starter follow-up

First, the westyventures auto-tranny adapter fits perfectly for the 002 (early bay manual) transaxle. I was able to slide the adapter into place, and physically connect the starter to the adapter. It seemed like everything lined up, gears-wise, but it was hard to tell from underneath. I am going to have another go at it before final connection to make sure.

There are a couple of things to note. On the original bay window bus, the upper starter bolt runs from inside the engine compartment through a tab on the block, through the bellhousing and out to the starter. On the engine compartment end, it has what's called a captive nut which is a semi-circular end that hangs up against the block so it doesn't turn when you're putting the nut on the other end. This works great for the original starter. It doesn't work at all for the adapter. The adapter has a small counter-sink hole, but it isn't large enough for a full-sized nut. The counter-sink was designed for the vanagon upper bolt which is an Allen-head bolt that runs from the starter side through the bellhousing.

If you are going to use this adapter with a TDI starter on an original 002 with an aircooled engine, you will need a vanagon upper starter bolt (over-length) and a fitting nut. The bolt will go in from the starter side through to the engine compartment and the nut will thread on from that side.

In my case, where I'm using an a Kennedy adapter to mate a TDI engine to the 002, there isn't a captive nut. Instead, there is a stud threaded into the adapter. I covered some of this in this post from last Summer. To make the adapter fit, the stud needs to be pulled and replaced with a vanagon-style Allen-head bolt. I didn't have one handy, so I'll be finishing this when I do.

My sister and nephew are visiting from SoCal this week, and my other sister (with family) will be visiting next week. Add a camping trip at the end, and not much progress will be made for a little while. I hope to have some idle moments to start filing the sharp edge of the hole where the engine lid will go. This is lower priority than lots of other things, but with the engine mount work in mid-stream, I don't want to move it or otherwise get something started that would slow that progress one minute. I probably won't post again until I get back from Lake Billy Chinook unless some news breaks.