Hapy Runs Again

Picking up where I left off last time, we had Hapy mostly in one piece, needing coolant. His exhaust was still in pieces, rear bumper on the ground and he had not started since June of 2024.

 

Coolant

full moon down the street

There is really no adventure here, but in the interest of being thorough, I topped off Hapy's coolant with some G40. I worked air bubbles out of his system by squeezing hoses, but they won't really fully work themselves free until the engine is running. So, after a couple more top-offs, I called it good and capped the overflow and coolant bottles.

 

Exhaust

The not-my-favorite, too-small-diameter, cheap exhaust installed on this engine all those years ago went back on. This was not my first choice, but I want Hapy running, so I'll circle-back on a new exhaust later. The old one came apart where the piping enters the muffler. I think the cheap muffler failed allowing the section of pipe to which the exhaust "downpipe" (we'll call it that: it's the pipe that leads from the turbo, but it does make it sound awfully grand) was welded to fall out of the muffler body. The weld is a good 4 inches from the end of the pipe which clearly fits inside the muffler body and sets inside an inner pipe within. I regret not taking a picture here; apologies.

 

ShadeTree mechanic'ing

So, I hung the muffler body by the support hook and then set to attaching the downpipe. There is one stud attached to the turbo that the 3-holed flange hangs on. Then, you swing the rest of it into place, square the gasket and send the other bolts (with washers) through. A 13mm spanner is needed for the lower bolt, but the other 2 can be approached with a socket. With the muffler swinging on its mount and the downpipe firmly a-fixed, I set the pipe into the muffler and literally hammered the muffler into the pipe with a rubber mallet. These parts will easily work themselves apart again, if I didn't do something. So, I went full shade-tree, and added a 1" angle bracket, screwed into the muffler and the pipe to hold it together. The picture on the right, here, tells the tale. Not a proud moment but that will all go to the landfill / recycler eventually.

 

Bumper

Feeling confident that Hapy would be a runner again very soon, I installed the rear bumper / tow hitch component. I detailed the original install of the tow hitch in Bus Tow Hitch. Re-install is not nearly as involved. 15mm socket needed. I set the hitch onto the TravisJack and lifted it close to where it would eventually sit and then balanced on the TravisJack while I set bolts. I fingered-on the left (driver) side and then the right (passenger) side, taking care not to drop the unit off the jack and onto me. I discovered that the exhaust pipe leaving the muffler hung in the way, but a solid kick with my boot resolved it without causing any damage to anything. Just needed some sudden blunt force. Once all 6 bolts were finger tight, I set the bumper where I wanted it depth and parallel-to-the rear-wise and torqued them down.

 

Injection Pump Prime

electrical connection cleaner

Any time I let Hapy sit undriven for a while, the injection pump loses prime. I believe this is because of a failing seal, but it's the one that's much harder to get to (and I don't have on-hand). So, I have let that sit to be solved another day. Enter the mighty MityVac. Since I disconnected the large fuel filter for the flywheel replacement, I was unsure if that filter was completely full, so I started with the line which enters the injection pump, moving to the return side of the pump next. This is relatively straightforward: disconnect the fuel line, apply vacuum with the MityVac (using the collection bottle between the pump and the fuel line, of course) until the collection bottle consistently gets fuel. Then, remove the vacuum contraption and reconnect the line. For the return line, I also clamped the return line from the injectors to the pump so I did not lose vacuum through them. Once the pump was full, I cracked the hard lines at the injectors with a 17mm spanner. This last bit of priming needs to be done by turning the ignition and counting to 5. Well, that's how I did it. When I returned to the engine compartment, each of the 4 injectors had some fuel sitting on top where the hard line connected. I snugged them back tight.

 

DeOx-it D5

Before I ran to the cab to give the engine a try, I wanted to make sure all of the plug-in bits were set. So, I went around the top of the engine, disconnecting, shooting-DeOxit D5 into the connectors and clicking them back together. This served 2 functions. First, a simple survey of the top of the engine allowed me to see if I had missed anything. Second, every electrical connection was confirmed a good-click connection and it was cleaned/deoxidized for a better connection. Having done this, and it only taking literally a minute, I intend to include a similar final survey when doing top-side maintenance going forward. Its so easy, and removes many possible variables to failures.

