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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2017 9:17 pm
by Amskeptic
The "Wish Me Luck" post has been superseded.
This engine, of all the cross-country air-cooled VW engines I have flogged, had me the very most nervous of all. You've read of it since the day I dremeled the valve seats down flush with the combustion chambers and filed 52 aluminum teeth on the camshaft, cursed my nuts (connecting rod nuts, boys), and got in a lather about that horrid new brazilian chatter-monkey pressure plate. I was anxious for very good reasons, but the Universe once again toys with me.

This thing has been phenomenal of late. The last week, this engine has told me that there is pretty much nothing that can perturb it. Just did I-5 south from Redding to Sacramento in the 100* heat at 65 mph with a definitely lean mixture, and the Dakota Digital gauge never went past 375. Come on! I can't explain it. I can't share the recipe with your engines. This isn't just the gauge. The valve covers smell like sweet new oil. The rocker surfaces are shiny clean. The valve adjustments, while still tightening, are now only losing an hour or so. Yes, they may bite me, but the engine is running so peppy and economically, the abandon with which I piled into the Road Warrior and drove wherever, whenever, however, is coming back to me with Chloe here.

So, a couple of years ago in this car, I passed a slow tanker truck on a steep downhill on CA-299 and discovered a hairpin turn just past it. It was hair-raising to have to seriously get on the brakes all the way into fade, force a downshift, and still hit the curve well over a reasonable speed. The road was unforgiving, there were two more hairpins and the rate of descent was pretty ferocious. I remember having a chat with myself about drum brakes, life on Earth, a car too good to throw off the cliff because of stupidity, and a promise to not barrel into the mountains without a sharp appreciation of the laws of physics and gravity.

Then in 2015, with a somewhat more portly orange Westy, I was tearing along CA-299 sort of recalling that there was this hairpin turn downhill deal that I might want to be on the look out fo- oh geeze, here it is. Now, the disk brakes had a more powerful clamping force, yes, but the corner didn't care about braking. It is an unsettling feeling when you have to crank the steering wheel past your usual, it is almost like "steering fade".

THIS year, I am ON TO THAT DAMN HAIRPIN CURVE. Here it is. I am already downshifted and holding at 40 mph with moderate braking still necessary:

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Here is the first hairpin as seen from below:

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There is the little toy road way down below where your tumbling crushed-beyond-recognition car would eventually come to a stop:

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Here comes the second and third hairpins and the hill is dropping away, and the brakes are mildly faded, but we got this, we got this:

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WHAT?? :

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I can hold 40 mph, but stop?? Friggen brakes were maybe half their usual strength, and the hill is steep, and the little man with the stop sign is standing there in the middle of the lane and I am already casting for alternative routes around him. A slight chirp downshift into 2nd, and I am eyeing his Golf parked on the opposite shoulder as my "runaway ramp":

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We chatted about "brake fade" and "Golf red caliper paint" and took in the fragrance of brake linings . . . .
(to be cont.)

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 3:58 am
by Jivermo
Great description. That is some set of curves. Here, around Honesdale, Pa., I find that I have to pay serious attention to the winding roads, and I'm not in my bus.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 9:11 am
by airkooledchris
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you can nearly see the fear behind those sunglasses

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 9:16 am
by Amskeptic
Heck yeah, Chris, I was still moving when I took that shot.
Jivermo, you ever notice how northeast Pennsylvania likes to heat up lumber/coal truck brakes, then dump them on steep descents into little villages? Pennsylvania is not for newbies . . .

