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- 

 

Hapy Re-Assembly

I have been waiting to do this post until after Hapy was completely back in one piece, but after many hours and days out there, he is still not quite together. Still, seems like as good a time as any to update, and, like seems to happen so often, this got long, so this is going to get split out. Perhaps he will be in one piece by the time I get the next post done. Anyway, I left off last time after having moved Hapy from the sloped and badly cracked driveway into the shop. That was in early October. With extreme work expectations, I had very little free time, so there he sat until winter break (mid-to-late December).

 

Time to Lean, Time to Clean

engine in, oriented

First, I moved the ATV jack with my wooden cradle under the engine and supported the engine. I started by removing the ratchet-straps I had used to hold the front of the engine to the frame and the axles from dragging on the ground. Then, I removed the rear mount, support tower and cross-bar. Last, I removed the rear tow-hitch / rear bumper assembly.

 

I was on a cleaning adventure, so I cleaned the engine bay and the parts I had just removed with de-greaser. Then, I painted those parts and the underside of the bus's rear end and lower engine bay with Eastwood's rust converter. I felt this set the stage for a less filthy job. Since I failed to clean the engine, however, I was only half right. But, the parts which were painted look really good now and I hope the rust growth is at least slowed, if not stopped, by the application of the rust converter. As they say "rust never sleeps" so it will remain on the inspect-every-time list regardless.

 

Transaxle Together

output flange going on

We start our assembly adventure by just returning the transaxle back to its state before I removed it. Recall that during my efforts to get the transaxle and engine to mate on the cracky driveway, the transaxle awkwardly fell off a small jack and onto the concrete, causing the left (driver in US) side output flange to pop off. This was what put the re-assembly effort into dead stop last Summer. After getting some advice, a new plastic cover and a few packets of grease from a shop around the way, I again did nothing about it for weeks. Work has been all-consuming this year, did I mention that? Anyway, continuing my cleaning frenzy, I cleaned everything (except the engine, it seems): the transaxle, the various parts, the area I was going to work in, my tools... you get the point. The little c-clip that was responsible for holding the flange to the transaxle was a little bent from it's rapid extraction by the driveway. The shop owner suggested that the original clip was higher quality than the EMPI stuff on the market now and encouraged me to flatten/fix that clip. So I did, with a vice and a hammer. With the mating points all clean, and the old little plastic cover gone, re-attaching the output flange, setting the c-clip and then setting the new plastic cover actually took as long to do as it just took to type. I was stunned it was that easy and felt rather stupid for avoiding this for, like, 6 months.

 

While I was there, I also took the shop owners other advice about removing the throw-out bearing, greasing the slide and re-installing the throw-out bearing. While the parts were apart, I hit the teeth on the output shaft with a wire brush, getting all the gunk out of the teeth. With the transaxle now back in one piece, I set it on a big sheet of cardboard and slid it under the bus, from the rear around the left side of the engine and over the rear sway-bar lying on the ground. 

 

I will make an aside about the rear sway-bar here. While it is great for handling, it is awful for getting the engine/transaxle in and out. It really is great for handing, though, especially in windy conditions. Simply disconnecting the frame mounts and letting it hang on the ground, leaving the shock mount ends connected, makes for a tall, virtually uncross-able, speed-bump for your floor jack. In the future, when I (and I suggest any reader who has the rear sway-bar) remove my transaxle again, I will completely remove the rear sway-bar from under the bus, leaving the space completely clear.

 

Tranny Meet Diesel

strapped to rotate

With the transaxle on the ground under the bus, I set to mating it to the engine. Right here is when I wish I'd remembered a few things:

1- while you can still interact with your transaxle, put the little cage on the shifter rod that comes out the front. I didn't and while it still isn't done yet I have already spent an hour trying to get the grub screw to thread in after the transaxle is already installed. Word to the wise: do this beforehand.

