Exhausted

So, we have ourselves a nearly road-ready bus. I said I was going to get the exhaust put on in my last post. Add to that, the kids' mom is home from Las Vegas, so the celebration continues.

Plumb that Thing
Around 9:30 Thursday morning, the exhaust guys at Meineke started their efforts. By 11:30, they were done, and Hapy was ready. Between work and single-parenting, I couldn't pay for it until after 5 and pick it up until after the kids were in bed. The guys are Meineke were as curious about this conversion as most folks I've encountered along the way. They had the misfortune of trying to drive it, though, and they gave me warnings about the linkage. Yeah, I knew it was a little wonky, and the clutch made some horrible noise when trying to get the thing in gear. Still, they came out when I fired it up, and we all got a chuckle out of how it runs - really freakin' good. "Sounds like a bus," the guy says. He's no VeeDubber, so he meant city bus, but I took it as a compliment. He added,"careful not to pift the front end off the ground with all that torque." Hahaha... yeah, like anyone has ever said that about a street-legal bus before. Anyway, we checked the rear lights, and the ground in the passenger side tail light is disconnected: none of the light illuminate. I paid the $320 (lifetime warranty), and hopped back into my other TDI and drove off to pick up the boys.

Lookee Here
After the usual round of dinner making and clean up, assembling lunches, running the kids through showers and bedtime routines, I contacted my good friend Ed for a ride to the muffler shop. I didn't mind riding home in the sprinkling rain that morning, but I wasn't up for riding in the heavier drizzle in the dark. We fired it up (once we got there, of course), and we surveyed the install a little bit. From the rear, it almost looks stock with that cylindrical left-to-right muffler routing the exhaust out to the rear. I haven't gotten underneath yet, to see it from end to end, but it looks like a relatively simple design: from the turbo, it gently curves down and to the rear until it approaches the bellhousing where it runs straight to the rear. Once it reaches the side-to-side engine support bar, it bends right and enters the muffler. From the muffler it hits a simple 90* bend out the rear. It all looks like basic mild steel, so I'll probably remove it and shoot it with some exhaust paint to inhibit rust. I suspect the warranty only applies to the muffler, not the piping.

What Gear You In?
After the lookee-loo, we fired it up. The look on Ed's face was priceless - yeah... that's power baby. Finding reverse had always been easy, but the rest of the gears have been a little evasive. I found myself pulling out of the parking lot into traffic in 3rd. Still, he drove really nice, the brakes were nice and responsive / firm. By the time I was off the main road, I was able to find and use 1st through 3rd. There is a straight-shot street that sees very little traffic that I use to get home. For fun, I took the corner at low speed (in second) and stood on the pedal. Hapy took off like a shot. I heard the turbo spin up, rode it up a litle bit, slammed it into 3rd and stood on the pedal again. Shazam, we're off to the races! Now, I disconnected the speedometer cable, so we probably weren't going that fast, but the sheer acceleration was something I'd never felt in any bus before. It didn't feel forced either, it sounded and felt like it was business as usual for this engine - which is just flat out scary. So, add in some larger tires or a properly geared tranny and this could get crazy. I think the hard-to-find gears thing is more of a result of lack of use, and needing to get the gear oil up off the bottom and into the synchro's. We'll see.

Home Again, for now
I pulled into the driveway as the heat from the defroster was really getting warm. Now, I mean warm for a 1972 air-cooled bus (my frame of reference). The windscreen was nice and clear since the straight-shot street, but now there's tangible heat. I'll need to integrate a temp gauge so I can audit the radiator effectiveness. I can't see the TDI dashpod, so I'll either have to take it back off the road to extend all those wires, buy a water temp gauge or buy a real OBDII cable and use my laptop. I have basically no money, so I'll probably go with the gauge.
The kids' mom arrived this afternoon after 2 weeks in Las Vegas. Between the boys staying at friends' houses after school, and my parents dropping by, I have been able to work. Still, being the only parent in one town while working in another is not easy. Especially when you don't want to use after-care (day-care).

I won't be able to do much on the bus over the next couple of months. I won't go into details, but Hapy and I won't be near each other much, so there is only so much I can do remotely. I'll be working through my bad-ground engine harness with a multi-meter when I can. Anyway, after all this recent progress, this blog may fall silent, or take a departure from the usual "bus progress" theme. It seems a shame, but that's how these things go. I greatly appreciate your interest and feedback (both as comments and via email), and I will post as interesting things happen.

pictures:
top - the down-tube from the turbo (unpainted)
middle - view from the back see how the muffler looks kinda stock-ish
bottom - from inside the engine compartment along the engine. That's the serpentine on the right, the engine support bar on the left and the muffler in the middle