow move towards a centered and inspired life. For me, this is close to perfect, and I'd happily pay Colin to simply sit and talk the afternoon away. But it's not his way, is it? So after talking for a bit, he asked what it is I wanted to do with my hired gun.
This wasn't an easy question, since the upshot of the dying transmission was this: I had gone to Elsinore, and looked at used transmissions from the guys at Interstate Used Parts (Jim Lucca is easily the nicest guy in this business bar none; he also has more vintage air-cooled parts than anyone else in this country). The cost of a used transmission was more than I was willing to part with for a van that had so many other issues, but I did see, and bought, an 85 GL Westfalia with a 2.1 engine that had been sitting in a field somewhere for 7 years.
The problem with this is, in a word, rodents. The van had been overrun with mice, and a rat had set up camp on top of the engine. So even though it had been running when it was stopped back in 03, the engine and interior were awash in rodent refuse. The engine itself was rusty, and I had committed myself mentally to replacing it with another 2.1, or possibly a Subaru.
So, in the way of amusing Colin, I showed it to him; he asked me if it was running, to which I replied, "Of course not." Colin, ever-perceptive, and precise in his argumentation fired back; "How do you know? Have you tried it?"
I owned that I had not, but simply assumed years of sitting and the damned rat had ensured that the engine was dead. I might have known... this response, and the legendary toughness of the VW engine was enough to light the fire in the man. His steely eyes glinted, he grinned his colinesque grin, and asked, "Do you have any problem with trying to see if it will run?"
Lord, the man loves a challenge. I had spent the last 4 weeks wondering how to explain to my wife that we needed, NEEDED, to buy a new engine for this van. I think we all know that many wives see VWs as a kind of demanding, expensive mistress, so you know this was not a pleasant thought circling around in my head. BUT; since I had already committed to the concept of replacing the engine, what could be lost in this enterprise? It'll amuse Colin, and failure isn't failure ~ it's confirmation of my thumbnail diagnosis.
First we put the car in gear, and rocked it back and forth... does the engine move? By gosh it does! More than that, if we pulled hard enough, it almost, right on the edge of perception, seemed to be trying to kick over and start! Surely not? Well, having come this far, perhaps we'll go a bit farther.
Next was a check of fluids. The coolant bottle was dry. Luckily, I had several gallons of "pre-mixed crap" from Prestone to put in. Then the oil, which wasn't too bad, was down a quart, but from my stores of automotive items I pulled out a bottle of Castrol 20W-50. While checking out the uber-rusty engine, Colin noted a missing spring atop the plenum that connects to the accelerator spring. I dug around in my box of wonders (I have a largish collection of parts, crap and detritus related to Vanagons) and delivered: "Is this what you're looking for?" Placing the spring in, mild admiration coloring his voice, he noted that, "This isn't 'a spring', it's THE spring. This is the actual spring for this."
I held on to this moment of glory; 'ask and ye shall receive' I say. I raid the 82 for a battery. We run to the store for 2 gallons of gas in my gas can, which upon return we put in the tank, leaving a bit to prime the engine should we need it The questions in play are these:
What will happen when we juice the system?
Has the damned rat done anything really destructive?
Power to the system brings the fuel pump to life! This however, quickly shows the largish leak coming from the main fuel line. Shut off the power, and Colin wonders, "Do you have any fuel line?" Heh. Back to the box of wonders. Is BMW fuel line good enough for you old-timer? It is, and in it goes. Reanimate the system. Oh Jeebus! Still dumping fuel, this time from a little section of line on the other side of the firewall. Replacing this is not going to be easy, and for 15 minutes Colin works at dragging the line through the hole in the firewall so that he can replace the little line without jacking the car and lying on the ground. This can be tricky, as it involves some crucial plastic parts that he (we) cannot afford to break. He manages it, as he always does, and now back to work.
This time, the pump fires up, the system primes, and NO leaks. We're at least not in danger. So start it up, he says. In my head, the recording goes like this: "There is no way. There is no way. There is no..." But that's not giving the man is due, is it? So I keep my negativity to myself, box it up and mentally burn the damn box. "It is going to work, dash it all, because I have the master of VWs, a man so steeped in the mystic ways of those Teutonic meisters that I must, I WILL have faith." I turn the key. My God! It starts and runs! The rancid smell of cooking rat piss is not a nice smell, and we need to keep an eye on the temp gauge. Is it moving? Not sure at first but eventually it does.
