Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Down South
Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 6:34 am
This was to have been only a quicky three-day marathon with appetite up in New Jersey, and has turned into a whole epic journey of crumbling roads and windy cold days followed by fierce rains and sticky humidity and a close eye on the BobD to see if it is indeed in the mood to do a whole country again.
I visited cheesehead, a real friend in this big old world, she has little complexities that I bemusedly enjoy, she has a Raby-engineered-but-built-by-others-Westfalia that is ready for the road, so take it already. She takes her bus seriously and it is best to have an answer to her questions. Sometimes I am able to answer them, like, what is the cause of the oil leak? Well, the plastic filler pipe actually likes that mean single-wire spring clamp better than the broad serrated hose clamp that people frequently use in its stead:
It was at cheesehead's house that I discovered a leak in the right rear tire of the BobD, caused by the trash and debris littering our neglected highways that had peppered the car from New Jersey to Maryland. She watched with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation as I screwed in an adhesive globbed self-tapping screw into the tire and drove the car around the block to "seat it", but hey, it did prevent the tire from going flat through the night. She was graciously accommodating as we mailed the Lexus plates to the NYS DMV and stopped at Enrique's Tire Emporium for a BobD repair plug as we tested the Westfalia for any recurrence of the oil leak that was the basis for this visit:
Next visit was along the More Evidence Still of The American Decline, Ruined I-64 to Norfolk VA to see Vis the day after he retired from the military at the ripe old age of 24. We worked on his 1969 bus brakes. First operation of the day stalled us out cold - Remove The Rear Axle Nut. My suffering 3/4 breaker bar and pipe cheater were no match for this thing. Unlike Jivermo's late model axle nut that I could just cut off, this early bus had a Serious Big Nut. We drove his bus around looking for a machine shop and found that air impact wrenches and a generous application of heat could not budge the thing. I finally suggested that we do all the other brakes and hoses and he could use his new-found brake replacement skills later . . . when the local VW shop gets the nut loose. Does anyone do math any more? 253 foot/lbs of torque is an easy stand on the breaker bar 18" from the center of the nut if you weigh 160lbs, then advance only to the next cotter pin hole.
Took a few hours on my way to Tennessee to visit Energyturtle to try to straighten the exhaust pipe that was sticking out too far on the BobD (after that brutal truck tire carcass strike of the Washington Beltway):
The German Leistritz muffler was a pretty well-built item. It took a serious pull with the pipe cheater to straighten it back out only about half way. The springiness of the endcap refused to let me go any further:
Do you think I was enjoying the sunshine and warmth? You bet:
So much so, that I started sanding and painting and making that tailpipe all it could be:
Final result yielded a grade of "barely acceptable".
The visit to Energyturtle felt like a visit from the Grimtinerant Air-Reaper Himself. Car ran FINE. Decent power, nice new wheel bearings, man . . . so close, but the recently rebuilt engine had a deadly little canary chirp during starting and a lousy 50# compression in the #2 cylinder. We await the teardown. We discussed the Philosophy of Setbacks on the porch with the family:
Setbacks. I am so very familiar with setbacks. We talked about harnessing the curiosity of discovering what did not go right, the little improvements that can be made going over the same old ground yet again, the additional learning. I might seem blase in the face of catastrophe, but after traveling the many detours of many setbacks, I have learned to enjoy the same old scenery twice or twelve times around . . .
I visited cheesehead, a real friend in this big old world, she has little complexities that I bemusedly enjoy, she has a Raby-engineered-but-built-by-others-Westfalia that is ready for the road, so take it already. She takes her bus seriously and it is best to have an answer to her questions. Sometimes I am able to answer them, like, what is the cause of the oil leak? Well, the plastic filler pipe actually likes that mean single-wire spring clamp better than the broad serrated hose clamp that people frequently use in its stead:
It was at cheesehead's house that I discovered a leak in the right rear tire of the BobD, caused by the trash and debris littering our neglected highways that had peppered the car from New Jersey to Maryland. She watched with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation as I screwed in an adhesive globbed self-tapping screw into the tire and drove the car around the block to "seat it", but hey, it did prevent the tire from going flat through the night. She was graciously accommodating as we mailed the Lexus plates to the NYS DMV and stopped at Enrique's Tire Emporium for a BobD repair plug as we tested the Westfalia for any recurrence of the oil leak that was the basis for this visit:
Next visit was along the More Evidence Still of The American Decline, Ruined I-64 to Norfolk VA to see Vis the day after he retired from the military at the ripe old age of 24. We worked on his 1969 bus brakes. First operation of the day stalled us out cold - Remove The Rear Axle Nut. My suffering 3/4 breaker bar and pipe cheater were no match for this thing. Unlike Jivermo's late model axle nut that I could just cut off, this early bus had a Serious Big Nut. We drove his bus around looking for a machine shop and found that air impact wrenches and a generous application of heat could not budge the thing. I finally suggested that we do all the other brakes and hoses and he could use his new-found brake replacement skills later . . . when the local VW shop gets the nut loose. Does anyone do math any more? 253 foot/lbs of torque is an easy stand on the breaker bar 18" from the center of the nut if you weigh 160lbs, then advance only to the next cotter pin hole.
Took a few hours on my way to Tennessee to visit Energyturtle to try to straighten the exhaust pipe that was sticking out too far on the BobD (after that brutal truck tire carcass strike of the Washington Beltway):
The German Leistritz muffler was a pretty well-built item. It took a serious pull with the pipe cheater to straighten it back out only about half way. The springiness of the endcap refused to let me go any further:
Do you think I was enjoying the sunshine and warmth? You bet:
So much so, that I started sanding and painting and making that tailpipe all it could be:
Final result yielded a grade of "barely acceptable".
The visit to Energyturtle felt like a visit from the Grimtinerant Air-Reaper Himself. Car ran FINE. Decent power, nice new wheel bearings, man . . . so close, but the recently rebuilt engine had a deadly little canary chirp during starting and a lousy 50# compression in the #2 cylinder. We await the teardown. We discussed the Philosophy of Setbacks on the porch with the family:
Setbacks. I am so very familiar with setbacks. We talked about harnessing the curiosity of discovering what did not go right, the little improvements that can be made going over the same old ground yet again, the additional learning. I might seem blase in the face of catastrophe, but after traveling the many detours of many setbacks, I have learned to enjoy the same old scenery twice or twelve times around . . .