Smooooooooooooooth....

OMG.

First Drive!

To the gas station...
Ignore my passenger's silly questions. ;-)

Yes, I'm shifting with camera in hand...

:-)

engine work!

OMG, this shortblock is dirty. I have to be honest- not my favorite part of doing engine work. Most don't clean to the extent that I do; but I feel it has to be done. The fact is, a cleaner engine case cools better. There's no rocket science to this and no special machine to do it- just a lot of elbow grease with small brushes, screwdrivers, and the Dremel with a polishing wire wheel.

Will pull that leaky oil pump and reseal it- with a proper gasket and not a ton of silicone (like it is now).

Oil cooler was smashed. See the top right section there.

Not a huge problem, not leaking and did not affect the integrity of the actual cooler, just those vanes. Could spend $170 on a new one or bend it back a little like I did here...

Thermostat cable guide roller/wheel chewed up. No problem, we have a replacement.

Getting better/cleaner. Will polish it up more tomorrow. These pictures actually don't do my (hours of) work justice...

Oh, old pistons/cylinders left on so as not to contaminate the crankcase whilst cleaning. :-)

I need a shower.

New parts!

OK, they're not new but no one else would know that. hehe ;-)  See the previous blog post to get the before pics. Again, time consuming stuff but done right. These parts have been cleaned, blasted appropriately, and recoated with appropriate finishes.

Fan shroud: seperated, cleaned in parts washer machine, inside clear coated, outside metal-etch primered, and finished with a base of metallic silver then a light coat of hammerite silver and clear coat.  This finish will be better than powdercoating on the magnesium, in my non-professional opinion. :-)

Cooling fan: cleaned, lightly glass blasted, pulley finished metal-etch primer and black; and the rest clear-coated (colors like stock). White painted on timing notch and clear coated. Fan NOT seperated due to potential off-balance issues. Note, if this engine were a full balanced rebuild, the fan would be seperated, reassembled, and then balanced with the engine.  hhhmmm...picture shows a bit of dust, sorry about that. ;-)

heat exchangers:  fully blasted but lightly, to  not create any holes in the relatively thin skin. It is not necessary to FULLY blast off 100% of all surface rust since they are to be painted with POR (Paint Over Rust) 20 high temp paint. It's always cool to see the date stamps and part numbers on these! :-) Small ding on bottom, no problem for function. There is some looseness on the skins at the flanges but this is normal wear and tear. They will function well and be sealed with some high temp copper sealant as needed.

Coated with first coat of POR 20 aluminum color high temp paint. They will get one more coat. Also, the flanges have not been finished in this pic.

control boxes and their warm-air pipes (one missing in this pic), blasted:

POR 20'd:

Control box outlet tubes. These route the unused air out the back of the bus when the control box valves are closed off from the cab. These are only on 1978-79 buses. VW painted them gray so I've stuck with that (cleaning, blasting, metal-etch, etc). The air is not extremely hot when it passes through them.

Muffler heat shield, helps keep heat (off the top of the muffler) away from the rear of the engine tin, below the cooling fan. Many folks rid of these. Big mistake to do so. These are filled with asbestos containing material, but...whatyagonnado...this one is in the best shape I've ever seen, blasted very well (be careful) and took the POR 20 like a champ. This is only coat 1.

Flanges on exhaust manifolds and U-pipes being refinished. All flanges are very thick and nice. A few needed flattened, no big deal. There will be no exhaust leaks on this motor!

And, last but my favorite...starting on the fuel injection parts. Here are the manifolds and plenum, fully blasted, metal etched, painted stock colors. Beautiful! :-)

Also done with cooling flaps, oil fill, heat exchanger channel covers, oil dipstick, ignition coil clamp, etc. etc...

Stay tuned.

dirt and goo and grime and what-not

Definitely my least favorite part of restoration, engine assembly, etc. is the preparation of parts; i.e. disassembly, seperation, removal, degreasing, scraping, cleaning, scrubbing, blasting,  prepping, metal-etching, priming, painting...well, you get the point? Just give me a nice clean part and let me install it! That is why I love having the tin blasted and powdercoated all in one! Unfortunately, with the below stack of parts, this is not possible- too much subjectivity involved, as you will see. There is some asbestos, there are different colors, rust, POR-15 paint, yada yada...

Pile o' engine parts I'm currently working on, minus the shroud:

The original asbestos-containing sleeves between the heat control boxes and flex tubes. As you know, asbestos has to be dealt with very carefully. These will be replaced by silicone type flexible sleeves.

Wow, the original asbestos-containing exhaust gaskets! These were between the heat exchangers and the elbows. This means that they were (likely) never seperated.  It's a good indicator of a relatively low mileage part. And, these flanges are very nice and thick and solid. Me likey! But me no likey trying to scrape this asbestos off before they are blasted. You can NOT blast these with any of this white stuff left! Pretty much guaranteed asbestosis, mesothelioma, or whatever.  Even just doing this freaks my wife out, because asbestos DOES get airborn when messed with.

Here are the newer (non original) metal gaskets. These were between the exhaust manifolds and elbows, an indicator that they have been changed- likely with the new engine. Again, very good and thick flanges on the manifolds. All of the exhaust parts are in great shape!

