Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Northeast I
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 7:32 am
Yuck.
Rain rain rain all over again, like last year. Stay tuned for me blowing a mental fuse again, and scampering across the country in three days again in search of a blue sky sunny day again, I'll do it again, you know I will.
My poor Westy bravely cut through the trillions of gallons of water thrown at it from this latest "system", and I think to myself, "sure am glad that fuel filter saga is past me." But, I lost a valuable online resource (Intellicast, with its real-time radar maps for anywhere in the country just by punching in a zipcode) to help me avoid things like "tornado warnings in New Jersey". Thus, I pulled off Interstate 80 right in the middle of a tornado warning swath, and fired up the laptop huddled in an open parking lot to see a red box around my location. Over the hill behind me, the tornado dumped a tree on a family of four huddled in their car at the local high school.
After a serious blatting blast of heavy raindrops, fierce gusts, and hopeless staring at lousy weather maps, everything settled down, and I took to the road again to enjoy GLARING HEADLAMPS and BLINDING TIRE SPRAY and HORRIFIC POTHOLES and best of all INCOMPREHENSIBLE ROAD SIGNS, I must be in New Jersey or something. Got thoroughly lost, but my pigeon brain stem came through and intuitively led me to yet another late-night New Jersey suburban street that wetly and reflectively splashed me through sodden neighborhoods to Grove Street somehow, accidentally and gratefully orienting me to my next appointment's location. Bailed into a parking lot and set up urban camp, this was a full curtain encampment with towels draped across the poptop frame to blot out some more of the detestable streetlamp glare. NaranjaWesty is a lovely interior environment that permits me to fall asleep exhausted in record time. Morning light wakes me reliably at 6:30 AM and I don't know the weather of the day yet because I can't see out. First curtain pull shows me ........ another cloudy day. PhooeyWhatever. Everything is stowed, windows windexed, curtains are carefully pleated and pulled back, carpet swept within ten minutes.
Arrived at appetite's house to appetite's 1969 Westy on time, ready to go.
Appetite was ready to go, too:
Through a honed intuition, appetite decided we should have a look at the valve adjustments, and they needed an adjustment, all right. Some hieroglyphics to assist in future adjustments ... :
He had procured a correct tailpipe (537 B, thankyouverymuch) that I gladly tackled while he adjusted the valves:
Through a honed intuition, appetite decided we should have a look at the rear brakes and had all parts necessary to resolve what turned out to be a badly leaky right rear wheel cylinder and soaked brake shoes:
Last year's field supervisor came home from I don't know, supervisor school? and waded right in with his usual crafty questions designed to keep us focused. "What are those?" "Why?"
We discovered that the new window regulator chewed itself to death and detached from the window lifter. I recommended that he score a used one if at all possible:
Got the turn indicator dashboard indicator lights working again by virtue of switching the taillight brake and parking light wire spades at the bulb holder. I think they were backwards since we assembled the car back in ... ouch, 2013:
https://itinerant-air-cooled.com/viewto ... 37#p202797
Did it begin to rain hard as we put away the last of the tools? Yes. Yes it did. The Universe was taunting me to blow a mental fuse and hie off to drier vistas. Got lost on the way out of Montclair to Englewood NJ and got to spend a couple of hours in New Jersey's finest traffic jams with my fellow doused motorists. Camped in an especially seedy broken down closed restaurant parking lot nestled in the comfy curve of an exit ramp where people must throw their trash out their windows and down the embankment. Listened to the incessant traffic and rain and just gave myself over to the gritty city.
Next morning's appointment was with skip and his Thing and his orange Westy. I did not take one picture, no, I waltzed into the kitchen and sat down with a cup of coffee and said, "I have had quite a year with God, skip." We of course plowed into our annual discussion of the Miracle of Creation, then went out to the Thing. Why won't it start? It cranks. It has spark. It has fuel. In our test for fuel pressure, we discovered that the fuel itself was contaminated with who knows what, water? cloudiness, and we set out to drain the carburetor and provide fresh fuel. We checked the spark plugs which were pretty much brand new. Put it all together and cranked, and it was just so dead. Checked for clean breaker points, grumbled a bit about the spark not being sufficient, little spritz of fuel into the carburetor throat, and it should really really start. Then a little intuition from the VW gods ... this poor car has been sitting under the deck all year, do the Wake Up Method, battery willing. That is when you commit to a serious spell of cranking with the accelerator to the floor. And lo! a little chuff occurred, and more cranking, another chuff, and by and by, a few more cylinders began to weakly rouse themselves, and finally, the Thing was roused and we just kept it running to heat up all of those spark plugs and combustion chamber surfaces, then set to finding out why it would not idle. It was a simple reason. The mixture screw was a few turns too lean, and the idle air screw was a few turns too open, so the idle circuit was acting like a vacuum leak.
Once running well and starting right up, we turned to the "rebuilt" wipers on the Westy that have had only one speed. After various diagrams of wires and a used wiper motor with a lot of wires, we determined that the rebuilder had used a single-speed armature (as found on all new post-Germany wiper motors) and didn't tell skip that the rebuild was a downgrade. We left it at that, repositioned the crank so the park feature would actually park the wipers at the bottom of the stroke, reinstalled the defroster vents and glovebox, and I took off for New Jersey's finest traffic once more. And yes, it began to rain, recalling the last time I left skip's house.