 

And Then It Happened

At this point, I felt that I had done everything I could to set up for a successful first start since June of 2024. I put the trans-axle into neutral turned the key to run and saw the familiar lights. With an inhale, I turned the key to start and after about 3 seconds he fired up. I didn't expect immediate, since fuel still needed to get pushed down into the injectors, but he started well and ran strong, arriving at a comfortable idle almost immediately. I left him run for a while, sitting in my shop in neutral while I checked for leaks and drips. There were none, which was little short of a miracle.

 

I thought about giving him a little test drive, but I have not solved for the electrical cord for the FrostHeater yet. Curious, though, I tried to ease him into gear, but he wouldn't. Knowing that he easily moved in and out of gear when the engine was not running, I concluded that the clutch cable needs adjusting.

Clutch Adjustment

This adjustment took a little bit of effort, but with a thicker spacer where the Bowden tube meets the mount on the transaxle, and another spacer on the adjuster, I was able to get the clutch to engage and disengage properly. The Bowden tube needs a curve in it to reduce clutch chatter, so this was needed regardless. The fact that I needed a spacer on the adjuster tells me that the cable that I replaced.. jeez.. almost 20 years ago... may be stretching. This is often a warning that the cable will fail soon. So, time to order a replacement.

I used a Velcro ties to hold the FrostHeater cable up and out of the way. But, before I wrapped it up, I tried the FrostHeater, and I think it might be broken. I'll have to do some research, but I expected the unit or at least the top hose to warm up to the touch a little bit. I did not notice any warming, so that effort may have been for nothing after all. Again, I will look into it and I may get a replacement unit, but I'll be pretty bummed if it was really only used a couple of times before it got damaged.

Here's a video of him running, probably 3 minutes after his first start in like 18 months.

 

 

 

I noticed that the rear lights were acting all weird, but a different kind of weird than usual after messing with the battery. So, I did not want to risk a drive-about. It seems like every time I touch the battery, the tail lights short-out such that stepping on the brakes completes an unexpected circuit. That's the usual. This time, the reverse lights were lit up and the blinkers were acting all strange, but only the rear. I think I may have done something with the reverse lights, like reversing the plugs when I wired up the switch, but I ran out of daylight before I could get after it. I'll diagnose and attempt to fix it next time. 

Thanks, as always for following along, and I'll post with any test-drive observations, and other improvements as they happen. At this point, I am thrilled that Hapy self-starts and can move around again--

Hapy Gets a FrostHeater

Today, I nearly complete the re-assembly from the flywheel (well, ring gear, really) replacement that has been an open effort since US Independence Day. I had to order a clip to hold the coolant temperature sensor in the coolant outlet flange, so this post picks up where I left off after placing that order. Before I begin, hapy belated GroundHogs Day or Imbolc, if you're a little less western in your seasonal outlook. Either way, there's 6 more weeks of winter because Spring Equinox is still 6 weeks away no matter what a Pennsylvania rodent sees. Anyway...

 

Some History 

installed

For background, Hapy was having increasing trouble starting over the past 2 years. I thought I was getting poorly manufactured starters because every time I replaced one, he would be okay to start for a few times. That was until the last couple, including a new highly-recommended starter from IDParts and a fresh local rebuild of the original TDI starter by a very reputable rebuilder. I concluded the teeth on the "ring gear" or in my case the teeth on the flywheel since this flywheel was one formed unit, had broken off enough that the starter teeth could not engage. This started a path that started with removing the engine-transaxle on my falling-into-pieces driveway, having the transaxle fall off a jack and popping off a flange, hauling Hapy in a sketchy way back to the shop, and finally, now, almost completely reassembled. When this saga completes, he would have been not running since July of 2024 (when we drove home from the final 4Peaks Music Festival).