"Turn on the heater and the defroster" he calls over the yammering of a long-dormant set of hydraulic lifters that are pinging away. I do; after a brief set of tests, I can feel, FEEL the warmth of the system blowing through the heaters. The rear heater core WORKS and DOESN'T leak. Amazing. No, astounding. No, impossible. But it's not impossible, it IS.
"How's the clutch, I wonder?" Seriously. He wants to DRIVE it. Isn't one miracle enough? But the man will not be denied, and I have no strength to oppose his single minded pursuit of VW glory, so I move the stuff out of the way, and he runs it back and forth in place ~ a few feet each way. "Let's go for a drive" he calls. Um, there are no seats. I took them out. "No matter" he exclaims and gets in, handing me the camera for documentary purposes. I take a picture of the Colin behind the wheel, the windshield a brown haze of 7 years of neglect filtering the late afternoon sunshine (this is an inside joke because the first two years he came, the windshield on my 82 was unacceptably dirty). He puts it in gear, slowly backs out, and drifts down to the corner of the parking area on tires that have been sitting in the desert for 7 years. "Do you have any problem being seen/embarrassed by this little trip?" I own that I do not. I am mesmerized by this, this, this ~ resurrection. There's no other word for it. That engine was DEAD. I don't care what anyone else says, it shouldn't be running but it IS.
down the apartment path, around, and back up. We go out on the road, to the dismay of the pushy, modern-car driving residents of my snooty neighborhood, but no amount of revving can quite that yammering, that hammering valve. "You'll need to do a valve adjustment to see if it'll help that" calls Colin over the rapid, staccato sound. I nod, acknowledging that I have done that under his tutelage.
Returned to it's parking place, Colin asks, "Now, how do you feel about that?" He is all triumph and glory. Words fail me; what is the value of NOT having to buy a new engine? Is it only the cost, or is it something more? The value of not having to have that discussion with the lady, the value of the story of the "The Resurrection", the value of an afternoon well spent?
But one more surprise awaits us. We sit in the 82 looking through the Bentley so Colin can confirm some stuff about timing and set up. I have an air filter for the 82, and ask him if it'll fit. "I don't know, how does it look?" I figure it looks about right, so let's try it.
I start to disassemble the air cleaner but don't really feel like messing with the S-Boot, and tell Colin I'm too tired to do it now. The wry arch of the eyebrows and my own statement phrased back to me as a question were enough to shame me into the deed. I unscrew the band that holds the air cleaner to the S-boot, and Colin wrestles it out.
Oh. My. God. The entire air cleaner is filled with plastic shreds, dried, dead grass, mouse crap and other crap. The filter is eaten clean through by the little mousie bastard. How did the engine run? I am amazed at the ability of the engine to function when utterly and completely screwed. While Colin cleans out the mouse house (I will never look at Disney so benignly again) I go into the little area where the air cleaner draws from. Soak it over and over with bleach water (mice are disease vectors, and I hate disease) but the layers are too thick; I soak it with the remainder of the bottle, and tell Colin not to worry about putting the air cleaner back. I'll let it wait for a few days and get back to it.
It's just past 7. In 5 hours, the man has enriched my spirit and mind, and then brought a long-dead voice back to the choir of VW. "When you get this cleaned up, after long hours of washing, fixing and replacing wires, you're going to have one nice van." And for the first time since I bought the thing, and discovered what the rodents had done, I agreed.
With chewed wires all over town, he was shocked and amazed to see that the lights work, and that it runs. Not as shocked as I was, but nevertheless. My spirit restored and the 85's powerplant brought back to life, it was time for him to move on, and he does. He'll be back tomorrow (now today, as I write this) to visit my good friend Nathanael. I'll stop in to see them knee deep in N.'s awesome 80 air cooled.
So now you know why that image is the one. Who else could have done such a thing. An engine that sat for 7 years, ravaged by time, temperature and one (or more) of Ratfink's cousins was brought to life with the gentle, knowing touch of the master's hand. What price, knowledge and patience?
Only instead of God reaching out and touching man, it's Colin reaching out and touching a VW engine. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Due to the constraints of work, I could only manage a half-day with Colin (this means 2-7pm) and I felt guilty at that, since I didn't really have anything for him to do. The air-cooled Vanagon that I've had for the past several years has served it's training purpose, and taught me all that I needed to know about Vanagon ownership. It's now rusty body, and some other issues led me to decide that my '82 had reached the end of a useful life when I discovered that the transmission was dying, and the cost of replacing said transmission was substantial.