Colin
Rain rain rain all over again, like last year. Stay tuned for me blowing a mental fuse again, and scampering across the country in three days again in search of a blue sky sunny day again, I'll do it again, you know I will.
My poor Westy bravely cut through the trillions of gallons of water thrown at it from this latest "system", and I think to myself, "sure am glad that fuel filter saga is past me." But, I lost a valuable online resource (Intellicast, with its real-time radar maps for anywhere in the country just by punching in a zipcode) to help me avoid things like "tornado warnings in New Jersey". Thus, I pulled off Interstate 80 right in the middle of a tornado warning swath, and fired up the laptop huddled in an open parking lot to see a red box around my location. Over the hill behind me, the tornado dumped a tree on a family of four huddled in their car at the local high school.
After a serious blatting blast of heavy raindrops, fierce gusts, and hopeless staring at lousy weather maps, everything settled down, and I took to the road again to enjoy GLARING HEADLAMPS and BLINDING TIRE SPRAY and HORRIFIC POTHOLES and best of all INCOMPREHENSIBLE ROAD SIGNS, I must be in New Jersey or something. Got thoroughly lost, but my pigeon brain stem came through and intuitively led me to yet another late-night New Jersey suburban street that wetly and reflectively splashed me through sodden neighborhoods to Grove Street somehow, accidentally and gratefully orienting me to my next appointment's location. Bailed into a parking lot and set up urban camp, this was a full curtain encampment with towels draped across the poptop frame to blot out some more of the detestable streetlamp glare. NaranjaWesty is a lovely interior environment that permits me to fall asleep exhausted in record time. Morning light wakes me reliably at 6:30 AM and I don't know the weather of the day yet because I can't see out. First curtain pull shows me ........ another cloudy day. PhooeyWhatever. Everything is stowed, windows windexed, curtains are carefully pleated and pulled back, carpet swept within ten minutes.
Arrived at appetite's house to appetite's 1969 Westy on time, ready to go.
Appetite was ready to go, too:
Through a honed intuition, appetite decided we should have a look at the valve adjustments, and they needed an adjustment, all right. Some hieroglyphics to assist in future adjustments ... :
He had procured a correct tailpipe (537 B, thankyouverymuch) that I gladly tackled while he adjusted the valves:
Through a honed intuition, appetite decided we should have a look at the rear brakes and had all parts necessary to resolve what turned out to be a badly leaky right rear wheel cylinder and soaked brake shoes:
Last year's field supervisor came home from I don't know, supervisor school? and waded right in with his usual crafty questions designed to keep us focused. "What are those?" "Why?"
We discovered that the new window regulator chewed itself to death and detached from the window lifter. I recommended that he score a used one if at all possible:
Got the turn indicator dashboard indicator lights working again by virtue of switching the taillight brake and parking light wire spades at the bulb holder. I think they were backwards since we assembled the car back in ... ouch, 2013:
https://itinerant-air-cooled.com/viewto ... 37#p202797
Did it begin to rain hard as we put away the last of the tools? Yes. Yes it did. The Universe was taunting me to blow a mental fuse and hie off to drier vistas. Got lost on the way out of Montclair to Englewood NJ and got to spend a couple of hours in New Jersey's finest traffic jams with my fellow doused motorists. Camped in an especially seedy broken down closed restaurant parking lot nestled in the comfy curve of an exit ramp where people must throw their trash out their windows and down the embankment. Listened to the incessant traffic and rain and just gave myself over to the gritty city.
Next morning's appointment was with skip and his Thing and his orange Westy. I did not take one picture, no, I waltzed into the kitchen and sat down with a cup of coffee and said, "I have had quite a year with God, skip." We of course plowed into our annual discussion of the Miracle of Creation, then went out to the Thing. Why won't it start? It cranks. It has spark. It has fuel. In our test for fuel pressure, we discovered that the fuel itself was contaminated with who knows what, water? cloudiness, and we set out to drain the carburetor and provide fresh fuel. We checked the spark plugs which were pretty much brand new. Put it all together and cranked, and it was just so dead. Checked for clean breaker points, grumbled a bit about the spark not being sufficient, little spritz of fuel into the carburetor throat, and it should really really start. Then a little intuition from the VW gods ... this poor car has been sitting under the deck all year, do the Wake Up Method, battery willing. That is when you commit to a serious spell of cranking with the accelerator to the floor. And lo! a little chuff occurred, and more cranking, another chuff, and by and by, a few more cylinders began to weakly rouse themselves, and finally, the Thing was roused and we just kept it running to heat up all of those spark plugs and combustion chamber surfaces, then set to finding out why it would not idle. It was a simple reason. The mixture screw was a few turns too lean, and the idle air screw was a few turns too open, so the idle circuit was acting like a vacuum leak.
Once running well and starting right up, we turned to the "rebuilt" wipers on the Westy that have had only one speed. After various diagrams of wires and a used wiper motor with a lot of wires, we determined that the rebuilder had used a single-speed armature (as found on all new post-Germany wiper motors) and didn't tell skip that the rebuild was a downgrade. We left it at that, repositioned the crank so the park feature would actually park the wipers at the bottom of the stroke, reinstalled the defroster vents and glovebox, and I took off for New Jersey's finest traffic once more. And yes, it began to rain, recalling the last time I left skip's house.
Colin