Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Jun 10, 2018 8:14 am

Left tommu's house with a heavy heart, all that beautiful work and too many questions (he SHALL prevail, we'll keep you updated). Hit I-5 northbound. Now, you know I had terrible headwinds from Phoenix to southern California, that Pacific Ocean was rushing in to fill the lifting desert hot air. Now that I was heading north, at least I wasn't battling headwinds, right? Wrong. The winds decided to now come down from the north:

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These were mean gusty winds, no steady no where, just buffets from every which way. Fuel economy was laughable at 13-15 mpg with a couple of tanks at 11 mpg. "Smile," I sez, "happy exhaust valves makes a happy traveler."

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Drove along the California Aquaduct and pondered where that water was going to end up:

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I had been noting a sort of sloppy sound as I started off in 1st gear. It actually stretches back to the first time I started NaranjaWesty in the Law Firm's garage last fall, a whirring "I Wonder If That Is The Pilot Bearing" sort of whir. It had been surreptitiously developing, attempting to ingratiate itself into the Sounds That NaranjaWesty makes:

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By Coalinga CA, it developed a new sound, let's call it the "Ball Bearings In The Blender" rattly sort of sound that only occurred when taking up. I could step on the clutch with the engine running all day without nervousness. Take up, the act of starting off, not good. I wanted to ignore it:

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See? I am ignoring it. There are two aquaducts in this photograph. One near us at a higher elevation, one further down. By Tracy CA, the sound was getting thoroughly worrying. What would you do? I called SG Kent.
"I'll be home at 4:30". Phew. Drove through Sacramento:

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Tried to use the clutch sparingly, but there was traffic, and a big ol' accident just miles from his house. Arrived at 5:30PM. SG Kent set up fans, swept the garage floor, and here we are looking a lot like August 2016's Fuel Tank Saga, minus the sheer and utter destruction of my sanity:

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Hour later:

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See the rust dust? That is a poster child for lack of lubrication. This input shaft was at the ragged edge of damage:

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Release bearing was decent but coated with the rust of the pilot bearing's devastation:

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Devastation is an apt word:

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Clutch disk wasn't bad, but I replaced it anyway:

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Original seal/spring on left. Way more substantial than the two new "viton" seals' springs. Why do these manufacturers just blithely decide to cheapen parts?

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SG Kent enigmatically viewed through one of the welcome fans:

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SG Kent removed the old thoroughly dead pilot bearing with a slide hammer and I tapped in a new one and we reinstalled the flywheel, clutch, and engine, and drove it out at 11:30PM.
Dayam. That was almost as good as a garage! almost as good as a pit stop at Le Mans.
Thank-you once AGAIN, SG Kent.
(to be cont)
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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wcfvw69
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by wcfvw69 » Sun Jun 10, 2018 11:19 am

Holy lack of lubrication Batman!

Now remind us, your loyal readers. This engine was last stabbed in place in Germany at the factory by Hans and his group, yes? First engine drop for this bus since then, correct?
1970 Westfalia bus. Stock 1776 dual port type 1 engine. Restored German Solex 34-3. Restored 205Q distributor, restored to factory appearance engine.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Jivermo » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:37 pm

SG Kent...what a guy! Bravo!

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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by tommu » Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:12 pm

What a relief to discover that just in time - and what savior Mr Kent's hospitality is!

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Bleyseng » Mon Jun 11, 2018 6:38 am

tommu wrote:
Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:12 pm
What a relief to discover that just in time - and what savior Mr Kent's hospitality is!

I mentioned to you Colin that the Sabo front seal was just too tight a fit and tore on entry. So I used an Elring instead that went straight in. What could have caused that tightness and what should I do when I try again?
Yes, that was probably the sabo spring which is tighter than the Elring. Did you put a thin coating of grease on the lip of the oil seal before installing the flywheel?
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by tommu » Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:31 am

Yes I did. And a little sealant on the outside. It really felt like it physically would not fit.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:35 pm

wcfvw69 wrote:
Sun Jun 10, 2018 11:19 am
Holy lack of lubrication Batman!

Now remind us, your loyal readers. This engine was last installed in Germany at the factory by Hans and his group, yes? First engine drop for this bus since then, correct?
Yes, first engine pull. And we wrecked the beautiful turbine smoothness of that engine. God knows how, maybe the angle of the transaxle yanked the nose cone mount. It did distort the shift coupler cage. Suddenly it sounds like every other VW bus, thumpy through the floor, shifter bringing noise up to the front cabin. Could not bear it. No, please! My favorite thing about this car is the sound of that cooling fan and transaxle whine, just smooth, quiet, no du-du-du-du vibration . . .

