Now, I cannot explain how humbled I am after Colin's visit. This was my first visit from him, but it certainly won't be my last. I'll be anxiously awaiting next summer. The amount of knowledge that just got dropped on my brain is immense and I am still taking it all in and beginning to connect dots a little more clearly. Lets begin from the beginning, a great place to start I'd say.
I've owned an ACVW since 2004 when I purchased a 1976 Transporter that I knew very little about. I drove it during the summers only, and barely put any miles on it, and subsequently paid little attention to the rust that was eating away at it, and the mechanical issues that were developing. I changed the oil, but as far as tune-ups or anything else went, she was essentially neglected
. In 2009 I began tearing into it and I'm half-way through a full-blown restoration. But that '76 is a long, long story for another day, with many twists, turns, and a whole lot of embarrassment thrown in for good measure.My original reasoning for signing up this year for a visit was to get a little hand on some of my tasks for the '76. But after purchasing a 1968 Single Cab in March, and having a summer with almost no time available to devote to the '76, I determined Colin's visit would be best spent working on the new Single Cab. I had a short but lofty list of potential jobs to tackle: all new seals in the cab doors/windows, fix my sloppy shifter, and teach me how to do a full-blown tune-up.
Colin said: "I'll be there between 9-9:30.", and as I sat looking out the window as the clock ticked towards "Colin you're late!", I spied a beautiful early bay pulling into my driveway at 9:30 on the damn dot. I greeted him with a hot thermos of dark roast coffee and we sat down for an hour of knowledge dropping and quizzing. I revealed my embarrassing secrets of being far more versed in my modern VW TDI engines instead of my '76 Type IV and newly acquired '68 Type I. The shame shone through, but Colin pressed and led me to the promise land.
We went out to begin the tune-up and discovered the first wonky bit: I have a mostly stock 1600cc engine except for a rogue distributor. Apparently the previous owner had installed a DVDA, which I was promptly informed was meant for a '73, and was likely not playing well with my H30/31PICT carb. We started the tune-up with a valve adjustment, and discovered that I had likely done something wrong when I first adjusted the valves about 2k miles ago. Very tight...way too tight on some of them. So I did it the right way and everything went to .006" where it should be. We hooked up the dwell/tach and the timing light and found that my Pertronix was pushing my dwell to 54º (two degrees past the 52º limit). That was explained and noted. We moved on to timing, marked the 28º + vac advance marks on my pulley in the correct spots. We disconnected my retard because it was pulling the engine's timing down too far. Adjusted timing to 28 @ 3400.
On to the carb! My throttle screw was apparently mal-adjusted (as harsh as Colin could word it, he says). We fixed that, adjusted it out to no contact + .020". It smelled rich so we adjusted the mix to 1/4 turn past the optimal spot, then the idle speed to 1000 RPM. Colin spotted that my throttle spring was weak, and causing it not to return fully, resulting in a faster than ideal idle. My head was beginning to spin with so many degrees and numbers and exhaust fumes, but his simple discovery of a simple solution to one problem brought me back to reality. These engines aren't rocket science, but you certainly do have to know how they work and why.
After sitting in my cab and checking the shifting while I worked away at cleaning up from our tune-up, Colin found that my idea of "sloppy shifting" was a very kind way of putting it. Indeed, he conjectured that I may be missing my stop-plate altogether. The damn thing wasn't even pushing down to go into reverse. We pulled the shifter and found said stop-plate just sitting there, not doing its job properly for no good reason. Out comes the shifter, the spring, the stop plate. Clean, Clean, Clean! Colin struggled to free a pin (I'm losing my descriptiveness here) on the bottom of the shifter. It wouldn't budge. Plan B: Re-install and hope for the best for now. We did, with cleaned and greased parts. It works! Well, it certainly works better than it did. I can find gears now. No more ker-klunk when I downshift to 2nd. No more grrrrrrrrrrrinding when I accidently hit reverse instead of 2nd.
Test-drive time! I saw double-clutching in action. My single-cab had probably never been happier, being driven by someone who really knows how to treat these vehicles. I only hope I can put his advice into action when I get behind the wheel from now on. We discovered a slight hesitation around the 30-40MPH range, a problem that'll hopefully be solved by the correct distributor.
Back at the house we wrapped up the afternoon by fiddling with my horrendously rattling doors. Everything was out of adjustment, so we brought it back as close as we could. Now my double-latch mechanism is actually...latching twice like it should. And the doors aren't threatening to fall off completely when we hit a bump. Excellent! A more thorough overhaul is in order down the line, but for now we're as close as we can get to it being normal again. We shimmed my '68-only wiper system so that my wiper arms didn't fly off the pins altogether, using some handy HVAC tape. I'll find a more permanent fix soon. We installed new pedal seals/boots, adjusted clutch free-play to 1", adjusted brake pedal, adjusted front brakes, lubricated the center pin, and finally called it quits around 6 p.m.
After a brief recap quiz of the day's events, I paid the man his hard earned money, shook his hand and promised to do all I can to keep this beautiful SC from incurring any more neglect. If Colin says I have a responsibility to history by owning this vehicle, then I'll damn well do my best to keep it in tact.
A big thanks to Colin for sticking with me even if I came across ill-prepared and less than worthy of my beautiful Single Cab. Even if we had not actually accomplished anything, I think the $440 would've been money well spent just in kicking my ass into gear.
. And I must say, I am glad I was not the only one sore and mentally numb after a day from the itinerant. Nice pics of your SC!
