Inch by Inch

Row by Row... gonna make that westy go.

After that last posting, I had Monday off. I was planning to drive my son T to camp, but last minute his mom chose to car-pool to camp, so I had the day with my other son, C. C spent most of the day playing outside in the neighborhood with his friends (checking in on me from time to time), so I suddenly had a bunch of time to finish things up... or so I thought.

Ignition control
After digging through the wiring diagrams and internet advice, I settled on my own way of dealing with triggering the ignition. I decided that the best way to pretend the key was turning was to connect the circuits with relays that are triggered from the original switch. To make this possible, I took apart the NewBeetle ignition switch. This is actually much easier than you'd think. 2 tiny bolts and the switch mechanism comes apart. This allowed me to test which pin showed resistance when the key was turned. From this, I drew a diagram (which was then confirmed with my friend's drawing). With 2 Radio Shack relays, I wired up the corresponding sockets in the ignition switch plug (in the main harness) so that when the bus ignition is turned to run, the "15" circuit, the lights circuit and the warning buzzer circuits are all fed power from "30". When the bus key is turned to start, the 50b circuit and the "15" are powered from the "30".

Grounding
There are many many ground wires in the TDI engine stuff. Many, if not most, wire together into big bundles with ring terminals on them. Many wires, though, were cut as I removed chunks of the harness, so I had to wire these back into the mix. Also, there were the grounds for the 2 relays that I added above. I simply drilled a hole in the body inside the westy closet and threaded a bolt through from the underside (above fuel tank on driver side). The ring terminals dropped onto the bolt and I threaded a nut on top. Easy peasey.

Coolant Shmoolant
I went back to the engine bay to admire my work and mess around with the vacuum (move the ball so there's more room for the air intake) when I noticed that the bracket that I fab'd for holding the coolant bottle was broken. Me bad welder. Rather than grid it all down and re-weld it, I cut 2 new tabs from some 1" steel bar I had lying around and riveted them into place. I figured that if they start to get wobbly, I can always lay down some weld along the edges. While I had the bottle out, I decided to get the temperature sensor in the coolant-to-radiator send line rotated and tied into the electrical system. So, I did that too. Funny how just looking at something creates a few hours of work.

Now, I feel like I'm where I said I was in my last post: very close. I have ordered some intake rubber so I can tie-in the MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor and an air filter. I thought I had an air filter solution, but it won't fit, so I'm looking at ordering a cheap import cone filter for now. We'll see. Meanwhile, I've made contact with my old friend Justin to come over for the initial firing of the engine. We should be ready for that in a couple of weeks. I figure I need some time to get the fluid in, but also to get the intake completed. I'd like to clean up the wire mess in the westy closet, but now that I have a cover for it, I doubt that will ever happen. I will at least verify the relays and fuses before I start it up though.

I'll post again when there's some thing interesting gonig on. I'm off camping tomorrow night with C, so I don't think the bus will get much of a look-see until next week.

Pictures:
top - the inside of the ignition switch, showing the pins
middle - my diagram for what pin corresponds to which slot in the ignition plug
bottom - the inside of the westy closet with the cover in place. the 2 wires are for the NB dashpod. There's another one (not visible in the picture) of the OBDII plug.