 

FrostHeater

Frostheater is a vendor who uses a widely available Zerostart 3309040 coolant heater with hoses and brackets for a custom fit for various makes and models. If you have not tried one and are tired of cycling your glow-plugs multiple times before you can start your diesel in the winter, I suggest giving them a look. The unit Frostheater uses looks to be the top of the line from Zerostart in terms of build, capacity and cost. There are plastic other brands, and block heaters that are effectively a glue-on heating pad, but I have found these FrostHeaters to be really effective. From what I can tell, there are no moving parts. By placing the unit near the lowest point of the oil cooler loop the unit draws colder coolant from the oil cooler and the warmed coolant flows up through the upper bib into the head. That rising heated coolant then puts pressure on the coolant in the block to move into that vacuum, through the oil cooler and the loop completes. A few years ago, I installed a Frostheater into a 2004 VW Jetta Wagon (K'Lack). It worked great. We sold K'Lack to our niece a few months later, and she never used the heater. So, when we had to do a major timing belt and cam shaft maintenance, OldPoopie removed the FrostHeater, and restored the original coolant line which I left in place when I installed the Frostheater. The Frostheater and related hoses went into a box for future Hapy consideration.

 

Coolant Temperature Sensor

#6 in diagram

Before I get too far ahead of the story, I installed the coolant temperature sensor and retaining clip first. That sentence is easy to type, but the actual install is very unpleasant. In Hapy, the coolant outlet flange sits behind the fuel tank and barely above the top of the body cross-support that also contains the center-mount for the transaxle. So, there is no way to insert the clip from below, it must go in from above. Directly above the insertion point for the temperature sensor, however, is the to-the-heater side of the coolant outlet flange, leaving a 1/4" or so to fit the clip. Since the orientation of the clip is straight  up and down, there is not enough room to simply slide it in. Of course, let's not forget that you can't actually see anything because it is all on the front side of the engine. For the ALH-TDI engine install into the bay-window bus, I believe this is the single issue that challenges the install. It is minor, in the grand scheme, but it is still highly unpleasant when you need to replace this sensor.

 

So, how do we do this? With a fingernail, I find the slot on the far side (front) of the flange where the one side of the clip will go, and send one "leg" of the clip into that slot while holding the sensor firmly in place. The clip will flex hard, and the inner "leg" of the clip needs to bend somewhere while the first notch of the clip is slid in, I found that having it flex away from the flange (towards the sensor) gave me something to work with. Once the clip is most of the way down and it seems like the clip can't possibly flex any more, push the flexed inner "leg" towards the flange until it clicks into the hidden slot. I spent a couple of hours wrestling with this, and broke a clip along the way, but this method does work. These clips are inexpensive, so buy several when you need to install one. Also, I found it much easier to access the coolant flange from the driver side (the sensor side) if the charged air hose is removed.

 

FrostHeater Install

where fits FrostHeater

I could have stayed on target at this point, filled the system with coolant and started test firing the engine. In fact, I try to follow that pattern more recently: finish what you started, then do the next thing. In this case, I had already lost the coolant from just below the outlet flange and above. I figured swapping out one hose for 2 with the coolant heater was not a significant scope increase when compared to the effort to open the system to add the heater later. I figured adding it later could be years away.

 

All of the install drawings and instructions I was able to find gave very model-specific directions. I was able to determine through loosely related searches that the life of the heater is significantly extended if it does not suffer the constant vibration of being attached to the engine block. So, I looked for a place along the right side of the engine bay where it would be low enough to be nearly the lowest point relative to the engine block while still being reachable by the hoses I had on-hand. That area has a small wire bundle, the main 12V line and the diesel fuel lines, so my placement will need to be careful, but there is a section a few inches front-to-back where it could go. With that general placement decided, I shifted to hoses.

