Fear, Loathing and Driving in Circles

2 items today.  Broken alarm on my Jetta, and test driving the bus.  Its a beautiful day and I want to get out into it, so this post may not be as tidy as some of my others.  Apologies in advance.

Fear and Loathing

I have the boys this week, and that brings a different rhythm and a very different schedule around the house.  They enjoyed a camp at the local Park&Rec except for Thursday.  Which is where our tale begins.  I've had on-and-off problems with the door lock on my Jetta over the years.  3 years ago, I took it to my good friend Justin to fix the door switch.  The computer couldn't register when the door was open or shut, and thought it was open all the time.  This caused the puddle light to stay on all the time and run down the battery.  It eventually caused that annoying door-ding to go off while I was driving, etc.  Well, he tore the door don, pulled out the switch cleaned the snot out of it, and re-installed.  Problem solved.  Until recently.  Thursday, to be exact.  I couldn't disarm the alarm with the key.  Triple-A came out with a locksmith and he couldn't do it.  He said "take it to a dealer.  My guys tried to fix one of these once and it took 4 of us 4 hours".

Fear.

Loathing.

I called work, took the day off, and set to fixing it myself, with the help of VWVortex and my Bentley.  In just over 2 hours, I had the door in pieces, the switch cleaned and tested and re-assembled.  I do want to cover the testing process a little bit since this isn't documented anywhere that I could see.  The door lock mechanism has an 8-pin plug receiver on it (male pins sticking out of mechanism surrounded with a plastic ring for the plug to snap into).  After checking the electrical diagram in the Bentley, the #7 pin is ground.  Frankly, it wasn't clear which was the signal from the Bentley.  So, I figured when the switch was engaged, it either was set to ground when the door was open or set to 12V when the door was open.  I just needed to determine which was the signal pin.  How?  I tested connectivity between pin #7 and all 7 of the remaining pins each time I passed through a cleaning.  In the end, the #8 pin is the signal pin, and it goes to ground when the switch is open (IIRC).

Knowing this, I can think through a means of testing that circuit, and cleaning the switch without tearing the door apart every time.  I say that because I know this will happen again.  The switch is located under the locking mechanism, so dirt and grease get into the switch eventually.  This causes the switch to no longer make contact, fouling the signal.  Perhaps this could be solved simply by boring a hole near the switch so cleaner can be shot into the switch from the outside.  Sealing the hole with a rubber bit would keep dirt and water from getting in, but this would make the whole thing much more maintainable.

the Rounder We Go, the Faster We Get

I test drove the bus yesterday.  After struggling to get him going, and spending an hour trolling web sites for clutch engagement hints, I think it was again just a case of lack of movement.  Figure he hasn't moved since April, and even then it was just from a trailer into the garage.  Yesterday, though, he got a little workout, test-track style.  I drove him around and around the same loop of streets (right turns, so anti-NASCAR style) until his temperature got up into where the thermostat should open.  Worked.  I got him up to 185* and he sat there for a full loop.  The temp fluctuated up and down after that, but steadily climbed.  I don't think the fans kicked on, but I wasn't sure.  Rather than risk troubles, I parked him and noticed the coolant was leaking from the same hose-connection.  Drat!  I tightened the connection until I couldn't tighten no more and the leak stopped.  I topped off the coolant (and some distilled water), and I'm ready to test again.  He drove very well.  Peppy, and not nearly as loud as I expected.  Remember, he has no roof, so there's air-noise there, and the windows were all down.  Still, I could hear the "tink-tink" of the turn signal.  I think we have a winner.

Ed and Toby are headed over today to help me any my boys (T&C) put on the new pop-top.  Its gonna be a hot day, so I need to prep as much as I can to reduce the time we need to be hefting that top in the heat.  That means getting off this PC and digging into the bag of parts Toby gave me when I bought the top.  If they're all laid out, and I have some idea where they're supposed to go ahead of time, this could go a little faster.  Still, its gonna be quite an undertaking.  I'll take pictures and post on it soon.

Thanks for following along-

pictures:
top - driver door in pieces just before I removed the lock mechanism.
middle - test driving, "view from the bus" :)
bottom - the UltaGauge showing 186.8*, near the end of the drive