Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings ToFrom Jacksonville
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 7:31 pm
. . . I drove to Jacksonville FL to visit with our good Filthy Dub who has to read this very post because I have a Very Serious Suggestion for him other than to re-check the brake fluid reservoir leak for any new leaking . . . . get the breather squared away! It is jamming against the right fresh air hose. Why? Because the alternator stand doesn't know what to do with a generator-designed breather.
Now you all know I was a bit crushed that my sweetie BobD factory fresh bus died flat dead-on-the-road. I was supposed to drive to Jacksonville FL in the morning! I had a dead no-pump beautiful BobD sitting dead there in the parking space. This was messing with my psychic feng shui. It was parked facing the wall, dead. I could not leave it so abject. So, before I left for Jacksonville 365 miles away, I WD-40d the BobD's pump inlet and outlet, shook the pump vigorously to get the WD40 into the pump rollers, then used NaranjaWesty's battery to reverse-polarity-energize the pump ( +/- -/+ and switched back to correct +/+ -/-, until the pump's subtle little jerking turned into a lush spray of gasoline over the battery and my sparking wires. Wiped down NaranjaWesty's battery and engine compartment thinking to myself, "it is so nice that it is not on fire."
Installed the BobD's resurrected fuel pump into the BobD with a new filter, and the BobD started right up, right UP.
"You get to stay in the garage", I told the BobD. Left a note for Rodney The Pilot on the kitchen counter.
"Keys are in it. Feeling lucky? Take 'er for a spin."
Now, I did bad things on the way to Jacksonville in my hurry to get there after spending half the day with BobD.
a) 65-75 mph
b) maximum 434* CHT on hills "ah too bad, hey be sure to clean the carbon out of the exhaust back there"
c) huge honking Blu-Blocker clip-on sunglasses over my driving glasses
d) noise-cancelling ear buds (see where we're going here?)
e) silver socket pressed into service charging the dumbowner/smartphone
f) 18 mpg at 65-70, see "b" (not acceptable of course, richened mixture > max 413* CHT @ 14.7 mpg)
g) enjoyed very much my yellow blue-blocked experience out the windshield listening to:
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Yes - Time and a Word, Fragile, The Yes Album, Close To The Edge, Going For The One
I kept the volume down enough to just catch horns blaring. Here's what you do, drive into other people's lanes while keeping a finger on the volume button and reduce volume of your music until you can just make out their horn. If you can hear them screaming at you, the volume is a tad too low.
With gratifyingly unstressed eyeballs, I pulled into Jacksonville at 10:00PM (two hour-long phone calls required two long rest stops) and passed out in a rest stop. Had a brief consultation with exoticdvm in New Mexico, and showed up at Filthy Dub and his brand new wife's soon-to-be-vacated home. Reason I am there:
(am I allowed to dish?)
Uncle X was driving newlyweds and the bus died. Had to tow. Melted Pertronix during diagnosis due to crossed wires on the coil. Won't run. Hasn't run since wedding day, actually. We got into our best diagnostic focus and replaced the melted Pertronix with a brand new not-yet-melted Pertronix. Here is Filthy Dub installing his new Pertronix:
As I looked around, I saw what I saw.
"What did you see?"
"I saw why your bus won't run."
"What is it?"
"I can't say."
Well, I do that so people will settle in and observe and train their hopping minds to focus. This was subtle, though.
The pivot pin in the #@!&^ cheap-a$$ Brosol brazilian fuel pump had backed completely out of the fuel pump, rendering the pushrod and lever completely useless. Now why on EARTH would they sell a fuel pump with a pivot pin that had no circlips? No circlips to hold it in place as it gets hammered by a lever going back and forth 25 times a second at 55 mph.
No circlips.
The new spare Brosol fuel pump had a pivot pin with two grooves at the ends and two nice little circlips like all the original VW pumps have had since 1949. Uh duh, come on. We must warn our suppliers who sell 1600 fuel pumps to NOT SELL any WITHOUT CIRCLIPS! Don't roll the dice. Here, print this banner:
"YES, I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU'VE 'NEVER HAD THAT SORT OF PROBLEM BEFORE' BUT YOU AREN'T SELLING ME A PUMP WITHOUT CIRCLIPS ON THE PIVOT PIN." (optional > UH DUH).
Pulled the old pump, found the old pin laying there, stuck in the new pump, primed the engine with a genuine Mechanics Tool Bag Real Glass Shot Glass of gas, and she started right up and held a pretty good idle.
All this by 11:00AM. Drove around. Steering still has that nasty steering box "catch" on either side of what must be a badly dented-in worm gear at direct center. Got back to the house. Here is Filthy Dub backing up with a reverse light out:
Now what? Glad you asked. I managed to get in all sorts of trouble snooping around in the Rat's Nest® of wires under the dash. By the time I had managed to get the dangling fuse box sort of where it is supposed to reside, we had lost:
a) the other reverse light
b) right brake/turn signal light
c) all idiot lights including the turn indicator lights in instrument cluster
d) high beam indicator
But, we found a most interesting anomaly, the parking light indicator lamp was not only on, it was always on.
"It has done that since I have owned the car."
"That is why your battery dies after a few days."
I just turned the bulb in the socket and let that shut it off. No way I am tracking that down after seeing the Rat's Nest®.
After a few referrals to the Bentley manual, we got most everything back AND (this is where my smartness reely shines through) we decided to mount the fuse box where it was dangling instead of where it belonged. We used a brilliant bit of plastic busted clean off his socket set and a cardboard protector between the fuse box and the intake plenum. Here, we note the two-year-old $$.$$ chrome trim rings from Wolfsburg West are looking . . . . dodgy. Come ON!
