Hapy Shifting

In my last post (Hapy not Spittin Fuel), I described a stressful drive home without turbo and then losing access to my 2 lower gears. Today's post covers the install of the Gene Berg shifter, and some other little bits on the bus as well as the replacement of the throttle cable on Oliver the 1978 MGB.

 

Before I begin, especially to my union brothers and sisters, Happy International Labor Day. Employee protections were and remain hard-fought; from a legally defined "work week" to overtime pay and safer working conditions, we have our unions to thank.

 

Throttling Oliver

Gene Berg shifter

I'll start with Oliver, even though I did this cable replacement in the middle of the Hapy stuff. Recall, I moved Oliver out of the shop so the overhead door crew could install the door. At that time, I got Oliver to start, mostly by cleaning and re-gapping his spark plugs and otherwise being patient. Since Oliver does not have a stock carb set up (side draft SK Racing carb), the stock throttle cable is not an exact fit. The old cable had a much longer hard "pipe" to fit the cable through near the carb than the stock one I had ordered. I thought about simply removing the braided cable and sending it through the old sheath, but the points where the plastic sheath met the hard pipe was failing. I think the way the hard pipe was attached to the carb was a little hinky too, so the whole cable, hard pipe combination went in the bin.

 

Both the new and old cables attached to the pedal the same way: round ball on the end of the cable fits into a nook on the underside of the pedal. So, once you pass the cable through the slot, the springs on the carb effectively hold the pedal up through steady tension through the cable. The other end of the stock cable has a fitting on it which presumably fits onto the old carb with a c-clip or similar. I had to cut that off so I could thread the raw cable through the more common hole with a bolt model. Cutting the cable left wire shrapnel at the end, so it would not easily fit through the hole. Ultimately, I had to remove the actuator arm and the spring arm from the side of the carb so I could more directly feed the wire into the hole. While this was more destructive initially, I was getting nowhere trying to send a cable through a hole I could barely see.

 

One the cable was through the hole and bolted down tight enough so it would not fall off, I put the arms back, and re-added the spring. I got Boo to sit in the driver seat and move the pedal through it's full motion so I could set the depth of the hard tube and the cable length. I had other things to get after, so I did not test fire and drive Oliver. In retrospect, that may have been a missed opportunity.

 

Gene Berg Shifter

shifter diagram

I don't know when I first installed the Scat chrome shifter into Hapy. It seems like it was always there, so it may have been one of the first things I did. Back when I first bought Hapy, he did not want to go into gear at all because the shift coupling at the front of the transaxle had lost the little plastic bits. Note the picture on the right, here. In sub-component "P", there are 2 rectangular things. Those are the plastic bits which were gone when I bought the bus. If you threw the shifter in the direction of the gear you were seeking often and hard enough, the long-ish bar thing (top of sub-component "P") would move the cage (center of sub-component "P") and eventually you might find a gear. The prior owner had beaten on the original shifter so much, it wasn't straight anymore. It was literally bent. Once I got the cage resolved, the bent shifter was just too strange to use, so I bought the upgraded shifter. Or at least it was. Over 15-20 years of use, I think it slowly may have moved, though there is no facility to adjust it -or- the limited-throw bits wore down over time. Since most folks think somewhat highly of Scat products, I'll assume it wore down or moved over the years. I will say that in recent years, Hapy has predictably popped out of 2nd gear every time, and I don't remember when that started.

 

greased up

The loss of both 1st and 2nd gear on the drive home was enough for me to do something drastic. After removing the Scat shifter and discovering the rust and what looked like some wear on the plastic bits, I decided to find the Gene Berg shifter I bought a few years ago. The Gene Berg shifter is simply bad ass. It is 3 or so inches longer (Scat is 21 inches, Gene Berg is almost 25) which puts the shifter in my hand without having to bend over like I did with the Scat after adding the Sprinter seats. The picture at the top shows how high it is. One drawback: when I put it in first, I hit the rear of the cup holder. The reverse lockout is a button on the side rather than a "T handle to pull up on. I like that better too, since there is less to think about and backing up a bus requests all of the focus you can. It uses a shift plate like item "D" in the diagram above so for the more stock-familiar, this vibes well. Perhaps the most important, the attachment of the pieces has adjustment capability engineered into it.

