TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

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RSorak 71Westy
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by RSorak 71Westy » Mon Nov 07, 2011 6:08 pm

Making lists of things "not right" and plowing thru those lists 1 item at a time to eventually get it all done provides a great sense of accomplishment.
Take care,
Rick
Stock 1600 w/dual Solex 34's and header. mildly ported heads and EMPI elephant's feet. SVDA W/pertronix. 73 Thing has been sold. BTW I am a pro wrench have been fixing cars for living for over 30 yrs.

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Elwood
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Elwood » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:13 am

Colin please let me know about wheel bolt for El, I must get to Phoenix and need to drive, no other options. Is he good to go without replacement?
Daughter is in hospital undergoing test for growth on pancreas--- UGG!!! weird to say the least---been reading Mikes' carring bridge posts to get information.

Advice needed for my overloaded brain.

Thanks, Barb
'69 weekender ~ Elwood

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Amskeptic
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Nov 08, 2011 8:34 am

Elwood wrote:Colin please let me know about wheel bolt for El, I must get to Phoenix and need to drive, no other options. Is he good to go without replacement?
Daughter is in hospital undergoing test for growth on pancreas--- UGG!!! weird to say the least---been reading Mikes' carring bridge posts to get information.

Advice needed for my overloaded brain.

Thanks, Barb
Good to go. Godspeed. Please keep me updated ...
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ... edited 11/09

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:54 am

So, yesterday November 7 at 1:00PM in Casa Grande AZ, I was posting about the TBRRD sliding door sill refresh done in the desert on the 6th outside Yuma.

Today it is 10:30AM November 8, and I am outside Fort Stockton TX at a McDonalds with ATT Wifi that does not allow me to upload all these pretty pictures to Photobucket, I HATE WAYPORT/ATT HOSTED BY McDONALDS!

It was a chilly 57* when I stepped out of the Casa Grande Starbucks on E Florence Blvd, so I said to heck with replacing the spring plate bushings, hardly any sun left anyhow (and I was embarrassed by how I had dropped their average daytime temperature by 22* just by my presence).
I merged onto I-10 E and found a decent tailwind propelling me along at 62mph with head temps right around 390-410*, cain't beat that. Drove to Tucson in the afternoon light and filled up. 15.9mpg. Hmmm, head temps aren't too bad, let's put the original German carburetor back on.

Mountains to the east of me ... :

Image

Mountains to the west ... :

Image

... and here I am, stuck in the middle with you:
Image

15 minutes later after a wind-whipped carburetor replacement (a passing pick-up driver queried me, "having problems?" "naw, it's time to swap carburetors again", drives off still querulous), I am on the interstate again at 62mph with head temps now consistently at 410-420* with a 424* up the hill to Benson AZ. "Too bad for you!" I snap at the exhaust valves, "I like the heater output." And I did, too.

The Most Gorgeous Sight I Have Ever Seen was mangled into piss-poor-postcard-print by this long laboring WalMart Kodak EZShare camera now in its eighth year. But try to imagine a dusk of lavender with silver grey cloud bank above the most handsome beige brown grass speckled by blue grey silver bushes, it was absolutely color-perfect. Thanks anyway, camera .... :

Image

Image


The downhill past Benson showed head temps in the low 300*s, this cooling system is fine, it's just the generation of heat I have to track down. The sun sets and the chill starts to bite this overtan baldy heat-seeking missile as he irritably fills the gas tank in the gale of icy air molecules.

But the heat in the car is so lovely, so snug, so warm, I vow to never leave the driver's seat again, and I will not shut off the engine neither, so there. Do a quick fill-up in Willcox (had to leave the driver's seat to do that, so much for my vows)), 18 mpg nice, and drive into the dark chilly night with a moon overhead and trucks thundering up on me one after the other. Let's shoot for El Paso, it's only 380 miles or something.

A nice little generator whine harmonic drills through the ambient unsynchronized diesel locomotive team sounds of the failing right and left front tires (yeah that was the other thing I dealt with at pj's, the camber was so badly adjusted full-tilt-negative that the inner treads are gone on both front tires), and I keep it there as probably the most accurate cruise control I have ever had. For fun, I check the mile posts as I enter New Mexico and discover that, averaged over the next thirty miles, my "62" is a dead nuts 60 and the generator whine happens to harmonize perfectly for a true mile per minute at what the impaled trouper Volvo tachometer calls 3,600 rpm. On the downhills, I avail myself of the plummeting head temps to build up a head of steam so I can sail up the next hill a while before the inexorable 424 comes up again, oops, 428*. Too bad! The heat's great! Onwards!