Since Chloe was feeling pretty good, I drove pretty hard. No Diet Coke wash downs of the interior, fuel filter just filtered, engine gave 19 mpg and we made it to Eureka by sundown. A terrible pall overcame the landscape, the warmth, the life-sustaining warmth bled out, the sunshine bleached out behind a white fog, then the hideous hateful billowing mists of shivering doom enveloped me in a summer-murdering descent back into the worst of a Florida deep winter's colorless joyless damp disporia of monotonous grey. I always take my chariot-of-the-moment to the carwash in Arcata first thing to thank it for traversing CA 299, and I always can be seen wrapping myself up in the comforter (to cry a little) to take in the last of the desert heat still locked in the car. I fill a Motel6 bucket with warm warm! water from my gallon jug and wash the car down with warm in my warm sweatshirt and long pants that rapidly shed the last of the heat. Rinsing the car of course is hell. Some stupid Pacific breeze always sets up in the car wash and blows my heat to hell. Camped behind Target, because I wanted the red light from the sign, made me feel better in the fogs of winter. The water jugs collapsed during the night, the acetone can kaplonked at 1:00AM as it caved in, and of course the Target supply trucks just had to show up at 5:30AM with a rousing conversation between the drivers/off-loaders. I had no idea that truck drivers now have automated pallet trucks that let (make) them unload their own trucks. Yay for fewer jobs! They came over when they saw that I was now awake and doing my bleary morning shave, nice bus! etc.

Didn't take one picture at pdlrofdrms appointment. Still in shock from the change of temperature. We did the center pin bushings, rear brake adjustment (watch those ebrake cables, Jen, check the hubcaps for unusual warmth), and pretty much left the engine alone because it ran fine.

That night, I camped at the homeless encampment under the 101 bridge at the west end of Eureka. Let's do this cold dispondency up proud. See the needles? See the waterlogged blanket? See the trash barely scraped away from the sleeping "quarters? See the writing on the walls of the bridge beams?
"Eat, Sh*t, Die!" said one.
"Meth kills" said another.
Those are the homeless equivalents of self-affirmation post-it notes on the mirrors up at the fancy houses with fancy electricity.
"You can do it!"
"I love you!! Pick up milk on your way home"

Eureka!

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It was better to see airkooledchris than I let on. He had electricity and we had hot coffee and a bagel. He also has a daughter so full of brains and spirit that the underbridge despair lifted. So did the Pacific mists. So we removed the sliding door. We used a sledge hammer and a four-by-four:

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The job was to replace that sliding door and put the window in the new (used) door. There was a danger in the air:

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We did all of the tender ministrations that these fine doors deserve, cleaning out drain holes, touching up rust spots, hammering the new door with broken pieces of wood and vise grips . . . . to make it as straight as the seller promised:

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We cleaned and greased/oiled both latch assemblies and the rollers:

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Such tender ministrations with our hammers and wood blocks and screwdrivers:

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"Weeze take out your glass real good . . . "

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"Ay! And don't forgets to pay neither . . . "

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"Weeze garanteeze youse no damage to no seal when weeze take it out, kapiche??"

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"Call for your quote TODAY, or else."

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The new "race-ready" door with the racing stripe is on here, and airkooledchris is cleaning that perfectly removed old window/seal in preparation for installation:

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We installed the window with a four-by-four and some rope. Yeah, we did too.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:42 am
by airkooledchris
The brutal hackery done to that OG window frame was something out of a Tarantino movie, everything minus a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

The window frame was so rusted that once we realized I failed to get a new seal for the window, the old one had to be removed without messing it up. Removing an old delicate seal from a window frame completely engulfed in rust along the bottom was going to be a hell of a challenge. I ended up taking the bigass flatblade screwdriver and punching it *through* the frame below the seal, then sawing back and forth as I went sideways until it was opening up like a canned ham. The other side went that much faster. We could then pound it down out of the top part of the frame and into the rust canyon that had opened up below it and POP, window and seal came out together with nary a scratch.

It WAS nice and sunny in Eureka long enough for the shorts to come out, but in true coastal fashion we were back to long pants by 4:30.

While obviously behind in my maintenance schedule for the bay, stopping any water from reaching the inside is still job 1.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:40 am
by Amskeptic
Feeling so "expert" with our hammers and pry bars and screwdrivers in Eureka, why not go harass SG Kent in Sacramento? Why not?