 

I test fit everything first, and finger-threaded the supplied bolts into the respective holes, just to be sure everything would fit. Then, I took it apart and greased everything: the ball, the slides, the shift plate, and the cup the shifter tip sets into. Then, I installed it again. One thing about a test fitting is the second time around, you know how it all goes together, making the final fitting much faster. Because of the adjust-ability factored into the shifter, it was easy to wiggle the shifter and the mounting footing to get it seated squarely and threaded snug. I tested the movement of the stick and did not feel a need to adjust it. I figure after some longer test drives, I will know for sure and then execute the minor adjustments. For now, though, I fired up the engine and backed Hapy out of the shop and drove him up and back on the laneway. At this point, I have all my gears.

 

Seasonal Scrubbing

I ended my weekend of yardwork and playing on cars by giving Hapy his spring cleaning. I have documented this in the past, but in brief: I use SoftScrub bathroom cleaner and a soft brush to clean the fiberglass top. This gets all the black ick from organic material removed. Prior to this step, I will clear out the luggage rack of leaves and such. It was especially bad this year so I need to circle-back, remove the rack and clean the metal top. Once the top is SoftScrub'd, I wash the entire bus (top again) with car wash like any other car. The end-to-end process takes 2 or 3 hours, but if the sun is out and it's not too hot or cold, it is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I hope to get the luggage rack removed and the tin-top cleaned next weekend. That will also give me the opportunity to repair any part of the luggage rack which needs attention. In the meantime, I swapped the vehicles around, setting Hapy up as my daily driver and the lower mpg truck for specific-use-only. As of May 1st, regular 87 octane gas is $5.70/gallon here, and diesel is $6.20 but with the mpg difference, Hapy is less expensive per-mile.

 

Wrap

Around that work, there's the usual clearing brush, mowing lawn, etc that comes from living in a house, and spring growth. Our favorite construction contractor was over on Saturday to experiment with the south-facing doorway in the shop. After some large thinking, we are going to put in barn-door style doors, but with fiberglass so the little bit of winter light we get will make it into the building. That's it for this week. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Hapy not Spittin Fuel

I managed to get Hapy, the 1972 TDI-powered microbus, over to Justin to get the injection pump re-sealed this weekend. Today's post covers that adventure as well as a quick trip thru a K'Lack (2004 VW Jetta Wagon) issue.

 

Getting There

head seal complete

It has been 2 years since Hapy really went much of anywhere. Most of that time, he sat waiting for attention either in an unknown, but unstartable state or in pieces. Once I had him re-assembled with a new flywheel/ring gear and had a test drive, the original reason for him to have starting problems re-appeared: Injection Pump losing prime. I was able to prime the pump with a MityVac and then crack the injectors to get him running. And, in that way I took him on a short test drive, found some issues with the lights, etc. There remained many other issues, but at least I could get him running, stopping and had my lights so I could drive him an hour and 20 minutes to Justin's shop.

 

The night before our start-of-day appointment, I got Hapy out of the back and filled with B-20 biodiesel ($6.40/gal. same as dinoDiesel. Thanks, Trump). That morning, I filled up with coffee and hit the road. Most of the drive from West Beaverton to Justin's shop is on back country roads with few other drivers on an early Saturday morning and even fewer traffic lights. It was in the 50's (F low-teens C) and clear, making the drive very pleasant. At some point after I fixed the rear speakers, the stereo lost access to 12V so I drove in silence, a familiar scene for Hapy. The road was so easy, the thermostat never opened. I had the cabin heat on, so I may have been pulling just enough heat off the engine to keep the thermostat closed. Based on the UltraGauge, the engine temp was hovering around 180*F so running "cold". When I pulled into town off the country roads, I had a few cases of not finding 2nd gear. I noted that for followup later. When I arrived, Justin and I hung out for a bit before getting started. He has so many interesting projects all going at once, you have to absorb it all. I mean, who puts a TDI in an Audi TT while also putting one into a Rabbit pickup? Love that! The way he scraps discards and re-uses them for the basis of tools is pretty awesome too. He's even teaching himself TIG welding. Small crush, maybe. Okay, fine. He does do some impressive stuff.

 

Injection Pump (IP) Reseal

hammer mod perfecting IQ

Justin had encouraged me to get the seal kit from Cascade German, since they are local-to-Oregon, when we first set the apointment. I had already purchased the deluxe kit from DieselGeek. I didn't understand the difference. These 2 kits definitely vary in their intended purpose, so they have some meaningful differences. The Cascade German version is actually less expensive, but it includes all of the little seals usually replaced when a legit shop does the re-seal. The DieselGeek kit has far fewer seals (just the 2 on top and the head-to-base seal) and it is designed for the home-mechanic to re-seal the pump in their garage without removing the pump from the vehicle. The DieselGeek deluxe kit is more expensive because it includes specialty bits a car owner probably does not have, but are needed for the job. This differentiation is important and your case may lead you to the larger kit even if you do not intend to replace much more than the 3 included in the DieselGeek deluxe.

