Irvine Interlude
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2014 12:03 pm
The day started off drowsy, slow and cloudy. Not to worry, though, as the marine layer burns off promptly at 10am, and we were scheduled for another pristine So-Cal day: 75 F, light breeze, and a reasonable cup of coffee. We got all three, and then some. In the past, I've usually had some major project to do that was a challenge to do within a day; not this year. Anything that big I wasn't prepared for (redoing the front end suspension, for example) so instead I set my sights a bit lower, on a couple of things that Colin's help would be invaluable, and would make for a somewhat more relaxing itinerary visit. We've had hairy times before, so low and slow was the order of the day.
The first thing we looked at, which of course turned into a more extended meditation on the nature of these engines, and the necessary experience needed to fine-tune the engine according the book, but not by the book ~ some account must be taken of the years of wear, differences in technology and the engine's own "personality". The engine has, over the last six months, run rather rich. This did however resolve some issues, while maintaining some other issues. I knew the gas/air metering system was operating at the edges of sanity, but by running rich, I had apparently solved long-standing "hot start" issues. The engine would however, when warmed up, maintain a high idle (1800-2200), which is far from ideal (though it makes starting from a stop in rabbit-start-land somewhat more tolerable for the other drivers around me, since the high idle made it fairly roll off the line).
We started by setting the engine to factory specs, and then I watched as Colin fiddled with the unmetered air and the idle switch. It seemed t hat adjusting the distributor was also called for ~ and done. After the adjustment, more fine tuning of the air, idle and timing. My takeaway from this was as follows:
1. The factory settings are a starting point, but then I'm going to have to use my knowledge of the engine, sound, touch, etc. in order to get the engine to run happily; in getting back to the factory settings, we also re-introduced the hard start problems (I learned that it might be easier to jump start in second or third gear, as opposed to first!) and you really haven't lived until you get to "drive" a van while Colin pushes!
2. I'm going to have to make checking the engine and pushrods a more common thing; I simply need to spend time adjusting and readjusting settings until I can develop a more intuitive sense of how to manage the engine. Particularly since I have to deal with a tight smog regulation down here in So Cal. Two years ago, Colin set the engine and I smogged it within a week or so. We'll see if that works here, but in any event, I see I'm going to have to make a habit of toying with the settings in order to fully understand what they're doing in terms of effect.
The engine has some gremlins; one which was particularly vexing was the throttle switch. It's apparently supposed to enrich the mixture under full throttle. Removal and check showed the switch worked, so why no enrichment? Careful replacement and setting the switch at optimum location did not reveal results... or so it seemed. The LM-1 is a great device, but it's hard to tell, when placed in the pipe end, if you're seeing real numbers, or just what's left after the catalytic converter has done it's job. In any event, we couldn't tell for sure if the enrichment was working; didn't feel that way according to the butt dyno, and the LM-1 had no good info to appease our anxious souls.
Here's the throttle switch. It's tempting to replace it, but it seemed to be working OK, though we didn't test every bit of those wires:
This process took most of the day, and involved a fair amount of test driving with the LM-1 hanging on for dear life as we roared around Irvine trying not to irritate the rich and clueless in their pristine cars. Coming up and down the rather steep hill I live on, it was clear that we had resolved a problem that i'd been having with stuttering/starving under load when the engine was warm. The offset was less power when cold, but I now have a more reliably sluggish van. Getting to that point required a bit more experimentation, and adjusting, sometimes on the road, as here:
In the midst of this my lovely wife brought out "lunch" ~ in deference to Colin's "full-speed-ahead" work attitude, it was our usual cut fruit and cracker plate. I probably ate most of it, which is why I'm chubby. I like cheese, what can I say?