So I pulled off in Vacaville. Jacked the engine and transaxle with all mounting bolts loose. Removed the shift coupler. Made the cage perfectly rectangular, both sides exact. Cleaned everything:

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Installed the coupler cage and adjusted the engine/transaxle to have NO bias when I installed the rectangular "pucks" Then I gave it a little downward preload so when the nose cone lifts under ring and pinion torque, it leaves the shift rod floating under load. Yeah, so it is a little better, but not enough!:

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What happened to my mannerly VW? Was it the act of separating the engine and transaxle? Did I inadvertently bend the shift rod? My princess is so . . . coarse, now. Then, even worse, the clutch pedal developed a tick. Every double-clutch, tick tick. I could feel it as painfully as a pea under the mattress. But first, I had to get to misszora:

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The industrial side of San Francisco in the morning:

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"Sure," I said, "sure. Sure, I'll watch out for farmers on their tractors . . . " :

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Sniffed snottily at the cheap flimsy "rear bumpers" hidden under modern cars' bloated plastic rumps:

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Found misszora on a fiercely San Francisco hill street:

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The mission was to find out why misszora stumbled and coughed intermittently for three years or something. Responding to the advice of others, we investigated t-h-o-r-o-u-g-h-l-y the fuel tank flow. Notions of floating debris intermittently blocking the outlet had put us to the edge of removing the gas tank. Heck, it's California, I done that, I gots the teeshirt. But, I suggested to leave it in, we'll test it in the car. And we did, with a long hose and two five gallon buckets and lots of flammability and blowing and bubbles and even my transaxle oil pump, we tested that poor tank until 1:00 PM or something, then we had to put all of that gas back in the tank with a bizarre bunch of transferring and funnels. At least we found and replaced the horrid non-reinforced soggy hose from the tank to the filter.

Started the engine firmly convinced that the fuel supply was not the problem. Saw some NGK 5BPES plugs which reminded me of last year's couple of customers who had defective NGK plugs. Happily replaced them with Bosch. No dice. Engine coughed and misbehaved at high rpms. Checked resistances in wires. Did points and condensor, replaced coil, even stuck in NaranjaWesty's distributor. Nope. Fuel pressure? Perfect. Double relay grounds, enhanced. TS 2 checked out. Wiring. AFM adjustments from lean to rich, no change in this stumble. Used a timing light to check for spark degradation at high speed. Nope.
8:00PM comes up quickly when you are lost. Rehearsed my Refund Speech (rehearsed my retirement speech). Don't know the inspiration to check the injector grounding behavior at 8:20 with my alligator clip test light. The lamp pulsed during cranking and developed a nice dim effort to keep up with the pulses once running. When we revved the engine to bad behavior rpm, that was interesting. The light would brighten in time to the exhaust interruptions. Well, there you go. A bad ground. Injectors ground through the ECU which in turn grounds through the single spade next to the double spade under the intake plenum. I surreptitiously pulled the spade halfway off where it would stay tight.
"Let's go for a test drive." Well, it was running well all of a sudden. During the test drive, we discussed the long saga of poorly running misszora. I promised NOT that I had fixed it. I only promised that IF I was able to replicate the symptoms at-will when we got back, then I was pretty sure that just this slightly loose terminal (only when seated) was indeed the cause of years of aggravation. And I replicated the symptom at-will:

viewtopic.php?f=77&t=13634


Made it 50 miles out when NaranjaWesty started exhibiting the same symptoms as misszora, stumbling, bucking, even backfires. Yeah, but I am onto this now. Found that the condensor had come loose on my distributor that had run miss zora only hours earlier!
Check Your Grounds!
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: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by PaducahFrank » Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:52 pm

Colin,

How did you hook the alligator test lamp up? Did you pull an injector connector off and run 12 volts from the + terminal on the battery through the lamp then to the wire on the injection connector grounded through the ECU? If that's the case why did the light get bright when the ground was bad?

Doggonit that can't be what you did because it don't make no damn sense.