 

The BEW TDI hoses that were part of the FrostHeater kit are not an exact fit for my early ALH TDI. The top hose (red line in the drawing on the right), which runs from the top of the heater into the head hose bib which protrudes on the oil cooler side of the engine just below the coolant outlet flange (#11 in drawing), had an extra bend at the far end that I trimmed off. I felt that the extra bend made the hose want to have a large arc which would have created a hard-to-manage air pocket -or- it was a kinking risk, reducing the coolant flow. The lower hose that runs from the lower bib on the oil cooler to the lower bib on the heater simply would not work for where I could install the heater and still use the upper hose. So, I decided to reuse the hose I had originally running from the oil cooler to the head for the lower hose from oil cooler to heater (blue line in drawing).

 

viewed thru top hatch

Now, we get to hard-mounting the heater to the engine bay. The BEW install bracket on top of the heater unit was oriented to mount to the left side of something. I don't remember what. But the bracket could be easily removed with a 7/16" socket and flipped over, aligning the bracket for a right-side install. Flipping the bracket also placed the heater about an inch lower and set the angle of the bracket against the lip of the engine bay, offering some additional support. With the hoses attached, the heater unit had a smaller range of motion for deciding where to mount it without putting stress on the hoses. Still, I was able to find a spot where the bundle of wires and everything else would not get bound beneath the bracket, and marked it with a sharpie. I planned for and then drilled for a M6 rivnut. The M6 was considerably smaller than the original, but the heater is super light and I was fairly sure that bolt was designed to go into a pre-existing hole. I say "planned for" because once I got the hole drilled, there was no way I was going to be able to fit the hand-riveter into the engine bay and set the rivnut. So, instead, I simply sent the bolt through and nutted from behind like most things. It is still a M6 bolt, using washers, of course, just no fancy riv-nut. So, to remove, I will need 2 wrenches rather than one. Not a big deal.

 

Fill 'er Up

from behind approx level

With the cooling system seemingly buttoned up, it was time to add coolant and burp out the air bubbles. This is where my effort ran out of supplies: no G40 coolant on hand. I added some water to confirm there were no leaks, and after shifting the upper hose clamp on the FrostHeater, there were not any. In the picture on the right, here, you can see how well tucked up and out of the way it is, even though it is below the oil cooler. Note the dry, albeit stained, concrete floor underneath. No leaks.

 

I still need to solve for the routing of the electrical cord so it can be reached relatively easily on a cold day, but far enough out of the way that it is not subjected to flying gravel and road debris. At this point, I am looking at tucking it up behind the right rear wheel, under the battery tray and holding it in place with a strip of cable-management Velcro.It might be time to consider mud flaps back there to help protect the cable from tire kick up.

 

Last, when I removed the exhaust at the start of this project, it came apart where the pipe meets the muffler. To be honest, I was never terribly pleased with the exhaust that was put on there. But, it did last 15 years, so I can't complain too much. Still, I have a 2" exhaust kit that is a bunch of straights and turns that I intend to eventually cobble together into a better exhaust. I think, to get Hapy on the road, I will put the existing, falling apart system back in. Then, I can plan for the 2" exhaust as a near-future improvement.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along, and I intend to get coolant this week and get Hapy running next weekend.  

 

Hapy Re-Assembly Continues

First, thanks for following along. I know blogs have fallen far out of favor, with videos and such being the preferred means for getting information. I can't watch videos at work, but I can read, so for me, this is still viable. There's an old saying about not having a face for video, or a voice for radio, you can still print. That's me. Besides, I barely have time to do my thing and write about it, much less shoot and produce video. I don't know how those content producers get any sleep, especially the ones who aren't making any money at it, which, lets be honest, that's most of them. More power to them, and I greatly appreciate their efforts. When I finally wind down at night, I love me some car-fixin videos.

 

So, where were we? Oh yeah, Hapy was almost assembled. Well, his engine and transaxle were mated and they were mounted to the bus. That's the fun, exciting, sexy part. What's left is everything else. I stayed under the bus and finished everything there first before getting after the from-above stuff. I didn't take any pictures, mostly because with all the extra layers simply moving around under the bus is a challenge.