2- that shifter rod goes OVER the rear main frame tube. I don't know what it's real name is, but you need to put that rod over the tube before you try to put the transaxle into place. I forgot, mated the engine:transaxle and then had to do it again because I could not get the engine far enough back to get the shift rod over the tube. Total facepalm. Lost hours facepalm.

 

I am going to draft on this moment and drop a placeholder for consideration: Cutting in a removable rear valence like the earlier bus's had. I know the engineers made the fixed, permanent valence for structural integrity. Any other 1972 and later bus might still require it. For that matter, this bus may still require it. My bus, my risk ; I encourage others to not follow this advice without giving it some serious thought and even then, ask friends. My bus has 2 additional side-to-side heavy bars bolted into the side frames: one for the rear engine mount and one for the rear tow hitch. Both of these are heavy steel bars bolted in separately from each other. I submit that if I cut the rear to have a removable valence, I would suffer no structural loss. So, I think the next time I need to remove the engine, I will give this serious thought. How I do it so it doesn't look trash will be the fun part.

 

Anyway, once I got the shift rod over the tube, I set the transaxle on the "race" jack I got from our dearly departed brother-in-law, Travis (and named it accordingly). With the transaxle easily balancing on the Travis I was able to get the output shaft of the transaxle to align with the clutch. It is noteworthy that I did not use the "small" jack the transaxle fell off of this time; the big pad on the Travis is way more stable. I got the 2 to mate and threaded in 4 bolts to snug them together: 2 on the very bottom, one just above the clutch throw-out arm and one which threads through the starter mount.

 

Central Mounting

With the engine and transaxle as one large and heavy assembly, I needed to get it aligned with the 2 central mount holes: the 2 which pass through the ears on the top rear of the transaxle. I believe this mount handles the lion's share of the weight. The left side aligned fairly easily (20 minutes of wrestling) but it took a couple of hours of fighting the right side. I could not remember having such a hard time reaching and seeing. With a shrug, I went to put things away and noticed that I could not lower the overhead engine lid I'd cut in all those years ago. It was bopping on the intake. I realized that the engine and transaxle were clocked for an upright install, not a "stock" orientation (same tilt as native install in a Jetta or NewBeetle) as I had before. I had mated the engine and transaxle wrong. I called it a day, and took a long shower.

 

For Clock's Sake

nearly buttoned below

I have some of my best (and sometimes worst) ideas in the shower. I figured that I could put a ratchet strap around the front of the engine, hooking the ends on the frame like I had it when I moved the bus, and use the webbing as a cradle for rotating the engine, re-clocking it against the transaxle. Suspending the weight of the engine on some webbing was not going to be enough so I put in the rear engine mount cross bar and tower. Then, I connected the engine mount to the engine, letting the body-side of the mount float free. As an extra precaution, I moved the ATV jack and cradle under the engine and raised it so it was just below the engine. Then, I put the ratchet strap in place and cranked it down as snug as I could. Feeling a little anxious, I removed the 4 bolts and nothing moved nor settled at all. So, feeling bold, I grabbed the engine by the alternator mount with my right hand and the turbo with my left and slowly rotated the engine anti-clockwise. I was able to key off of the bottom bolt on the left side, switching from on my back with the bolt in hand to on my feet and shifting the engine and back again. Ultimately, I found that using a small screwdriver to help fine-tune the bolt location was most effective, but once I had that one bolt, the upper left and starter-bolts went in easily. I was unable to seat the lower right bolt and I will have to go through my notes to see how many bolts I've used before to see if I'm chasing something a false memory of 4 bolts.

 

Once the bolts were through, I removed the ratchet strap, wrenched down the engine mount on the engine side and then connected it to the tower. I am going to stop here, mostly because this is as far as I've gotten. By next time, I will have solved the grub-screw in the shift linkage and have the rest of Hapy put together. I hope I will even be able to tell a tale of a test run.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along. I know my posts have become few and far between. We had some staffing changes at my employer late in 2024 and that meant lots more work for me ever since. I do not anticipate that significantly changing, so my attitude about it needs to. Working on it.