Did you pull an injector connector off and just hook the test light up like it was an injector? I gotta understand this to stop the voices in my head. Please expand on this a little.
Paducah Frank

1978 2.0 F.I. Non Cali Westfalia
1974 Triumph TR6
2005 Chevy Colorado

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:22 am

PaducahFrank wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:52 pm
Colin,

How did you hook the alligator test lamp up? Did you pull an injector connector off and run 12 volts from the + terminal on the battery through the lamp then to the wire on the injection connector grounded through the ECU? If that's the case why did the light get bright when the ground was bad?

Doggonit that can't be what you did because it don't make no damn sense.

Did you pull an injector connector off and just hook the test light up like it was an injector? I gotta understand this to stop the voices in my head. Please expand on this a little.
Har har, my secret sauce stumps the professionals . . . Frank, I put two little wires into the injector connector and applied my test lamp to them. That is all. You will have to ask the ECU what it thought about having an intermittent ground. I had choked voltage to the injector plug + side (7 volts) from the series resistors, trying to find a switched ground via the ECU. When the ECU injector ground path (a dedicated ground path in the output stage) is interrupted, I cannot spell out the electronic mayhem that occurs when electrons try to find their way home through other means. The ECU has three separate ground paths. The important thing here was the synchronicity between the light brightening and the engine misfires. The brightening of the light, who the hell knows?
ColinOnNonSense
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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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by tommu » Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:54 pm

PaducahFrank wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:52 pm
1974 Triumph TR6
PaducahFrank - we need a picture of this!

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by PaducahFrank » Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:47 am

Colin's coming in about a month I'll try to get a photo of him in the cockpit going for a spin around the block.

I'm hoping the Bus work this year will be at a bit more relaxed pace it damn near killed me last year - but it was worth it!
Paducah Frank

1978 2.0 F.I. Non Cali Westfalia
1974 Triumph TR6
2005 Chevy Colorado

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SlowLane
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by SlowLane » Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:15 am

PaducahFrank wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:47 am
Colin's coming in about a month I'll try to get a photo of him in the cockpit going for a spin around the block.

I'm hoping the Bus work this year will be at a bit more relaxed pace it damn near killed me last year - but it was worth it!
New marketing slogan: "A near-death experience unlike any other."
'81 Canadian Westfalia (2.0L, manual), now Californiated

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."
- Terry Pratchett

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:28 pm

SlowLane wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:15 am
PaducahFrank wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:47 am
Colin's coming in about a month I'll try to get a photo of him in the cockpit going for a spin around the block.

I'm hoping the Bus work this year will be at a bit more relaxed pace it damn near killed me last year - but it was worth it!
New marketing slogan: "A near-death experience unlike any other."

Yer hired.
Colin :blackeye:
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

Boxcar
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Boxcar » Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:58 am

SG Kent !!

MZ sans stumble!!!

Naranja now,non turbinelike...those sounds are music,sorry for itinerant loss.


OT---
[I see some 23 juneColin facebook VW post sheparding back to here.
Heh..sorry for my random intrusionposts of fiberglass heat tube manufacture,and star washer remaching..
.it IS just easy,though barbarically uncategorized and stuff..to toss a post on that Itin FB thing.
Oh still the photo shrinking for Itin posts...clunky on my side....]
ok back to topic
1975 003 Auto Westy L90D

repair!!!!aug2015
Jan/16 Bumped mixture a few notches richer. finally developing HP.


1.8L/LJet/Pertron DVDA+PertronixCompufire 42/36Ham Heads/AA 93mm pistons/barrels.Porsc.Swiv.Adjusters/CromoSteel pushrds/ Web 9550Cam/55cc chmbr.,035 squish,8.6:1CR/German Supply VWCanadaReman Rods/Schadek 26mmPump/vdo dualOP8/10#low sender/Quart Deep Sump
Backdate Htr bxs,reflanged 914 4into1. Two and three eighths inch collector,magniflow*muffler

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Amskeptic
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Jun 26, 2018 9:25 am

Boxcar wrote:
Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:58 am
SG Kent !!

MZ sans stumble!!!

Naranja now,non turbinelike...those sounds are music,sorry for itinerant loss.


OT---
[I see some 23 juneColin facebook VW post sheparding back to here.
Heh..sorry for my random intrusionposts of fiberglass heat tube manufacture,and star washer remaching..
.it IS just easy,though barbarically uncategorized and stuff..to toss a post on that Itin FB thing.
Oh still the photo shrinking for Itin posts...clunky on my side....]
ok back to topic

We're used to it, boxcar.
Colin
(I am keeping view counts of Facebook links to these articles)
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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