RIGHT
LEFT
Some time around, what was it 4:10PM? Yeah, "one hour fifty minutes to go," I brightly suggested that we
"let's put in your new brake booster!"
(to be cont)
Now you all know I was a bit crushed that my sweetie BobD factory fresh bus died flat dead-on-the-road. I was supposed to drive to Jacksonville FL in the morning! I had a dead no-pump beautiful BobD sitting dead there in the parking space. This was messing with my psychic feng shui. It was parked facing the wall, dead. I could not leave it so abject. So, before I left for Jacksonville 365 miles away, I WD-40d the BobD's pump inlet and outlet, shook the pump vigorously to get the WD40 into the pump rollers, then used NaranjaWesty's battery to reverse-polarity-energize the pump ( +/- -/+ and switched back to correct +/+ -/-, until the pump's subtle little jerking turned into a lush spray of gasoline over the battery and my sparking wires. Wiped down NaranjaWesty's battery and engine compartment thinking to myself, "it is so nice that it is not on fire."
Installed the BobD's resurrected fuel pump into the BobD with a new filter, and the BobD started right up, right UP.
"You get to stay in the garage", I told the BobD. Left a note for Rodney The Pilot on the kitchen counter.
"Keys are in it. Feeling lucky? Take 'er for a spin."
Now, I did bad things on the way to Jacksonville in my hurry to get there after spending half the day with BobD.
a) 65-75 mph
b) maximum 434* CHT on hills "ah too bad, hey be sure to clean the carbon out of the exhaust back there"
c) huge honking Blu-Blocker clip-on sunglasses over my driving glasses
d) noise-cancelling ear buds (see where we're going here?)
e) silver socket pressed into service charging the dumbowner/smartphone
f) 18 mpg at 65-70, see "b" (not acceptable of course, richened mixture > max 413* CHT @ 14.7 mpg)
g) enjoyed very much my yellow blue-blocked experience out the windshield listening to:
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Yes - Time and a Word, Fragile, The Yes Album, Close To The Edge, Going For The One
I kept the volume down enough to just catch horns blaring. Here's what you do, drive into other people's lanes while keeping a finger on the volume button and reduce volume of your music until you can just make out their horn. If you can hear them screaming at you, the volume is a tad too low.
With gratifyingly unstressed eyeballs, I pulled into Jacksonville at 10:00PM (two hour-long phone calls required two long rest stops) and passed out in a rest stop. Had a brief consultation with exoticdvm in New Mexico, and showed up at Filthy Dub and his brand new wife's soon-to-be-vacated home. Reason I am there:
(am I allowed to dish?)
Uncle X was driving newlyweds and the bus died. Had to tow. Melted Pertronix during diagnosis due to crossed wires on the coil. Won't run. Hasn't run since wedding day, actually. We got into our best diagnostic focus and replaced the melted Pertronix with a brand new not-yet-melted Pertronix. Here is Filthy Dub installing his new Pertronix:
As I looked around, I saw what I saw.
"What did you see?"
"I saw why your bus won't run."
"What is it?"
"I can't say."
Well, I do that so people will settle in and observe and train their hopping minds to focus. This was subtle, though.
The pivot pin in the #@!&^ cheap-a$$ Brosol brazilian fuel pump had backed completely out of the fuel pump, rendering the pushrod and lever completely useless. Now why on EARTH would they sell a fuel pump with a pivot pin that had no circlips? No circlips to hold it in place as it gets hammered by a lever going back and forth 25 times a second at 55 mph.
No circlips.
The new spare Brosol fuel pump had a pivot pin with two grooves at the ends and two nice little circlips like all the original VW pumps have had since 1949. Uh duh, come on. We must warn our suppliers who sell 1600 fuel pumps to NOT SELL any WITHOUT CIRCLIPS! Don't roll the dice. Here, print this banner:
"YES, I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU'VE 'NEVER HAD THAT SORT OF PROBLEM BEFORE' BUT YOU AREN'T SELLING ME A PUMP WITHOUT CIRCLIPS ON THE PIVOT PIN." (optional > UH DUH).
Pulled the old pump, found the old pin laying there, stuck in the new pump, primed the engine with a genuine Mechanics Tool Bag Real Glass Shot Glass of gas, and she started right up and held a pretty good idle.
All this by 11:00AM. Drove around. Steering still has that nasty steering box "catch" on either side of what must be a badly dented-in worm gear at direct center. Got back to the house. Here is Filthy Dub backing up with a reverse light out:
Now what? Glad you asked. I managed to get in all sorts of trouble snooping around in the Rat's Nest® of wires under the dash. By the time I had managed to get the dangling fuse box sort of where it is supposed to reside, we had lost:
a) the other reverse light
b) right brake/turn signal light
c) all idiot lights including the turn indicator lights in instrument cluster
d) high beam indicator
But, we found a most interesting anomaly, the parking light indicator lamp was not only on, it was always on.
"It has done that since I have owned the car."
"That is why your battery dies after a few days."
I just turned the bulb in the socket and let that shut it off. No way I am tracking that down after seeing the Rat's Nest®.
After a few referrals to the Bentley manual, we got most everything back AND (this is where my smartness reely shines through) we decided to mount the fuse box where it was dangling instead of where it belonged. We used a brilliant bit of plastic busted clean off his socket set and a cardboard protector between the fuse box and the intake plenum. Here, we note the two-year-old $$.$$ chrome trim rings from Wolfsburg West are looking . . . . dodgy. Come ON!
RIGHT
LEFT
Some time around, what was it 4:10PM? Yeah, "one hour fifty minutes to go," I brightly suggested that we
"let's put in your new brake booster!"
(to be cont)