So the man arrived in timely fashion, and a wide-ranging discussion ensued, about the nature of current politics and the malaise that threatens our democratic experiment, education and my own slow move towards a centered and inspired life. For me, this is close to perfect, and I'd happily pay Colin to simply sit and talk the afternoon away. But it's not his way, is it? So after talking for a bit, he asked what it is I wanted to do with my hired gun.
This wasn't an easy question, since the upshot of the dying transmission was this: I had gone to Elsinore, and looked at used transmissions from the guys at Interstate Used Parts (Jim Lucca is easily the nicest guy in this business bar none; he also has more vintage air-cooled parts than anyone else in this country). The cost of a used transmission was more than I was willing to part with for a van that had so many other issues, but I did see, and bought, an 85 GL Westfalia with a 2.1 engine that had been sitting in a field somewhere for 7 years.
The problem with this is, in a word, rodents. The van had been overrun with mice, and a rat had set up camp on top of the engine. So even though it had been running when it was stopped back in 03, the engine and interior were awash in rodent refuse. The engine itself was rusty, and I had committed myself mentally to replacing it with another 2.1, or possibly a Subaru.
So, in the way of amusing Colin, I showed it to him; he asked me if it was running, to which I replied, "Of course not." Colin, ever-perceptive, and precise in his argumentation fired back; "How do you know? Have you tried it?"
I owned that I had not, but simply assumed years of sitting and the damned rat had ensured that the engine was dead. I might have known... this response, and the legendary toughness of the VW engine was enough to light the fire in the man. His steely eyes glinted, he grinned his colinesque grin, and asked, "Do you have any problem with trying to see if it will run?"
Lord, the man loves a challenge. I had spent the last 4 weeks wondering how to explain to my wife that we needed, NEEDED, to buy a new engine for this van. I think we all know that many wives see VWs as a kind of demanding, expensive mistress, so you know this was not a pleasant thought circling around in my head. BUT; since I had already committed to the concept of replacing the engine, what could be lost in this enterprise? It'll amuse Colin, and failure isn't failure ~ it's confirmation of my thumbnail diagnosis.
First we put the car in gear, and rocked it back and forth... does the engine move? By gosh it does! More than that, if we pulled hard enough, it almost, right on the edge of perception, seemed to be trying to kick over and start! Surely not? Well, having come this far, perhaps we'll go a bit farther.
Next was a check of fluids. The coolant bottle was dry. Luckily, I had several gallons of "pre-mixed crap" from Prestone to put in. Then the oil, which wasn't too bad, was down a quart, but from my stores of automotive items I pulled out a bottle of Castrol 20W-50. While checking out the uber-rusty engine, Colin noted a missing spring atop the plenum that connects to the accelerator spring. I dug around in my box of wonders (I have a largish collection of parts, crap and detritus related to Vanagons) and delivered: "Is this what you're looking for?" Placing the spring in, mild admiration coloring his voice, he noted that, "This isn't 'a spring', it's THE spring. This is the actual spring for this."
I held on to this moment of glory; 'ask and ye shall receive' I say. I raid the 82 for a battery. We run to the store for 2 gallons of gas in my gas can, which upon return we put in the tank, leaving a bit to prime the engine should we need it The questions in play are these:
What will happen when we juice the system?
Has the damned rat done anything really destructive?
Power to the system brings the fuel pump to life! This however, quickly shows the largish leak coming from the main fuel line. Shut off the power, and Colin wonders, "Do you have any fuel line?" Heh. Back to the box of wonders. Is BMW fuel line good enough for you old-timer? It is, and in it goes. Reanimate the system. Oh Jeebus! Still dumping fuel, this time from a little section of line on the other side of the firewall. Replacing this is not going to be easy, and for 15 minutes Colin works at dragging the line through the hole in the firewall so that he can replace the little line without jacking the car and lying on the ground. This can be tricky, as it involves some crucial plastic parts that he (we) cannot afford to break. He manages it, as he always does, and now back to work.