Chloe's fan had begun to give a nasty little noise upon start-up and shut-down.
I had already tightened it (right off the picture time stamps so you know it happened):

Saturday, ‎July ‎08, ‎2017, ‏‎ 7:53:49 PM
and
Wednesday, ‎July ‎26, ‎2017, ‏‎8:37:21 AM
and
Saturday, ‎August ‎05, ‎2017, ‏‎8:31:42 AM

Airkooledchris helped me on that last one, and as you can see from the above pictures of our window day, he has no problem helping. As a matter of fact, we got that fan nut on so securely, that we looked at each other like,
"Did we just shear the woodruff key?"
"No, I can't handle that, so no we didn't shear the woodruff key."

On Tuesday, July 25th, I was pretty sure that I had forgotten to properly torque the fan nut to a full 47 ft/lbs.
So, on Thursday July 27th, I was pretty sure everything was fine with that nice quiet start and shut-down.
On Saturday, August 5th at 7:00AM, I was pretty sure that the fan was hosed
On Sunday August 6th, screaming through the mountains with shifts at 4,400 rpm, I was grateful that airkooledchris had cranked that wrench and we were definitely good n tight.

On Monday August 7th, that damn fan was making some sounds again at low idle. So, I sidled up to SG Kent in a PM, "I will be in your area. Lunch? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oh, and can I drop my engine in your garage?"

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I looked at his engine that had just done Yellowstone, and I was most-pleased to see a couple of squished mosquitoes on the front of the car, gives it a more lived-in look:

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There's my tinnerman nut fan balance clip! In the daylight finally! There's some damn oil leak, too! The one that has spotted innumerable driveways to my great great abject humiliation!

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And this is Chloe's engine, out and stripped down in a backyard patio in Sacramento with some guy working on it?

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And here is the generator and fan all splayed out AGAIN?

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Yes, because of THIS. This is a fan that has fretted and opened up its "keyway":

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And this! Oil favoring the left side of the engine under the flywheel:

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And the opinions began to leak out, the opinions of two stubborn master mechanics in the heat of the day and the heat of the moment, opinions that collided and clashed and roiled and resolved into a cautious consensus . . . .
(will finish after another 250 miles of shakedown drive on CA 99, it's gonna just hit 100*)

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:47 pm
by tewa3240
i'm no type 1 powered type II expert...
but the main seal looks chewed @ 6 o'clock.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:55 pm
by Amskeptic
tewa3240 wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:47 pm
i'm no type 1 powered type II expert...
but the main seal looks chewed @ 6 o'clock.
That is the reflection of a pool of oil over-topping the bottom lip, that is all. There was molybdenum disulfide grease junk around the perimeter from the day I installed the flywheel, here, wait, I'll get the photo timestamp . . . . . . on about ‎Tuesday, ‎April ‎04, ‎2017, ‏‎6:56:53 PM. Here is another shot of the day before yesterday:

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SG Kent was fairly certain that the oil leak was from the perimeter of the seal while I was fairly certain that it was not. We were both fairly certain that the flywheel looked pretty dry inside and outside except for a little weep that had stained the inside area and had just begun to contaminate the clutch disk. Then he was fairly certain that the parting line was causing this ridiculous oil leak that had bathed the bell housing, and I was fairly certain that it might be a gallery plug. When we removed the seal, the perimeter looked pretty dry, but he spied a little oil track on it which I thought was aforementioned pool of oil at the bottom of the seal as seen in the photograph that tewa3240 thought was a chewed seal (oh, if it had been a chewed seal, we SG Kent and I would have been crowing triumphantly - so much better to fess up to a bone-headed mistake than an uncertain cascade of maybe this-maybe thats).