Here's the California cat. converter exhaust, in case anyone in the future ever wants/needs to reinstall it...

Now some fun...here are the intake manifold sections after media (glass) blasting. These will now be self-etching primered and painted; the plenum semi-gloss black and the runners/manifolds gray. Pretty cool to see them naked. If you zoom in, you can see the copper brazings in some areas. Very well made parts.

Fan shroud was seperated, cleaned, lightly wire-wheeled, lightly blasted, and the interior sprayed with clear-coat/lacquer to assure smooth air flow and easier cleaning.

Shroud reassembled and having one coat of metallic silver.  Since then it has gotten an additional coat of hammerite silver, looks very nice. That picture on the next blog.

These are the things that a regular "mechanic" shop will not do when installing an engine. It simply takes too long for them to make any money at it. Many restoration shops won't even go this far. But, you can be assured that every screw will get attention with this engine assembly. After completion, it will power the bus AND heat pizza, right on top.

Sliding door works

I get so many emails with this: "my sliding door does not work. I need all the rollers." Bam! I just made a ton of money, right? No, I actually tell my customers "you know, consider that 40 years of sliding has been a pretty good thing. Now, your sliding door parts just need removed, cleaned, potential broken pieces replaced, relubricated, and reinstalled."  Crap, now I only made 10 bucks instead of 300. But, I sleep better. Here goes...

Here are the 3 rollers: the rear hinge/roller, the lower roller/s, and the upper roller. As you can see, they get dirty and need maintained. On the rear hinge/roller, the nylon guide breaks. This is the dirtiest piece above the wheel there- hard to see, I know.  The lower roller takes the brunt of the beatings because it is holding up the weight of the door. The upper roller is pretty much just there for stability. Let's clean these up and take care of them...

On the rear hinge/roller, the nylon guide is held on by a large rivet-type fastener. These are pretty hard to get and install so the recommended replacement is a simple cheese-head bolt with nut and wavy washer. This rivet gets drilled out.

Here's the new guide installed, with the assembly having been cleaned, the roller wheel free'd and cleared and all relubricated (with lithium here):

The lower roller cleaned and free'd. White lithium on the horizontal roller and Sil-Glide on the vertical:

Lower roller installed with its shims. The lower roller is the adjustment point for the door's "in and out" position from the bus. This will have to be re-adjusted when the new door seal is installed. Then, as the years go on and the new seal gets broken in, you adjust things IN.

Upper roller ready to rock:

Each of the three tracks that these rollers ride on must be cleaned and relubricated as well. Here's the lower track pre-cleanage. Eeewww.... And cleaning this one takes a while. No fun.

Rear track, post-cleaning and with door on, being lubricated (using roller to spread sil-glide). The new nylon guide is a bit tight but she'll break in. This is better than too loose! :-)

Door back on, sans sliding window. It works. Well. Even the rear catch and release works now, thanks to our thooper dooper captive nut repair. :-)
The rear track cover goes on after the new rear side window seal.

Other misc. things... the upper alternator adjust/heat exchanger bracket welded/repaired:

Here it was before, cracked. Always nice to save a part, especially when it's a part that is not reproduced and/or rare to find good  used.

New muffler's EGR feed was cut off and welded:

You can see it here before. Again, even if EGR were to be used on this bus in the future, this muffler could not be used with it because it can't be used with cat. converter so would not pass smog anyway:

My assistants for the day. May I present Mr. Owen and the lovely Ms. Kaya. They were going "to school." hint hint to us parents that they are ready for preschool!

Enjoy! More to come tomorrow...

Fuel tank, etc.

While that sliding door captive nut is "curing," let's put the fuel tank back in! :-)

No fuel smell in this bus...New lower fill tube. This is a cut (about 6 inches) of 2.25" fuel fill hose. There is a slight angle cut at the tank side, then it makes a slight bend.  Also, new upper fill neck installed.

All new tank vent line connections. You can see them at the yellow lines. Also, here is one hidden between the spare tire well and rear quarter panel. This one is often missed.

Firewall in and getting peripherals attached:

Fuel tank sending unit hatch installed. This is my personal modification to the Bentley manual's service bulletin to cut the sheet metal and create a recloseable flap. Really? This is much nicer.

Now you can easily gain access to the sending unit. This is a new one.

Starting to install fuel injection peripherals, the fuel pump wiring harness had some hacks (for the aftermarket carburetion fuel pump) that had to be repaired. Wires had to be replaced into the double relay plug (spade terminal clips repaired) and 2 wires had been cut. These were able to be soldered pretty easily and looks nice. This was much faster/cheaper than replacing the whole harness.

Starting to put the fuel injection parts in is SO exciting! :-) Here we have the series resistor block and double relay:

In other news, here is the driver side heat control box. Unfortunately, the cable was seized/rusted into the barrel nut that holds the cable to the control box. It could not be freed and the cable had to be cut. We will install a new left side cable- hoping the old one's sheath is not stuck into the body tube that it runs in front front to back (common and sucks). Cross yer fingers.

Cleaned the rear bumper. The inside is very rusted. No holes though.

:-)