 

Once Justin discovered the gap, we made-do with the smaller kit. Justin replaced the top 2 seals first and then moved onto the head-to-base seal. Rather than use the included "retraction limiting bolt" and try to fit the new head seal over the top of it, the head was removed, and I held the guts of the pump in-place while Justin cleaned all the surfaces and installed the new seal onto the head. Once installed, he hooked up the VagCom and hammer-mod'd (link to Hammer Mod thread on TDIClub) the injection quantity (IQ). Justin was aiming for 6.0 mg/stk because the engine was cold (54*C).

 

The engine bay was pretty dirty, so lots of time was spent getting the IP clean before we began as well as afterwards when the whole engine got a cleaning. After it dried off a bit, we let the engine idle and we looked for leaks. None found. Justin did ask about how the starter was mating to the flywheel. It does sound loud, like it may not be meshing quite right. I'll need to remove and reinstall the starter and the starter adapter to see if I can get things to sit right. The original adapter and starter that I put in just worked for years. I would expect the new-also-stock starter would fit the same. Since this is a new adapter, that is actually designed for the application, versus one I dremel'd to fit, I would think it would fit better. It's a puzzler, but one I will consider carefully as I remove/reinstall (R&R) the starter to get it to hit the ring gear more cleanly.

 

Getting Home

If there is anything we have learned over the years about Hapy, its that he loves going places and really does not like going home. How many times have I left home and the road trip to 4 Peaks or some camping spot went great and the drive home was either very challenging or partially performed by a flatbed? Too many. This trip was no different. At first, Hapy ran great. The engine was responsive and stayed cool. Somewhere around McMinnville a charged air pipe popped off, leaving me running naturally aspirated the rest of the drive home. This served as yet another reminder to never leave home with Hapy without some tools. While the turbo is great for the overall power-band, its absence is really noticeable when trying to leave the line and get up to traffic speed. Now that it was about noon on an absolutely stunner of a day, the roads were busy where they had been empty a few hours before.

 

By the time I was approaching the Dundee Bypass, I was having increasing difficulty finding 1st and 2nd gear. Sometimes, one or the other would be right there. Other times, it was a "can't find it, grind it" experience. This persisted all the way home, forcing me to sometimes leave a stop line in 3rd. When you add in the no-turbo, I had some dissatisfied fellow travelers around me. I did get home, however, and I drove Hapy all the way into the shop so I can chase these issues.

K'Lack

After having something to eat, I switched over to K'Lack, the 2004 TDI Jetta Wagon with a BEW motor. It had been throwing a crank position sensor error, lighting up the check engine light (CEL), preventing it from passing smog. I had ordered a replacement from Cascade on Thursday, and it was in the morning mail on Saturday when I got home from Justin's. The removal/replacement of these is not complicated (remove bolt, unplug from harness, install is reverse), but getting to the sensor and the weird bolt head complicate things. The sensor sits right behind the oil filter on the front, when the engine installed transverse like normal. The bolt head is a 9mm 12-point. Half of my sockets are 6-point and the other half are 12's, designed, I think, for easier application onto hex bolts. In this weird case, that socket set perfectly onto the 12-point bolt head. With the right socket, short extension and ratchet the bolt comes out fairly easily. The plug end is fitted into a metal tang, but otherwise once unplugged, the whole thing can just get dropped through the gaps onto the ground.

 

To install, I plugged it in first and then covered the sensor with a rubber glove to lower it past the engine ick and then below the car. Could I have cleaned the engine bay before starting? Yes. But then I would have been lying in mud since the car was on my front lawn, not back in the shop and I didn't want to lay in a puddle. At this point, I found having another person to be your eyes is very helpful. I got under the car, un-gloved and suspended sensor in hand and had Boo tell me east-west, up down until I was able to send the sensor into the hole. By doing it in this order, the sensor wanted to be oriented such that the bolt holes lined up naturally. I sent the bolt thru, tightened with the socket/ratchet combo and I was done. Since I cleared the code we need to run a few cycles until it is ready to smog.

 

For the legal-minded, Oregon cops are interested in registration violations after years of looking the other way post-CoViD. K'Lack got a registration-violation ticket while legally parked in downtown Portland. Drivers beware.

 

Hapy Wrenching

Feeling confident, I switched back to Hapy, and re-connected the charged air hose. As I suspected, it was one of the rubber-to-metal bits. I cleaned both the outside of the metal pipe and the inside of the rubber with brake cleaner so they were more apt to stay together and then tightened the clamp down.