 

Transaxle Finish

I started at the front and worked by way backwards. This started with the nose-mount. At some point when the transaxle was removed, one of the mounting bolts broke off inside the threaded body mount. I know I need to resolve this, and practically every time I get under the bus, I shoot that broken-off bolt with some penetrating oil. I believe the front mount carries very little actual weight, but it does make sure the transaxle remains aligned. I gotta get that bolt out and replaced, but not today. With the one bolt in, I connected the grounding strap. I slid to the left side and connected the Bowden tube and clutch cable. I make a point of leaving bolts partly threaded into where they go so (a) I don't lose them and (b) so I know where they go when I return to a project 6 months later. This made installing the Bowden tube just the usual challenge and not accentuated with a bolt search first. To make the threading of the butterfly nut on the end of the cable easier, I prop up the clutch pedal and then put vice-grips where the cable meets the threaded end. Lots of tightening later, I then test the play of the pedal and slide back under a few times to make sure the pedal has an inch or so of travel before the pedal meets resistance.

 

The last thing on the transaxle is the reverse light plug. In my efforts to install, I smashed the reverse light plug quite a bit. Perhaps this happened when the transaxle fell of the jack this past summer. Hard to know. Anyway, with needle-nose pliers I straightened them out. The leads, have been in the same position for so many years that they were already pre-oriented for the right spots to plug in. 

 

Rear (Anti-)Sway Bar 

Sliding further rearward, I got after the rear sway bar. I will again mention how helpful this bar has been for handling, especially in a strong cross-wind. I will also stress how important it is to have it out of the way for a transaxle R&R. I raised the center of the bar with the TravisJack so I could use both hands on the various mounts. I made sure to put a small smear of clear, hi-temp grease (not black axle grease) on the hard bushings, finger-threaded everything and then nutted every thing down. The grease extends the life of the hard bushings, by reducing the direct-wear of hard bar twisting against them. I had not greased these previously, but we really have not run more than a few hundred miles since I put this bar on.

 

Starter

Now we're getting near the end of the below-the-bus stuff, with the starter going in. With the newer starter adapter, with the studs to hang the starter on, the install is much easier. It really is as easy as popping on there and nutting down with a 17mm socket. The top nut can be a challenge to reach, but the rest of it is easy. Pop on the 12V send from the battery and the 12V send-to-front onto the main post, nut down with a 14mm. Last, pop on the starter trigger. Done. Next!

from warmer summer days

Before sliding out, I hooked up the ground from the right side of the engine to the frame.

 

Fueling

For the most part, I left the fuel system in-tact. Right now, I start to feel the advantages of not pulling the motor all the way out of the engine bay. All I did to enable this job was remove the big Caterpillar fuel filter from the frame, and drape it on the engine. So, a couple of bolts later, the fuel system is back together, hopefully holding prime.

 

Cooling

Similar to the fueling system, I minimally disconnected the cooling system. So, I thought it would be just as easy. I lifted the overflow bottle and noticed the bottle was low, and could hear splashing noise coming from the driver side. I lowered the bottle and the steady stream stopped, so clearly there was a breach up higher in the system, and not a breech in the radiator cooling lines or something that would have potentially cost me all of the coolant. Sure enough, the coolant temperature sensor that plugs into the coolant outlet flange was loose and the c-clip was no where to be seen. It is highly likely that the clip was lost last Summer. At this point, I ordered a replacement, and moved on, but not without laughing at how, again, the coolant outlet flange bit me again. 

 

Charged Air

All I removed from the charged air system were the 2 silicone elbows that connect the inter-cooler to the system. Then, the inter-cooler can be moved out of the way for the work. The silicone elbows are held in-place with large clamps that require a special tool (or lots of patience with channel-lock pliers). I used both. Once complete, I noticed that the little blower fan I have on the inter-cooler was barely clinging to the inter-cooler so I fixed that with some new zip-ties. I intend to one day replace the air-to-air inter-cooler with an air-to-water system, reducing overall inbound air temperatures and freeing up some engine compartment space.

 

This was as far as I could really go without that little clip. So, this is where I stopped while waiting for them to arrive from ECS Tuning. While waiting for the coolant temperature sensor c-clip to arrive, I put the battery on the charger. Next time, we'll get after that little clip and whatever other adventures we uncover.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along-