This time, the pump fires up, the system primes, and NO leaks. We're at least not in danger. So start it up, he says. In my head, the recording goes like this: "There is no way. There is no way. There is no..." But that's not giving the man is due, is it? So I keep my negativity to myself, box it up and mentally burn the damn box. "It is going to work, dash it all, because I have the master of VWs, a man so steeped in the mystic ways of those Teutonic meisters that I must, I WILL have faith." I turn the key. My God! It starts and runs! The rancid smell of cooking rat piss is not a nice smell, and we need to keep an eye on the temp gauge. Is it moving? Not sure at first but eventually it does.
"Turn on the heater and the defroster" he calls over the yammering of a long-dormant set of hydraulic lifters that are pinging away. I do; after a brief set of tests, I can feel, FEEL the warmth of the system blowing through the heaters. The rear heater core WORKS and DOESN'T leak. Amazing. No, astounding. No, impossible. But it's not impossible, it IS.
"How's the clutch, I wonder?" Seriously. He wants to DRIVE it. Isn't one miracle enough? But the man will not be denied, and I have no strength to oppose his single minded pursuit of VW glory, so I move the stuff out of the way, and he runs it back and forth in place ~ a few feet each way. "Let's go for a drive" he calls. Um, there are no seats. I took them out. "No matter" he exclaims and gets in, handing me the camera for documentary purposes. I take a picture of the Colin behind the wheel, the windshield a brown haze of 7 years of neglect filtering the late afternoon sunshine (this is an inside joke because the first two years he came, the windshield on my 82 was unacceptably dirty). He puts it in gear, slowly backs out, and drifts down to the corner of the parking area on tires that have been sitting in the desert for 7 years. "Do you have any problem being seen/embarrassed by this little trip?" I own that I do not. I am mesmerized by this, this, this ~ resurrection. There's no other word for it. That engine was DEAD. I don't care what anyone else says, it shouldn't be running but it IS.
down the apartment path, around, and back up. We go out on the road, to the dismay of the pushy, modern-car driving residents of my snooty neighborhood, but no amount of revving can quite that yammering, that hammering valve. "You'll need to do a valve adjustment to see if it'll help that" calls Colin over the rapid, staccato sound. I nod, acknowledging that I have done that under his tutelage.
Returned to it's parking place, Colin asks, "Now, how do you feel about that?" He is all triumph and glory. Words fail me; what is the value of NOT having to buy a new engine? Is it only the cost, or is it something more? The value of not having to have that discussion with the lady, the value of the story of the "The Resurrection", the value of an afternoon well spent?
But one more surprise awaits us. We sit in the 82 looking through the Bentley so Colin can confirm some stuff about timing and set up. I have an air filter for the 82, and ask him if it'll fit. "I don't know, how does it look?" I figure it looks about right, so let's try it.
I start to disassemble the air cleaner but don't really feel like messing with the S-Boot, and tell Colin I'm too tired to do it now. The wry arch of the eyebrows and my own statement phrased back to me as a question were enough to shame me into the deed. I unscrew the band that holds the air cleaner to the S-boot, and Colin wrestles it out.
Oh. My. God. The entire air cleaner is filled with plastic shreds, dried, dead grass, mouse crap and other crap. The filter is eaten clean through by the little mousie bastard. How did the engine run? I am amazed at the ability of the engine to function when utterly and completely screwed. While Colin cleans out the mouse house (I will never look at Disney so benignly again) I go into the little area where the air cleaner draws from. Soak it over and over with bleach water (mice are disease vectors, and I hate disease) but the layers are too thick; I soak it with the remainder of the bottle, and tell Colin not to worry about putting the air cleaner back. I'll let it wait for a few days and get back to it.
It's just past 7. In 5 hours, the man has enriched my spirit and mind, and then brought a long-dead voice back to the choir of VW. "When you get this cleaned up, after long hours of washing, fixing and replacing wires, you're going to have one nice van." And for the first time since I bought the thing, and discovered what the rodents had done, I agreed.
With chewed wires all over town, he was shocked and amazed to see that the lights work, and that it runs. Not as shocked as I was, but nevertheless. My spirit restored and the 85's powerplant brought back to life, it was time for him to move on, and he does. He'll be back tomorrow (now today, as I write this) to visit my good friend Nathanael. I'll stop in to see them knee deep in N.'s awesome 80 air cooled.
So now you know why that image is the one. Who else could have done such a thing. An engine that sat for 7 years, ravaged by time, temperature and one (or more) of Ratfink's cousins was brought to life with the gentle, knowing touch of the master's hand. What price, knowledge and patience?