I like to try to add a bit of civility to the day when I can; too many visits (mine as well as others) are such a long battle with the elements, the cars, the cheap aftermarket parts that anything that affords a moments relaxation seems beyond value. It also allows me the occasional portrait, as here:
The hot start problem plagued us; it seemed to be flooding at first; after cranking the engine a zillion times, plenty of gas smell... a leaky injector? First we checked the pressure ~ nope. Held pressure fine. Then we pulled a couple of plugs ~ nope. They looked fine. Then Colin did something that I didn't directly observe, but assume to be dangerous, since he said he checked the spark at the coil and it looked good. Probably best I didn't see that... In any event, if you have fire, and fuel, then it must be air that's wanting, no? No. Or at least so it seemed. In any event, we checked all the grounds, cleaned some contact points, used electrical grease of some sort to prevent oxidation ~ all in the hopes that it would solve this annoying gremlin. Here's some of that work now!
and close up:
We eventually seemed to beat it, but it's hard to say exactly which "thing" resolved the hot start issue. Timing perhaps, but it's a bit of a mystery ~ I'll have to fool around and see if I can get it to reproduce: get the engine hot and see if I can change the settings to reliably create/resolve the "hot start" issue I've been having.
The last order of the day was more concrete ~ the windshield washers have never worked ~ run the pump and you got a puddle on the ground. So we quickly dropped the dash (Colin has pictures of this) so we could have a "bat-in-hell" chance of fixing the issue. Though it's terribly difficult to get at the washer lines, it's possible, and we got lucky. The driver's side which is the intake and tees off to the passenger side, is available behind the master cylinder. Not so the passenger side, which is sadly hidden away behind the heater motor. I did NOT want to remove the heater motor.
Some work determined, though, that the problem was from the tank to the nozzle. We popped the driver's side nozzle (I'd order replacements) and got to the "T" junction that joined the intake to the two nozzles. We repaired the tubes, and Colin got his fingers burned heating up some shrink tubing to seal the junctions. Here's a picture of the final product; you can see the old brownish tubing on the right, which is the original, and our newer black tubing on the bottom and the right:
By that time it was just 6pm, and time for dinner. I neglected, I'm afraid, to take a picture of the fantastic layout Mrs. Lanval prepared, but it was steak and/or turkey tacos, with all the fixin's; we try to make sure that Colin gets a decent meal when he's here. I figure the next week is gonna be some random assortment of "food" duly washed with carb cleaner and spotted with gasket sealant of some sort.
The last thing I did was send him off with a half-rack of diet coke, a few t-shirts that I reckon will be used to polish a fender or something, and a catalog of VW stuff.
All in all a restful day of work, and perhaps the only true vacation I will take this year.
Bon Voyage!
Lanval
The first thing we looked at, which of course turned into a more extended meditation on the nature of these engines, and the necessary experience needed to fine-tune the engine according the book, but not by the book ~ some account must be taken of the years of wear, differences in technology and the engine's own "personality". The engine has, over the last six months, run rather rich. This did however resolve some issues, while maintaining some other issues. I knew the gas/air metering system was operating at the edges of sanity, but by running rich, I had apparently solved long-standing "hot start" issues. The engine would however, when warmed up, maintain a high idle (1800-2200), which is far from ideal (though it makes starting from a stop in rabbit-start-land somewhat more tolerable for the other drivers around me, since the high idle made it fairly roll off the line).
We started by setting the engine to factory specs, and then I watched as Colin fiddled with the unmetered air and the idle switch. It seemed t hat adjusting the distributor was also called for ~ and done. After the adjustment, more fine tuning of the air, idle and timing. My takeaway from this was as follows:
1. The factory settings are a starting point, but then I'm going to have to use my knowledge of the engine, sound, touch, etc. in order to get the engine to run happily; in getting back to the factory settings, we also re-introduced the hard start problems (I learned that it might be easier to jump start in second or third gear, as opposed to first!) and you really haven't lived until you get to "drive" a van while Colin pushes!
2. I'm going to have to make checking the engine and pushrods a more common thing; I simply need to spend time adjusting and readjusting settings until I can develop a more intuitive sense of how to manage the engine. Particularly since I have to deal with a tight smog regulation down here in So Cal. Two years ago, Colin set the engine and I smogged it within a week or so. We'll see if that works here, but in any event, I see I'm going to have to make a habit of toying with the settings in order to fully understand what they're doing in terms of effect.
