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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Washington DC

Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 8:45 am
by Schwing
What can I say other than it was an absolute pleasure to meet Colin and have him look over our bus. We laughed, we cried, and I think we fixed some stuff. My bus has NEVER sounded this good, and wow look at that it idles. I'm kidding on the "think we fixed some stuff", we fixed a lot of stuff!

Sure I wish I was able to source the correct dual vac dist, but it didn't go down that way. We even made an attempt to install a dual vac can from a Thing dist and install that on the aircooled.net SVDA. Shit I even found brand new vac lines in my stash, we were on our way. We were bitten by our inability to advance the dist since the nipple was hitting the bale for the oil breather. So, with our tail between our legs we reinstalled the 009, took it for a road test and tweaked a few more things.

I'm happy with the outcome, and honored he could make it. If you are reading this I wish you safe travels and look forward to meeting again sometime.

Laurel MD visit wrap up

Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 10:39 am
by kevinj73us
Spent a very productive day with Colin working on the bus, and the main goal of getting it running and driving was accomplished!
After adjusting the valves and re-plumbing the brake booster vacuum line, we were able to get things running and timed out. Looks like the PO's cobbled together approach to the balance tube was the source of a pretty big vacuum leak. As I went searching for some new brass fittings and plugs, Colin got the wiring connected for the CHT installation after giving the Dakota Digital telephone support folks a ration for a dodgy looking terminal ring.

After turning the mixture screws all the way in, and advancing the timing a bit, the bus was running well enough for a test drive. I think Colin's words to me were "Your brakes are sh*t." So after a little bit of driver training we went back to adjust the rear brakes. Or we would have if the star adjusters weren't seized. So with Colin banging away with a drift and a hammer, and me dodging the blows with a crappy pair of vise-grips, we finally got all 4 adjusters off and apart, and I learned the value of checking them regularly as I sanded and lubed the adjuster nuts and screws.

About that time, the weather started to roll in so we closed the doors and went into the garage to watch the hail bounce off the buses, and for a break in the weather for Colin to dash out and head off to his next stop across the bay.

The next day, we drove the bus down to Virginia to meet up with my sister for the Jimmy Buffet pre-labor day show. Things drove great, the bus acted very nicely. As we pulled off the highway, I went to downshift out of 4th and the gearshift lever flopped waaaay back between the seats. Uh oh.
I managed to get down to a cross street and into a neighborhood where I could stop and look underneath. The grub screw that holds the shift coupler onto the transmission input shaft had gone missing. Luckily we were only about 10 minutes from m sister's and about 10 minutes the other way to a home depot where I picked up a couple of 8mm bolts to make a field repair. Best guess is that I never put the safety wire back in after having the engine and trans out last summer.

After that fix, the bus again acted like a champ hauling 6 adults and gear to the show.

I'm working on my mount for the CHT, and will get that installed this weekend. Hopefully will do the tach install too.

Re: Laurel MD visit wrap up

Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 1:15 pm
by Jivermo
Great report...you guys got a lot done. Love those field repairs...keeps you on your toes. By this time, I'm surprised that Colin is not a ballerino!

Re: Laurel MD visit wrap up

Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 7:52 pm
by Amskeptic
This Kevin guy caught every conceptual point effortlessly. Seriously smart, I could tell that he just needed information and then he would take it from there. For example, if the damn mixture screw can be closed ALL THE WAY and the engine runs better, then close the damn mixture all the way and the engine will run better, which is exactly what we had to do. Of course, that begs a question, where on Earth is this engine getting all of this fuel after how many carb rebuilds and float adjustments? He is on to the jet replacement campaign until the mixture screws can actually have some effect.

While he went to chase down some brass nipples for the brake booster elbows, I ran the new Dakota Digital wiring harness and discovered that the ring terminals are hideous these days. Waaaay too much slop, good grief, how do we NOT get blowby?:

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Called Dakota Digital and left a message (a rant) which I will follow up with on Monday.

Meanwhile, on the test drive, he picked up the double-clutching tutorial effortlessly while I picked on the brakes, the lack thereof. He answered crisply and correctly which direction we need to turn the drag link to straighten the steering wheel. Came back to the house and ripped the brakes apart to free up the frozen adjusters:

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At 6:30PM, I wondered if we had time to knock out the drag link adjustment before the skies opened up. One minute after the question was broached, the rain came. So did the hail. So did the wind. So we didn't do the drag link. Excellent to meet you Kevin. Only minutes after I left, I got hammered with fiercer winds and bigger hail that damaged Chloe's roof with lots of little dimples before I could get under a gas station cabana with what must have been about thirty other cars all huddling from the mayhem.
Hail, hail finally got me, and a windshield leak . . . I was so appreciative of Chloe's cozy interior through all of that rain, but now that temperatures here in Pennsylvania have dropped into the icy clutches of low 60*s, everything has shrunk and the driver's floor mat greeted me with water droplets trickling down from just above and to the left of the ebrake bracket. Oy

Kevin, I am glad to read that you have all the necessary improvisational abilities to get to and from your Volkswagen destinations.

Did the big Bay Bridge on the way to the mad welder, Schwing. That is a lot of metal up there in the distance:

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Chloe bravely tried to hit 55 mph in the midst of restless traffic:

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It is beautiful, all of it.

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And it was a beautiful day at Schwing's going through his factory dual carburetor adjustments on his '72 Westy, but we did not take photographs. We were too busy wrestling his big ol' oil bath air cleaner in there, and fooling around with resistant distributors. I got to listen to his early Beetle engine so smooth, I got to see his '66 single cab welding extravaganza, and i got to listen to his relatively smooth Thing's engine. Here are his remarkable Samba epistles:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewt ... highlight=


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https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewt ... highlight=


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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Washington DC

Posted: Mon May 29, 2017 8:33 am
by Amskeptic
Schwing wrote:
Mon May 22, 2017 8:45 am
What can I say other than it was an absolute pleasure to meet Colin and have him look over our bus. We laughed, we cried, and I think we fixed some stuff. My bus has NEVER sounded this good, and wow look at that it idles. I'm kidding on the "think we fixed some stuff", we fixed a lot of stuff!

Sure I wish I was able to source the correct dual vac dist, but it didn't go down that way. We even made an attempt to install a dual vac can from a Thing dist and install that on the aircooled.net SVDA. Shit I even found brand new vac lines in my stash, we were on our way. We were bitten by our inability to advance the dist since the nipple was hitting the bale for the oil breather. So, with our tail between our legs we reinstalled the 009, took it for a road test and tweaked a few more things.

I'm happy with the outcome, and honored he could make it. If you are reading this I wish you safe travels and look forward to meeting again sometime.


Coming up for air here in drenched northeast, we shall meet again yonder on the other end of that long bridge.
Colin