Itinerant Air-Cooled Los Alamos upd
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:19 am
I have so many more photographs than I can possibly post. I just love New Mexico.
Went to The Bowers and yanked the windshield out of the jtauxe-supplied Yellowbird I. Cleaned up the channel that we did just last year and re-installed the windshield with black goop butyl strips because we have some dimensional problems in the opening. I "warrantied" the results.
Drove up to my mountain perch (the one where hail splatted Chloe's oil pump gasket replacement event) and replaced the door seals on Naranja. The originals were lovely supple German, yes, but they had a memory of Life Prior To Front End Hit, and I have had air leaks and water leaks at car washes, no matter the door adjustments. It was easy going to remove the original supple-still adhesive:
Slow, careful job was interrupted by the appearance of two tweakers slamming down the rocky path in a minivan. They parked not twenty feet from me. This whole big mountain, and they parked not twenty feet from me. Kid with a hat on backwards hyper-"saunters" towards me.
"Hey man, need any help?"
"Why no, I am doing fine."
"You blaze?"
"What?"
"You blaze, you know, smoke? Weed?"
"Oh man, I must be old, we used to say 'smoke' to describe smoking whatever."
"Yaahh, ahaaa, haa haaaa, that's funny. You got any weed?"
"Sorry, I don't have enough brain cells left to fry, so no."
"Ha-ahh haaa, that . . . is too bad, man, bad."
I packed up and split. Drove down the hill to another spot and completed the job, the spot in fact, where I had to straighten the rear bumper two days later. Now I have a beautifully quiet interior at speed and no water incursions at the car wash.
Next day was the Dual Carburetor Deluxe Marathon with jtauxe, the singularly responsible individual who has brought air-cooled Volkswagens to Los Alamos.
We had a white 1972 Sportsmobile to start for the first time in fifteen or twenty years.
We had the green-on-green 1974 "Jellybean" to adjust and tidy up.
We had the white "Wrecked '74 Westy" to install carbs and start (don't, like, confuse it with the orange "Wrecked '77 Westy" or anything).
We had "Arandano" the blue single cab with honking huge dual aftermarket carbs to tune, and perhaps some detail work.
Resurrecting the asleep is always a pleasure, so we dove into the Sportsmobile and got it running in fairly short order. The smell of old gas and crap burning off the engine reminded me of starting NaranjaWesty after its twenty year sleep. Heck, it reminded me of old varnish plaguing me for the past six months too. But that '72 Sportsmobile had a unmolested engine, so it responded nicely to our ministrations and it ran smoothly enough after we cobbled in the central idling cut-off and the left cut-off with aluminum foil due to stripped threads in the carburetor bore. Note how my car was slightly on the sidewalk in the below photograph. Wouldn't want a distracted driver to plough into it, ya know . . . :
This is one of the '77 single cab's air extractor grills. Now why, if the doors are all built with those ports that suck air out through the doors, do we also have these?
Here is jtauxe sorting out vacuum hoses and whatnot:
We got all buses running but the Wrecked '74 by the end of the day. Came up with a list of the next day's activities, and I departed for the hills, to lord it over the city lights below before falling asleep. Parked like a normal person the next day. Parking up on the sidewalk seems sort of rude. Jtauxe offered for me to park on the pad next to the house.
"Naah, that's OK."
Ahhhh, no it wasn't. After dealing with the distracted, we got back to work and got the Wrecked '74 Westy running pretty well, if I remember. I was sort of distracted myself. Took the next day to straighten the rear bumper up the hill, then showed up at pmaggiore's house to work on the jtauxe-supplied Yellowbird 2, the bus that his kids and I had worked on back in their childhoods.
I can't even remember his dog's name, but stylish comes to mind:
The day before, jtauxe and I had happened across pmaggiore piteously parked on the side of the road in the rain during one of our test drives. I remember driving Yellowbird 2 slowly to the gas station with little bucks and threats of stalling as jtauxe followed us. I was dismayed more for his driver's door fighting all efforts to "close" it than the engine dying on the side of the road.
Well, we got to the door:
And pmaggiore attended to the engine with its loose? spark plugs, loose distributor clamp, odd heater clamps that did not allow the heater valves to open fully:
I had to remove a hardening adhesive that was pushing out the door seal. Reinstalled the seal with a little 3m yellow adhesive and after a latch adjustment, the doors now close without a fight. We installed new door panels which required new Kustom Plastik Barriers:
At the end of our two days, we installed new windshield wiper grommets and Bus Depot windshield wiper arms. Good Gawd. They are incorrectly bent. Therefore they hug the bottom edge of the windshield::
Naranja's as counterpoint:
Is this really all that is available? I will let you know the results of my inquiry with Bus Depot.