I check the oil in Deming where they offended me with $3.89/gallon gas ("we're out in the boonies" NO YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO EL PASO WHERE GAS IS $3.16 WHY??), and find the dipstick is hardly warm to the touch. Come on engine, it is freezing out here, can't you give me at least a nice hot dipstick? Makes me wonder about these head temps all over again, with Westy78's suggestion to check its calibration.

Came upon Las Cruces in the night, a jewel of sparkle and a halo of glow over the hills to my right. El Paso 57 miles. That's El Paso. I will make it. This car is disarming. Give me a little heat and a little generator whine atop the flat four purr, and I am good for miles and miles. Came upon El Paso and looked hard for Juarez to my right, across the Rio. There are some shanties perched on dirt hills glared up by streetlights over dirt streets. I wonder if El Paso people feel all American-superior. Look at our shiny billboards and malls and freeways. Hey lookie there, there's a shanty with e-l-e-c-t-r-i-c-i-t-y.
Stupid me.

As I-10 hooks around to head east, I see an amazing, hitherto unknown-to-me sight to behold. Juarez is friggen HUGE! I never knew that it extended across such a vast bowl. Holy good grief, I have held this parochial vision of Juarez as ONLY the shanties stuck on the dirt hill across the river, but here on my first cold dry night traverse of this metro, it is a field of lightbulb flowers to the south as far as you can see, on and on, I was transfixed. Way up to the horizon, a petri dish of luminescence glowing like gold. Juarez, no boasting neon garishness, just street lamps for 1.4 million people. Drove east never thinking that Juarez has THREE times the population of El Paso. All that light. Finally hit the 48 mile marker and the lights of Juarez to my right are dying down to a ribbon of glowing beads. Huge! Drive east on I-10 over hills and down in valleys and at mile marker 72, there's the lights of Juarez in the rear view mirror! Finally settle down to ponder the limits of my assumptions and am driving along and there's a hill again. CHTs jump up to 428 (who cares?! the heat's great!) and I am up and up and up and there's mile marker 94. Do you really really think the lights of Juarez are going to show themselves really, actual lights at the horizon I left an hour and a half ago? Sure enough.

Warm car, no problem at this here 3rd checkpoint in the middle of nowhere,
"what are those things in the back?" "tires." "for this car?" "yes" . . . . . (?) . . . . Drove to wind-whipped Van Horn TX, and I-10 to the I-20 split. I am going south.

It is sunny! I must hit the road and find a wifi spot that allows me to upload. I am heading south until it is warm enough to do the badly needed undercarriage rust eradication/undercoating.
Nice car.
Brown cow always placidly staring even as it walks across the country unperturbably, my hot-headed brown cow with the bad front hooves.
Colin
Image
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Elwood
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Elwood » Tue Nov 08, 2011 12:05 pm

=D> =D> =D> Cool Beans Colin, these early bays are the Kind to keep us humble and reach our destination.

PM sent with less drama xoxox
'69 weekender ~ Elwood

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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by dingo » Tue Nov 08, 2011 1:31 pm

Enjears reading the travelogue with my breakfast...looking forward to the next installments
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';78 Tranzporter 2L

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vwlover77
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by vwlover77 » Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:45 pm

Thank you for the chronicle of your travels, Colin. It's so good to know that you are freely traversing this land in the slow, wonderful snugness of an air-cooled VW. Your stories are a welcome relief from the current insanity of my job, which seems to be raising my personal "head temperature" to the point that something might indeed snap.
Don

---------------------------
78 Westy
71 Super Beetle Convertible Autostick

"When we let our compassion go, we let go of whatever claim we have to the divine." - Bruce Springsteen

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airkooledchris
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by airkooledchris » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:24 pm

vwlover77 wrote:Thank you for the chronicle of your travels, Colin. It's so good to know that you are freely traversing this land in the slow, wonderful snugness of an air-cooled VW. Your stories are a welcome relief from the current insanity of my job, which seems to be raising my personal "head temperature" to the point that something might indeed snap.

CHT's = Cranial Head Temperature

mine was alarmingly high today as well. I enjoy following these adventures even moreso than with the bobd because massive laundry lists of 'stuff to address' is more inline with my own experiences.
1979 California Transporter

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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:25 pm

I sure preferred Texas last time ..... good grief!

Woke up this morning and it was 31*.
Who clambers out of their sleeping bag like it is full of scorpions at 31* and 5:50AM?
I'll tell you who, people who drank coffee at 10:30PM the night before.
Note to self .....

