Restarting after 12 years in storage

[webwalker]

And here's my reply, albeit a year late.

1) No 'Ran when parked. Not Parked. Up on jack stands in garage and I'm under it at least weekly.
2) Anyone want to buy a nice T4 case 0-0 spec rebuilt by VW of Canada back when they did good work? Is in encased storage, better protected than if I slept with it at night. I bought it personally from John Connelly of Aircooled.Net; he had it for 15 years to build a nice engine for his dad, who unfortunately passed.
3. Why the unloading of a nice case? Because T4 is a dead lump walking. There are about three people on the continent who are competent to build a 100k mile engine from the junk products that are available. You can buy a vintage design crate engine for a 1932 Ford. T4? Please. When getting consumables means combing through junkyards (Interstate in Lake Elsinore in 2013) and coming up empty for items like the PCV plastic...even if you can cobble together the internal *and* external parts, everything is used used used up.
4. I bought this bus to drive it, not to wrestle it two falls out of three every time I turn the key. The aircooled scene is dying; some folks won't acknowledge it because the body hasn't stopped flopping around yet. The cancer in parts quality has finally reached terminal conditions.
5. Both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer this year. The fact that I'm under the bus weekly is a testament to not giving up in the face of great adversity.
6. In consultation with others, I have started working on VolksarU, a specification of parts to replace the T4 with a modest Subaru Ej22 with modern engine management and a bullet proof reputation. This is not 'BusarU', this is not Honda Radiators jammed into the engine bay and running 3 degrees south of boiling over: This is an engineered solution taking the best of what is extant, production ready kit (mostly from Rocky Mountain Westy's fab shop) and combining it with my own Radiator and cooling solution design build in conversation with Mechanical Engineers. Much of it has already been tested in Connecticut with a similar design. Yes, It is underbelly.
7. Why? Because the aircooled scene here and at the samba abandoned me when I attempted to pull together a reputable T4 from reputable sources. "Call Adrian." That's nice. I get a rebuilt T4 which might make 80k for the same budget as my WHOLE conversion to EJ22. It is amazing how far $5000 will go when you SHARE. That's VolksarU: "Where You are part of the Solution." If you've heard of Open Source software ( a field I work in) you may know of Open Source Hardware, where the specification for new parts are all readily available so you can build your own with reliance on a particular vendor.
8 Why, Part Deux? Because working with the folks breaking ground on this for T2B Bay Buses has been a delight of camaraderie and excellent service experiences in exchanges of ideas. Working with the old school air cooled vendors is like they're doing you a favor to sell you a part. I don't have time for haters (see #5 above) and less time for people who are riding the industry right into the ground so fast, there's going to be an impact crater.
9. That said, a lot has changed in 3 years in the T4 scene. Jake's primary focus is elsewhere, the parts must be scavenged to make a running engine. No thanks. I did that with my 1972 Super Beetle 10 years ago. I can't image it now.
10. I intend to remain on friendly terms with the airheads who want to keep pushing their crate down the road 'Luft' style. Good for them. I need help on other parts of putting what is essentially a crusher ready barn find back on the road.

Bonus: My design is modular. No one else 'designs' a hack. They put it together from the bubble gum and twine they have on hand. Not me. Part # for everything. VolksarU is an experiment in the kind of crowd-sourced wisdom that IAC and The Samba where supposed to be. So one part 'run the bus' and one part 'be the community.'
http://volksaru-incubator.blogspot.com/ ... oject.html

I hope I explain clearly how I got here. My goal is unchanged: Throw my wife the keys and she just drives it without any more attention she would pay to a modern car...unless it got her attention that it was feeling sick. Keep the power band at the bottom of what the EJ22 is capable of, and be nice to the clutch. In a clinch, I am still an airhead at heart...I just won't keep throwing good money after bad. But I have nothing bad to say about someone who wants the 'Luft' in their engine compartment. I still need the ACVW community for all of the non-power-train parts that grieve me. (Sliding door especially.)

Feel free to reply. you can also find me on the Facebook IAC site, as well as on the FB site Subaru Powered Volkswagens. I occasionally bungee in to listen at the samba, remember that it is stuck in a time warp and echo chamber, and stroll out again.

Engine start is in July!

M

[Jivermo]

Thanks for your reply! Best of luck with this.

[Amskeptic]

And here's my reply, albeit a year late.

And an interesting read it was. Maybe even the first shot across the bow of those who find that this hobby cannot support the original engineering due to the painfully missing factory support.

As the value of these cars goes up, however, the "elites" may decide that they can resurrect some of the original engineering and make money off of it. Then parts availability will slowly improve, albeit at a steep price.

Unlike the Packards and Pierce Arrows and Duesenburgs and V16 Cadillacs of yore, these cars were treated with the scorn and contempt that elites have always bestowed upon the "economy car strata". Those who wanted to keep them going could not inspire the capitalists to invest in them in a substantial and deep (respectful) way. No, we had Chris Nowak of Rocky Mountain Motorworks turn the purveyance of cheap crap parts into a Fortune 500 company while dragging the floor of even modest expectations ever lower. I saw what human and financial investment looked like, firsthand, when I worked at Hill & Vaughn. We could fabricate or find every part we needed for cars with a far far smaller level of parts availability when checkbooks were open. Our 1980 restoration costs could reach between a quarter and a half million dollars. No such luck with lowly Volkswagens.

BUT, the engineering, the social phenomenom, the true egalitarian nature of these beautifully crafted cars will eventually win out. Many in this air-cooled VW group have no experience in shaking the trees and obtaining the difficult to find parts, and they will not pay the price that will only go up, as expected in this capitalist economy. So, there will be a die-off. We will lose the wonderful diversity of owners that I have been privileged to meet and know. Soon enough, I will have to don a white coat and look presentable.

In the meantime, I am driving the wheels off my air-cooled Volkswagens and loving every mile.
Colin

[Jivermo]

Right on, Brother!