Colin
Went to The Bowers and yanked the windshield out of the jtauxe-supplied Yellowbird I. Cleaned up the channel that we did just last year and re-installed the windshield with black goop butyl strips because we have some dimensional problems in the opening. I "warrantied" the results.
Drove up to my mountain perch (the one where hail splatted Chloe's oil pump gasket replacement event) and replaced the door seals on Naranja. The originals were lovely supple German, yes, but they had a memory of Life Prior To Front End Hit, and I have had air leaks and water leaks at car washes, no matter the door adjustments. It was easy going to remove the original supple-still adhesive:
Slow, careful job was interrupted by the appearance of two tweakers slamming down the rocky path in a minivan. They parked not twenty feet from me. This whole big mountain, and they parked not twenty feet from me. Kid with a hat on backwards hyper-"saunters" towards me.
"Hey man, need any help?"
"Why no, I am doing fine."
"You blaze?"
"What?"
"You blaze, you know, smoke? Weed?"
"Oh man, I must be old, we used to say 'smoke' to describe smoking whatever."
"Yaahh, ahaaa, haa haaaa, that's funny. You got any weed?"
"Sorry, I don't have enough brain cells left to fry, so no."
"Ha-ahh haaa, that . . . is too bad, man, bad."
I packed up and split. Drove down the hill to another spot and completed the job, the spot in fact, where I had to straighten the rear bumper two days later. Now I have a beautifully quiet interior at speed and no water incursions at the car wash.
Next day was the Dual Carburetor Deluxe Marathon with jtauxe, the singularly responsible individual who has brought air-cooled Volkswagens to Los Alamos.
We had a white 1972 Sportsmobile to start for the first time in fifteen or twenty years.
We had the green-on-green 1974 "Jellybean" to adjust and tidy up.
We had the white "Wrecked '74 Westy" to install carbs and start (don't, like, confuse it with the orange "Wrecked '77 Westy" or anything).
We had "Arandano" the blue single cab with honking huge dual aftermarket carbs to tune, and perhaps some detail work.
Resurrecting the asleep is always a pleasure, so we dove into the Sportsmobile and got it running in fairly short order. The smell of old gas and crap burning off the engine reminded me of starting NaranjaWesty after its twenty year sleep. Heck, it reminded me of old varnish plaguing me for the past six months too. But that '72 Sportsmobile had a unmolested engine, so it responded nicely to our ministrations and it ran smoothly enough after we cobbled in the central idling cut-off and the left cut-off with aluminum foil due to stripped threads in the carburetor bore. Note how my car was slightly on the sidewalk in the below photograph. Wouldn't want a distracted driver to plough into it, ya know . . . :
This is one of the '77 single cab's air extractor grills. Now why, if the doors are all built with those ports that suck air out through the doors, do we also have these?
Here is jtauxe sorting out vacuum hoses and whatnot:
We got all buses running but the Wrecked '74 by the end of the day. Came up with a list of the next day's activities, and I departed for the hills, to lord it over the city lights below before falling asleep. Parked like a normal person the next day. Parking up on the sidewalk seems sort of rude. Jtauxe offered for me to park on the pad next to the house.
"Naah, that's OK."
Ahhhh, no it wasn't. After dealing with the distracted, we got back to work and got the Wrecked '74 Westy running pretty well, if I remember. I was sort of distracted myself. Took the next day to straighten the rear bumper up the hill, then showed up at pmaggiore's house to work on the jtauxe-supplied Yellowbird 2, the bus that his kids and I had worked on back in their childhoods.
I can't even remember his dog's name, but stylish comes to mind:
The day before, jtauxe and I had happened across pmaggiore piteously parked on the side of the road in the rain during one of our test drives. I remember driving Yellowbird 2 slowly to the gas station with little bucks and threats of stalling as jtauxe followed us. I was dismayed more for his driver's door fighting all efforts to "close" it than the engine dying on the side of the road.
Well, we got to the door:
And pmaggiore attended to the engine with its loose? spark plugs, loose distributor clamp, odd heater clamps that did not allow the heater valves to open fully:
I had to remove a hardening adhesive that was pushing out the door seal. Reinstalled the seal with a little 3m yellow adhesive and after a latch adjustment, the doors now close without a fight. We installed new door panels which required new Kustom Plastik Barriers:
At the end of our two days, we installed new windshield wiper grommets and Bus Depot windshield wiper arms. Good Gawd. They are incorrectly bent. Therefore they hug the bottom edge of the windshield::
Naranja's as counterpoint:
Is this really all that is available? I will let you know the results of my inquiry with Bus Depot.
Colin
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