As some of you know, Hambone's been working on my bus and has really gotten a lot done. It went from basically sitting for 21 years (revived for 5 minutes only, 10 years ago and that was it), to running after a basic tune-up but roughly and dying in idle (and being tested by me using the scary old rusted brakes and extremely old tires), to running better but not great, and not dying in idle (thanks to carb cleaning and adjusting etc), to - 2 weeks later - running with new tires and new brakes but dying in idle again and not being able to make it up a hill! However it did make it as far as a gas station which was pretty cool (further than it had gone this whole time, maybe two miles or more in total). But there was much improvement yesterday!
Hambone and Gypsy (or maybe he spells it Gypsie?) did some diagnostic testing and predicting I needed a new or rebuilt carb, put in a new one that he had brought a long to see what kind of difference that made. Well not sure if new but let's just say new and improved.
To you guys this is all probably basic stuff but wow what a difference it made!! It sounded really healthy and was practically purring (in that VW way) and drove noticeably better! Also the new brakes were starting to wear in so the braking felt better too. So confidence was boosted which made the whole experience better. It was really fun to drive!
Here are a couple of short videos showing the boyz driving the bus. I also posted it on thesamba but I thought it would be nice to post here too for the Portland peeps who no longer hang out on the samba much and who know of my bus (and know Hambone!). I'm really loud in the first video, sorry!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyPcpQ34IMk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bjlgtwqFig
Also we opened up the pop top and while it's filthy, it also cleaned up super easily using some mechanics hand wipes I had near by! In the last couple of pics you'll be able to see a small area where I wiped it with the hand wipe. There aren't any rips in this material at all and the zippers work! There's a 1 centimeter size tear in the bug screen only - that's it!