Bus started up so fast it was spooky. Really, not more than a half a rotation of the starter. Gives you the feeling that the car really wants to go somewhere. So we really went somewhere, just northwest of San Antonio TX where it is plummeting to 39* tonight, pleeeze yer killing me! I just want to get some work done on this car before it goes into storage!! I won't even check the oil, with these whipping winds and cold cold cold air with big splat raindrops. Head temps were a horrid 420-441* today and unavoidably so. I had to keep my foot in it so as not to get killed by semi's and sloppy driving Dodge Rams with gardening implements swaying in rickety trailers in a hurry. After a couple of hours of this, I pulled off the interstate to go apologize to the dying engine.
Now wait a darn minute ... dipstick is *barely warm to the touch*. Spit doesn't even sizzle on the valve covers. I want to hug the engine just to warm up out in this whipping frenzy of rushing icicle air.

I am Icharius of Itinerant, instead of boldly flying too close to the sun and melting my wings like that first idiot Icharius did, I made one thousand puny decisions over the past eight years to just warm up a little in my beloved sunshine and accidentally got tanned to some dumb degree, where now 80* chills me to the bone.
DumbButWellDone
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Hippie
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Hippie » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:43 pm

Amskeptic wrote: Lawdy Lawdy, the things I've done.
Re-jetted the carb from 112 to 117. ...
You prolly need a 127. That's what works for me. These upright bastards run hot in a Bus anyway. It's still a Beetle engine.
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:13 pm

Hippie wrote:
Amskeptic wrote: Lawdy Lawdy, the things I've done.
Re-jetted the carb from 112 to 117. ...
You prolly need a 127. That's what works for me. These upright bastards run hot in a Bus anyway. It's still a Beetle engine.
I am not going to jump into this with a "prolly" change of jets. I will continue to be incremential and careful not to explode my variables. I seriously need and want to learn as much as I can here. I am happy with driveability, fuel economy is acceptable, cold behavior is gorgeous, no flat spots, main jet affects *everything* and my complaint is only the power circuit, so I am going to do an experiment with the Elwood Commemorative Brosol Test Carb where I open up the power circuit jet, then its drilling in the float bowl.

I want this engine to run well as stock as possible so I can continue to recommend stock set-up. Only with known issues, like valve guide wear, would I entertain installing Porsche 911 adjusters, and perhaps later in my search here, I can conclude that doghouse fan shroud on single port cylinder tins is OK ... or not.

I do hate being at the mercy of things I do not know, but it is motivation to get in there and search. And once I do "solve" the hot readings, I will reverse my last guess to see if they go right back up again. THEN, I can speak with something approaching "experiential authority". For now, I am in the dark... and cold
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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hambone
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by hambone » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:19 pm

doghouse fan shroud on single port cylinder tins is OK
I have 18000 miles on that very setup, and without gauges to freak me out. Ignorance is bliss. However I do have the expected amount of power and pep.
http://greencascadia.blogspot.com
http://pdxvolksfolks.blogspot.com
it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine
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Amskeptic
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:27 pm

hambone wrote:
doghouse fan shroud on single port cylinder tins is OK
I have 18000 miles on that very setup, and without gauges to freak me out. Ignorance is bliss. However I do have the expected amount of power and pep.
Hey Hambone. The power is somewhat better than it was.
I would love to retire any notion that singleport tins and doghouse fan shroud have any effect on each other.

17.8-18.5 mpg at 60-65 mph with occasional raids on the gas supply for sliding door clean-up and differential side cover repairs.
:cyclopsani:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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jeb1978
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by jeb1978 » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:40 pm

I have pretty much the identical setup, single port heads, doghouse cooling system, stock single vacuum distributor, stock muffle, and a Brosol H30/31 carb on a 1600cc engine. I also have dished pistons that lower my compression ratio a bit.

I don't have any gauges; I did have a Berg temperature dipstick at one time. I never did see it light. When the ambient temperature is in the 60s and 70s, the dipstick stays cool to the touch all the time. 80s, pretty hot, you could pull it out, but don't hold it for long. 90s, you can't really even hold it in your hand. I've also noticed the distributor body gets very hot on warm/hot days.

I also drag around all the Westfalia weight as compared to you.

You've driven my Bus... how do the engines compare?
1969 Westfalia 1600cc single port

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hambone
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Re: TBRRD Slowtails To Atlanta ...

Post by hambone » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:15 pm

Your gas mileage seems kinda low for highway miles.
I can't imagine how the setup could be a problem, although I did have that weird pulley mismatch. Nordhoff in the clouds laffing it up.
http://greencascadia.blogspot.com
http://pdxvolksfolks.blogspot.com
it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine
your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat

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