The engine has some gremlins; one which was particularly vexing was the throttle switch. It's apparently supposed to enrich the mixture under full throttle. Removal and check showed the switch worked, so why no enrichment? Careful replacement and setting the switch at optimum location did not reveal results... or so it seemed. The LM-1 is a great device, but it's hard to tell, when placed in the pipe end, if you're seeing real numbers, or just what's left after the catalytic converter has done it's job. In any event, we couldn't tell for sure if the enrichment was working; didn't feel that way according to the butt dyno, and the LM-1 had no good info to appease our anxious souls.
Here's the throttle switch. It's tempting to replace it, but it seemed to be working OK, though we didn't test every bit of those wires:
This process took most of the day, and involved a fair amount of test driving with the LM-1 hanging on for dear life as we roared around Irvine trying not to irritate the rich and clueless in their pristine cars. Coming up and down the rather steep hill I live on, it was clear that we had resolved a problem that i'd been having with stuttering/starving under load when the engine was warm. The offset was less power when cold, but I now have a more reliably sluggish van. Getting to that point required a bit more experimentation, and adjusting, sometimes on the road, as here:
In the midst of this my lovely wife brought out "lunch" ~ in deference to Colin's "full-speed-ahead" work attitude, it was our usual cut fruit and cracker plate. I probably ate most of it, which is why I'm chubby. I like cheese, what can I say?
I like to try to add a bit of civility to the day when I can; too many visits (mine as well as others) are such a long battle with the elements, the cars, the cheap aftermarket parts that anything that affords a moments relaxation seems beyond value. It also allows me the occasional portrait, as here:
The hot start problem plagued us; it seemed to be flooding at first; after cranking the engine a zillion times, plenty of gas smell... a leaky injector? First we checked the pressure ~ nope. Held pressure fine. Then we pulled a couple of plugs ~ nope. They looked fine. Then Colin did something that I didn't directly observe, but assume to be dangerous, since he said he checked the spark at the coil and it looked good. Probably best I didn't see that... In any event, if you have fire, and fuel, then it must be air that's wanting, no? No. Or at least so it seemed. In any event, we checked all the grounds, cleaned some contact points, used electrical grease of some sort to prevent oxidation ~ all in the hopes that it would solve this annoying gremlin. Here's some of that work now!
and close up:
We eventually seemed to beat it, but it's hard to say exactly which "thing" resolved the hot start issue. Timing perhaps, but it's a bit of a mystery ~ I'll have to fool around and see if I can get it to reproduce: get the engine hot and see if I can change the settings to reliably create/resolve the "hot start" issue I've been having.
The last order of the day was more concrete ~ the windshield washers have never worked ~ run the pump and you got a puddle on the ground. So we quickly dropped the dash (Colin has pictures of this) so we could have a "bat-in-hell" chance of fixing the issue. Though it's terribly difficult to get at the washer lines, it's possible, and we got lucky. The driver's side which is the intake and tees off to the passenger side, is available behind the master cylinder. Not so the passenger side, which is sadly hidden away behind the heater motor. I did NOT want to remove the heater motor.
Some work determined, though, that the problem was from the tank to the nozzle. We popped the driver's side nozzle (I'd order replacements) and got to the "T" junction that joined the intake to the two nozzles. We repaired the tubes, and Colin got his fingers burned heating up some shrink tubing to seal the junctions. Here's a picture of the final product; you can see the old brownish tubing on the right, which is the original, and our newer black tubing on the bottom and the right:
By that time it was just 6pm, and time for dinner. I neglected, I'm afraid, to take a picture of the fantastic layout Mrs. Lanval prepared, but it was steak and/or turkey tacos, with all the fixin's; we try to make sure that Colin gets a decent meal when he's here. I figure the next week is gonna be some random assortment of "food" duly washed with carb cleaner and spotted with gasket sealant of some sort.
The last thing I did was send him off with a half-rack of diet coke, a few t-shirts that I reckon will be used to polish a fender or something, and a catalog of VW stuff.
All in all a restful day of work, and perhaps the only true vacation I will take this year.
Bon Voyage!
Lanval