 

I next wanted to chase why the lower gears were sporadically missing. I checked the front of the transaxle to see if it was out of position at all. Nope. Right before Boo and I bought this house, I bought a Gene Berg shifter. The new-at-that-time seats were higher than stock, moving the approximately-stock-length Scat gear shift further away. The Gene Berg shifter is a few inches longer, so I figured there would be less leaning. I had not gotten to installing it before the house was bought and life took a turn. Anyway, at this point I looked at the Scat shifter I had installed, probably over 15 years ago and slid the vinyl boot up the shifter. The plastic bits on either side of the shifter appeared to be allowing more play than I remembered. Hmm. Then, I looked at the rest of that mechanism. It was very rusty, especially the foot that rests on the floor. I shot the bolts with Kroil and after waiting a couple of minutes, removed them with a 13mm spanner/socket combination.

 

rust under shifter

The floor under the shifter had meaningful rust to match the rust on the shifter foot. I don't know how much play was created by the plastic bits, nor how much may have been introduced by the rust. I do recall, however, that the Scat shifter instructions did not account for adjusting the placement of the shifter front/back nor left/right. When looking at the foot profile, it looks very much like it is designed to sit squarely in the oval without any adjustment at all. I don't know if this was a terribly good design, but I will be installing the Gene Berg shifter which does allow for adjusting. I cleaned up the rust dust, shot the floor and the shift-rod end with brake cleaner and got everything as clean as I could. Then, I painted the area with Eastwood's Rust Encapsulater (the new stuff is even better than the original) and called it a day. I still need to treat from below. I shot the picture on the right here as I was almost done applying the paint.

 

Wrap

Well, that's where we stand right now. I have been in and out of the shop a few times since Saturday and there is not a single drop of fuel on the floor under Hapy. So, we can close the book on the IP leak. I intend to complete the shifter swap and then R&R the starter next. I hope that will be the end of both issues, but I suspect there will be more to do than that. Then, of course, there are all the other things like a fuel level gauge, the radio, and the diesel heater just off the top of my head. There are many incomplete items on Hapy. Now that I have a mostly-inside (one doorway remains), concrete floor'd space to work, my desire to work on these cars has really kicked into a new level.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along and more next time-

Building a Shop - Doors

Ia accept that putting a garage door on your shop is barely car-content, but it is the big deal around here, and it is at least tangentially related to cars. Recall, the shop was designed with 4 openings: on the North, the big door and a person door; facing West, a barn door and facing South a to-be-determined door. I lightly described the barn door in the Ghost of GoRo. Today's post is about getting a big door for the front of the shop and all the stuff around that.

 

Before I begin, for my US readers, happy tax day. I recognize there are very curious ways this administration and his congress are choosing to allocate money, and today of all days, that "curious" feels more acute. You may not be able to influence their choices, but you can choose to vote with your wallet every day. Please direct your purchasing choices into small businesses. Those mom and pop operators are your neighbors. When you invest in them you are investing directly into your community, and not into some corporation which takes from it.

 

Measure Twice

This is so obvious and yet, this was almost my biggest mistake. When I first was designing the shop, I had the front of the shop (facing north) almost completely open for a massive door: 6 meters / 18 feet wide by 3.3 meters /10 feet tall. My thought at the time was that 6 meters would easily allow me to move 2 cars side-by-side without having to get either too deep into the shop. Like, I could have one sticking halfway out and still get a car in. This was great thinking until I decided I wanted a way to get in/out through a "man" (I say "person", but I'm not pronoun-hostile either) door. I also wanted this facing North, next to the big garage-style roll-up door. This way I could leave the big door closed and still come and go through a door with a lock on it. Consider the barn door is locked from the inside, and that was always the plan. I have no idea what the southern door will be like, but it may not have an externally-facing lock on it.

 

no wind inside

Anyway, fast-forward to after it is built and I am looking for a tracked roll-up door. After spending weeks looking for a 18' x 10' door, I have a site visit by a local door company (Overhead Door of Portland) who has a used door that big. We run the tape and sure-enough the opening is 10' high, the clearance above is adequate. Then we check the door width and it's only 16' (5 2/3m). Duh. When I added the person door, I reduced the size of the roll-up door and completely forgot. Ultimately, this saved me a bunch of money, though, because a standard residential tracked roll-up door is 5 2/3m (16 feet). When I say a bunch of money, the used door he had would have to cost me $14k US including install and an opener. The larger opening also would have pushed me into a commercial-grade door, so it would have weighed nearly double the residential door.