Whether or not we had different opinions, the work was outstanding on his end, recklessly field casual on my end. He sand blasted the fan hub and fan center and shims and the flywheel too, I sanded the pressure plate and cross-scratched the gallery plugs and cam plug, rinsed with Berryman's carb cleaner and he air-dried everything and I JB Welded the gallery plugs, like this:

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I roundly ignored several suggestions and obeyed others with a tightened stomach.

Ignored:
the suggestion to disassemble generator and put in a new spacer that prevents the fan nut from bottoming out before clamping the fan. Nope. That generator deserves to be left alone. So, I shimmed between the two "special washers" behind the fan and that got the nut off the bottoming problem. It is still damaged at the keyway and the fan can possibly move and fret itself loose again, so I am on the hunt for a new fan and generator.
(that was a great call on SG Kent's part, I appreciate having the chance to admire someone else's higher order deductions)

Obeyed:
torquing the fan nut to factory spec, I so wanted to give an extra ten foot/lbs.

Ignored:
the suggestion to remove the .010" spacer I used between the flywheel and the crankshaft during the initial build so I could use three shims. But since the end play was .010" now (yikes) I had room to delete the spacer.
"You can find three shims that will work now and delete that plate, that's what I would do."
"No, I have the spacer and have determined the three shims needed for .0035" end play."
"Fine, suit yourself, I'm going in for a while."
Then I discovered that the damn spacer was such a lousy fit over the dowels that it bent itself into a wavy washer AND the outside diameter was TOO BIG and THAT ate my graphite o-ring and THAT was probably a BIG PART of my "bent crankshaft" turmoil PLUS this oil leak!
Did you think I was going to go in and tell SG Kent? THINK AGAIN.

Obeyed:
the suggestion to remove the .010" spacer I used between the flywheel and the crankshaft during the initial build so I could use three shims without that stupid cheap .010" spacer.

Obeyed:
his annoying by the book method of determining the thickness of the third shim. I like to just measure the whole damn stack and do a mix-n-match to get a new stack thicker or thinner to my needs. Oh but no no no says SG Kent, that stack is like a bunch of wavy washers, it is not accurate enough, (aw go on, I been doing it this way for decades), and of course today, my method is all over the damn place so we did it his way. FINE. We're at about .0045-.005"

Ignored:
his entreaty to use a fuel hose clamp at the carburetor (if you want to burn down your bus, suit yourself)

Obeyed:
his demand to torque the stupid gland nut to only 253 ft/lbs. That was hard, but he friggen just leaned on the torque wrench and it friggen clicked at 253 ft/lbs, none of my usual dancing up and down on a cheater pipe while someone steadies the engine.

Ignored:
his request of how to help me install the engine. I was very not-helpful and I did not want to be. I like to surreptitiously line things up exactly and just roll the engine in. God knows Chloe knows . . .

Obeyed:
his offer of a turkey sandwich

Look, the engine is in and it is only 3:00PM the next day, 22 hours after pulling in:

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That is a Thumbs Up No Untoward Noises from the Master Mechanic:

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This is what outstanding 2017 SG Kent Hospitality looks like at the conclusion of a successful visit:

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See: Itinerant Cow Goes Rogue

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 9:17 pm
by tewa3240
Thank you for the oil seal explanation,
I can't see too well from here.
Sounds like that turkey sandwich was a reward & peace offer
for listening to the sanity of your wrenching buddy/garage boss.
Pretty buses.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:15 pm
by sgkent
Ignored:
his request of how to help me install the engine. I was very not-helpful and I did not want to be. I like to surreptitiously line things up exactly and just roll the engine in. God knows Chloe knows . . .
what Colin could not see was that a simple rock and push when he was not looking mated the engine and trans 90 %, and when he wasn't looking again a minute later another push finished the job. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was me behind that because he wanted control - I just wanted to get it done and having owned that 1971 dual port bus for 400,000 miles I hadn't forgotten how to rodeo a T1 engine back in with one clean fell-swoop. :) Now that he is many miles away I can tell him I am guilty of not listening to his orders in between his moans from his back bothering him as he lay on the concrete. :)

