Itinerant Air-Cooled

I took old 99 I think it was over the Siskiyou Pass. I did not traverse the "Siskiyou Summit" on Interstate 5 at a mere 4,310 feet elevation.
Nope.
I took the higher road, as per usual . . . coughcough:




I had no idea this was gearing up to be a record hot day. I blew down an exceptionally high exit number (Exit 796, take that, Texas I-10) and removed the rear apron in preparation for painting it. After much sanding and clearcoating of the metal latch + screws, I drove to Yreka CA with the apron sitting in front of the middle seat swathed in tape and newspapers and the engine hatch swinging in space, and the engine eating its own exhaust:



Painted the apron here perched aside a mountain ravine up on Highway 3, six miles from Yreka where the temps were a modest 90* This hill was stupid steep I was painting the engine hatch seal side at eyeball level while I was painting the engine cut-out below my feet. I can't figure out my decision-making sometimes:






Drove to Weed, at which time I thought it best to put the drying but no longer tacky apron back on the car. Here's the thing, wouldn't you have thought that the apron and the seal and the engine hatch seal would be critical to engine cooling? Yeah, they are.
403* at 90* ambient with none of the above installed, but just 391* max at 106* ambient in Redding.

I tried fabricating a new seal out of some foam tape. First I cut the Bus Depot hard cracking rubber abomination down to half-width so its bubbling in the corners would be gone gone gone, glued the square foam to the engine's rear tin, then applied the thin wide foam tape to the square foam. I figured that the apron would bend the wide tape over as the apron was offered up:









As I was industriously at work, a Dodge Ram with camper shell came up the dirt road and just died to a stop. I was expecting some "you can't work here," but the guy said that his "G@!D D*$!N Dodge always DOES THIS on HILLS." He watched me finish touching up the apron bolts and dusting the engine compartment (so I can see new dust incursions):




"Shoulda bought a Volkswagen," I yelled out to the guy as he sat there waiting for his fuel pump to cool down. I shoulda raised a little more fuss at Bob's Paint Land, this paint is no match:



Look at this! Way too black, way too much white, hardly any brown. The dots on the far right are my own mixing with the too golden Pensacola Sherwin Williams paint. :



Did the paint match test here in Weed CA, close to Mount Shasta:







Caught a Kodak EZ Share "reel telefoto-like" shot of what may be the last July snow you'll ever see on Mount Shasta:




and this will be continued. I got problems with wheel balance and brakes now with these new tires in Eureka.
Colin

p.s.

Excellent way to show why those seals are necessary to keep in working order. Sorry to hear the paint isn't working out for you. Too bad you weren't blessed with color blindness as many of us males are, it wouldn't matter! =)

Is that last pic to say once the property is sold that busboys will be gone?


glad you made it to Eureka! I just got back in town last night. Today I need to wash the bus and give it a nice drive, so it doesn't look like it's been sitting for the past week.

Just a note to note I noted word mashing.
Industriously.
Magic.
The end.

This year's visit with Colin gave me a water tight seal in the rear hatch, after replacing the entire rear hatch itself along with the window rubber and the seal between the hatch and the body itself.

If removing the water entry from my bus wasn't enough, we tuned the AFM and ended up swapping in a different distributor. This restored the 'peppy' off the line feel I had been looking for like WOH. The difference was rediculous, I kinda wish you had given it one more test drive to see for yourself. We netted so many great little gains before the distributor swap that once I drove it again WITH the dist swap it was like it was now turbocharged and all the turbo-lag was gone. It WHOOOSHES right away now.... No pictures of the day, I just don't take the time, but ill grab a few shots of the distributor and the new rear hatch.

Off for another drive!

I'm curious also; does that sign mean one less resource for our parts?

Visited Walter the morning after I took these photographs at Bus Boys in Redding.
Door was open when I arrived.




You can sense the late stages of the Volkswagen Phenomenom's death. The shop is down to just Walter. Business is touch and go. The property under him is indeed for sale:




Some parts are more available than other parts:




Here's the architecture of the back of an early bus:







A vanagon awaits its fate, with attitude:




Had a good conversation with Walter, and he gave me a generator so I can possibly harvest its brush springs, end plates, and bearings. My generator, from day one, has had a harmonic imbalance with that stupid wavy crinkle springy-thing trying to hold the bearing in place in a wallowed-out plate. I also bought a Type 4 engine seal because I am pretty sure that it will make a nice Type 1 engine seal that knows how to go around a corner better than the wretched hard rubber stuff currently available. $45.00 says I modify this new seal only carefully. Walter took a look at Chloe, he remembers both the Road Warrior and the BobD, "yeah, they'll do it all if you give them time . . . ".

How much time you got left in you, Chloe?

Im such a vulture that all I could think about in the above post was "that's a nice blue sliding door, must call Bus Boys in the AM."

airkooledchris wrote:Im such a vulture that all I could think about in the above post was "that's a nice blue sliding door, must call Bus Boys in the AM."

Airkooled Vulture Swoop, get on it.
Colin

Get a Beetle seal and cut it to fit, they are curve-molded.

If the T4 seal you got is the solid H shape and not the rounded variety, SGKent is hunting desperately for one and would love to know where it was available.

airkooledchris wrote:If the T4 seal you got is the solid H shape and not the rounded variety, SGKent is hunting desperately for one and would love to know where it was available.

Mine is the new cheapo thinned out rounded "Bosch logo profile" style. Perfect for my needs.
ColinInRedwoodCity

airkooledchris wrote:If the T4 seal you got is the solid H shape and not the rounded variety, SGKent is hunting desperately for one and would love to know where it was available.

Wasn't it established that gowesty carries the good type 4 seal?

http://www.gowesty.com/ec_view_details. ... parent_id=

poptop tom wrote:

airkooledchris wrote:If the T4 seal you got is the solid H shape and not the rounded variety, SGKent is hunting desperately for one and would love to know where it was available.

Wasn't it established that gowesty carries the good type 4 seal?

http://www.gowesty.com/ec_view_details. ... parent_id=

It is a lovely photograph of the good seal. Can you ask them if the actual stock is the same? Can you let us know? I am going to bet that the actual stock is the skinny new seal.
ColinGenLightON

Wolfsburg West shows the same picture. Humans answer the phone there, and I bet they can send a picture of the seal itself if you ask nicely.

https://www.wolfsburgwest.com/cart/Deta ... =411813225

And frankly the seal I bought in January for the new engine does NOT kink up like Colin's old photographs. It even has an extra cm or so to cut the center and side pieces to length without risking truncation. It's a double-flap seal, so the breast tin fits between the flaps.

http://www.wolfsburgwest.com/cart/Detai ... 111813705A



The Airhead Parts-sold seal I bought three years ago needed corner cuts to get it to sit like that.

RobbieTouchingUpPaintBelowApronScrewNOW

asiab3 wrote:Wolfsburg West shows the same picture. Humans answer the phone there, and I bet they can send a picture of the seal itself if you ask nicely.

Do you think they would expend the effort? I will be visiting Wolfsburg West soon any old how.

asiab3 wrote: Frankly the seal I bought in January for the new engine does NOT kink up like Colin's old photographs.
It's a double-flap seal, so the breast tin fits between the flaps.

I asked Bus Depot if their Type 1 bus seal had rounded corners and they said that all of the replacement seals are simple straight extrusions, like the one I got.

My KustomFoam seal has been doing superbly at keeping dust out of the engine bay.

One thing I noticed with the double-rubber-lip seal is that it wears the paint right off the tins as the dust merrily abrades the every movement of anything that can possibly occur in the engine compartment.
I hope to do the Type 4 foam seal before I visit you.
Colin