 

Patience Pays

open, windy inside

With the more accurate measurement, the fine folks over at Overhead Door of Portland dug into their stock of used doors. After a few weeks, they had a suitable door. Boo and I want a glass door, to maximize the light coming on for cold daytime work (think: winter weekends) and to not block overhead lights when it's open. We both also thought that a clear door would more closely approximate an old filling station look that we both had romanticals about. These glass doors, though, are less common and more expensive. The door they have is undamaged, but whoever had installed it chose to mask off the glass and then rattle-can paint the doors and rails with black Rustoleum paint. That decision would have been totally fine, had they prepared the surface for paint. At bare minimum the doors needed to be scuffed with 300-grit to 400-grit sand paper (or a red ScotchBrite pad) so the paint would have something to bite into and then wiped down. They did not and the paint did not. Instead, the paint is flaking off and is not presentable to most. For our purpose: make opening clear, yet lockable while looking old-Skool... it is perfect. We may change our minds and fix the paint, but for today, we are happy with it.

 

Car Mad Dash

Hapy's spot

As is so often the case, this was a full-on hurry up and wait. Well, really, it was more of a wait and then hurry-up. I have been looking for a door since the shop was built and now that we found one, the install was planned for less than a week later. From my prior post, you know that Oliver is against the east wall, right up against the big door opening. And, he was not running. Next to him is Hapy, barely jutting out the big opening and barely running. I needed to get both cars out the way and the lane way clear so they could get in there with the doors and equipment to get the door installed.

 

Getting Hapy out was easy: re-prime the Injection Pump with the MityVac, crack the injectors, pop the starter to a count of 5, re-tighten the injectors, start and back him out. This took less than an hour and I parked him in his longer-term designated spot where we can more easily visit and drive him. Yeah, I said visit; he's family.

 

Oliver drove!

Moving Oliver was a bigger deal, but only because I made it so. I wanted him to leave the shop under his own power. So that meant getting him running. In my last post, I described solving his fuel system. I don't know if it was insufficient patience or if I flooded the carb, but he would not start that day. A week later, and I have Hapy out of the way, I was ready to push Oliver out if I had to. First, I checked his spark plugs. They smelled like gas and were fairly black (fuel mixture probably too rich). I hit them with a wire brush and then re-set the gaps (0.033", internets recommend between 0.025" and 0.038") depending on lots of factors. I turned the key, got the fuel pump to prime and then quiet way down. At the carb with my hand, I "pumped" the accelerator a couple of times. At the wheel, I pulled the choke and tried to start him. After a few seconds, he started to act like he wanted to and after a few more tries, he fired up and held idle. This was the first time he ran since I rebuilt the carb, so an historic moment. Attempts to vary the engine speed with the accelerator pedal were fruitless, so I idled out of the shop, down the inclined gravel drive, and parked him in front of the person door. I was able to confirm that the throttle cable was junked. It would not stay on the pedal arm and then I was unable to move it consistently by hand. I'll be replacing that soon.

 

Final Prep

installers getting started

With the cars out of the way, I could get the last bits done for the door installers. I had strung outdoor patio lights around the inside of the shop, extending across the large door opening. So, half of that strand needed to come down. Last, I swept the floor which had not been really looked at since I moved the cars in last fall. With Oliver and Hapy out of the shop, I was able to really appreciate the size of my new workspace. It's really nice, and I will need to make a focused effort to leave myself room to work by not housing all of the cars inside all the time.

 

Door Install

The 2 installers from Overhead Door of Portland arrived as-scheduled around 10AM. They backed most of the way down the lane-way so the distance to carry the panels and runners was shorter. In half an hour, the doors were off the truck and positioned for installing (picture on the right). By 1130AM, 4 of the 5 door panels were installed on the runners and they were a-fixing the runners to the building. By 1PM, the door was in, the runners set, and the spring installed. Within the next hour, the install was complete, and Chris and Chase were showing us how the various controllers worked. With the door open, obviously, its almost like being outside. Well, its exactly like it was before the door was there: Full wind and misty rain on my face. Overhead, once lights are installed, the door will not block the light from reaching us beneath. That's huge. When the door is shut, the sound, wind and rain all stop. I did not expect the degree to which the air movement and sound would change. It is significant.

 

Wrap

Well, that's it for today. Next, I will be replacing the rear brakes on K'Lack (2004 Jetta TDI driven by my niece), replacing the throttle cable on Oliver and bringing Hapy over to Justin's to have the Injection Pump resealed. I don't know if any of those are really blog-post-worthy. Summer is coming, and having a safe vehicle (or a few safe vehicles) for Summer adventures starts now. As always, thanks for following along-