As for going inside the house - yes I am guilty - there was no reason to stand in the heat while he figured out what he wanted to do about the shims. Colin has the temperament of one of my brothers, and sometimes leaving them alone to figure it out on their own is better than being annoyed with them. See - it worked out exactly like I said it would - 3 shims and no spacer. The only difference is I was inside in a cool house while he was outside figuring that out in the hot sun. :) He lost an hour of his schedule - not me. :bounce:

As long as the engine works, and the problems are gone I am happy. My only suggestion is that he might consider tightening the fan one shim. I could see the fan belt grab the pulley every two or three seconds as it climbed up, and dropped down in the generator pulley, and when that happened the generator was being shocked by the constant speed changes as the belt diameter changed and slipped. I don't know if over time those shocks will loosen the fan again. My thinking is that slightly tighter will make it harder for the belt to jump up and down like that, reducing the torque load on the hub and fan. The rhythm of the belt hops matched that of the original fan loose noise. Whether they are related I do not know - but the load changing has to be detrimental to the whole rotating mass.
Sounds like that turkey sandwich was a reward & peace offer
more like people burn out when their blood sugar drops. We needed energy to finish the job. I am diabetic and don't eat a lot of carbs so I have to stagger my meals appropriately. it wouldn't have been nice to fix myself something, and leave Colin sitting outside in the sun with low blood sugar.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:44 am
by SlowLane
The mating surface of your crankshaft appears to be a bit fretted or hammered at four and ten o'clock. Is that just a trick of the light or could it be from use of the spacer?

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:24 am
by sgkent
SlowLane wrote:
Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:44 am
The mating surface of your crankshaft appears to be a bit fretted or hammered at four and ten o'clock. Is that just a trick of the light or could it be from use of the spacer?
I think you are seeing the spacer shim that was still on the flywheel when the photo was taken. Part of the rubber o-ring was under it. That spacer is why I went inside when ole buddy Colin decided he wanted to do it again. The issue when the engine was built that there was not enough end play so he added the shim to have more. Once the engine opened up .002" to .003" more he no longer needed the shim as long as he used the thinnest flywheel shims VW made. Those are .0095" In the real world they run from .009" to .010". We ended up with 3 flywheel shims and no crank to flywheel dowel shim. However Colin let me enjoy the coolness of my house and do other things while he labored for an hour in the hot sun trying to decide which way was better - shim, no shim, is Steve right, no shim, shim, no shim... . Last year it was my snoring that drove him away. This year a little tiny shim came between us. Wonder what it will be next year. And Colin, for what it is worth - there wasn't a drop of oil under my bus for 4 weeks after the 400 mile roundtrip to Yosemite, and a 120 mile local trip to the mountains. Last night there was no oil either under the bus when I looked, which made me proud - this morning there is a six inch line off one of the heads. These buses have minds of their own.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From NorCal

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 10:24 pm
by Amskeptic
sgkent wrote:
Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:24 am
And Colin, for what it is worth - there wasn't a drop of oil under my bus for 4 weeks after the 400 mile roundtrip to Yosemite, and a 120 mile local trip to the mountains. Last night there was no oil either under the bus when I looked, which made me proud - this morning there is a six inch line off one of the heads. These buses have minds of their own.

They do.
I am on Day Three of a grueling five day marathon in L.A. and my Chloe Cow piddled a drip on asiab3's driveway. Appalled. Abject. But he gave me a new crankshaft pulley that actually runs true. It has ten Chloe miles on it.

Will write up and photograph a most . . . interesting . . . appointment with NY Cynthia and her so very nice Sunny the '68.

Six inch line of oil??

Did I tell you that I have lost my little generator scream? Who knew it was actually restricted air flow between a rapidly rotating fan 1mm away from the mounting plate? All those years that I thought it was brushes counting off commutator strips . . .
ColinInLikeLA?