Hapy Cab Gets Quiet

In my last post about noise containment, I posted about getting the main living area floor noise controlled with Heat Wave Jute and MLV. Before that, I posted about the application of the constrained layered dampener (CLD) on the ceiling and easily-accessed exposed steel (See Noise Control Update). There has been a lot of foundational work and many posts leading up to this next step. I removed the drop ceiling. I ran the rough electrical for the luxury items like accessory plugs, dome lights, etc (See Ceiling Wiring Rough In). I found and resolved holes from the old Westfalia pop-top. I removed the old shelf, designed and installed a new one (See New Cab Shelf). So finally, today, I will focus on getting the cab area practically noise controlled.

 

Cab Floor Prep

cab floor, nose quieted

Many years ago, I applied something CLD-like to the floor of the cab after addressing the rust with naval jelly and rust encapsulator (see Rust Never Sleeps). That post was so long ago, it pre-dated my now-common efforts to identify the products I am using, but I am fairly sure it was B-Quiet. Regardless, the stuff available in 2007 may not be as effective as the stuff available now. I suspect the old B-Quiet has since been reformulated to have more Butyl and less asphalt. So, I started working on removing that old stuff. It did not want to let go, and in some cases it left a sticky mess behind. I found that I was most effective at removing it when I cut 2" squares into the foil topper and removed a square at a time. For the spots where tacky goop remained, simple scraping worked a little, running the grinder was ineffective, and multiple passes of Goof-Off was moderately effective. After multiple rounds with Goof-Off, scraping was much more effective, and I was able to get most of the asphalt-y sticky off the floor. Still, the effort to remove that old stuff took most of a weekend.

With the old stuff gone I discovered that I needed to address rust in the floor again. Long ago, I abandoned Naval Jelly to get rid of rust, believing that it just is not as effective as the converters currently on the market. Perhaps, it was user error, but I followed the instructions. Anyway, this floor had been worked on with the Naval Jelly before I changed and it showed. I like Eastwood stuff, after trying and abandoning others. It is a simple spray-on product that I then spread around with a gloved hand to make sure it gets everywhere. It dries with a thin shell that could be painted on top of, but Eastwood recommends their encapsulator (of course) on top. I thought about adding another layer of paint, but decided it was unnecessary and left the floor "top coated" with the black Rust Encapsulator.

Cab Floor Noise Contain

Once the cab floor was rust treated, I applied some fresh CLD. Even the Noico was an improvement on what was there before. Before I started, the floor still had a fairly noticeable "ting" when smacked with the roller. Perhaps part of the reason the B-Quiet was not as effective was because it was trying to adhere to rust, not to steel and converted rust. Similar to the cab ceiling, I did the larger panels with the ResoNix, and did a few smaller areas with some leftover Noico. I had not previously applied anything to the walk-through, but that got CLD this time.

I used the rubber mat as a template for the next 2 layers: Heat Wave Jute and the Mass Loaded Vinyl (MLV). I under-sized the front edge so the kick panel/card that runs along that leading edge can seat against the floor later. Then, I did the walk-though floor with Heat Wave and MLV, following its basic rectangle shape.

 

Cab Doors Contained

door Mega Zorbe'd

The amount of prep work needed in the doors was not as extreme as the floor, but there were some needed steps. There was some surface rust down along the bottom and in the spots where the different metal bits intersect. After the rust was addressed and some Rustoleum was applied, it was ready to go. The steel also had some of that B-Quiet, but it seemed much more effective in the door than it was on the floor. I only removed the pieces that came off easily. Oddly, the passenger door stuff came off with little effort and the driver side stuff would not budge. So, the driver door was pretty much left alone (just CLD'd one section) and the passenger door got a full replacement treatment. Thinking about how much material I have on-hand, and how small an area I needed to solve, I used the Noico. While I test-tapped each door, I noticed both doors had a rattle that I traced to loose fasteners on the window mechanisms and door latches. A couple of passes of tighten-loosen-tighten eliminated those rattles.

 

Unlike the floor, I used Mega Zorbe in the doors. This stuff is so easy to work with. It is self-adhesive, so you figure out exactly what size you need, cut it, test fit it and when you're ready, you peel the paper off the back and stick it on. Of course, clean the surface really well first. The self-sticky is super-sticky, so I suggest the first time you play with it you apply it in areas which won't be seen until you get the hang of it. I got the 1/2" thick Zorbe, and it easily fit against the outer door skin without impacting the action of the window. If I have material left at the end of this project, I may apply some to the side of the door card that fits into the door cavity for more sound absorption. 

 

Nose Noise Contain

original Styrofoam

Most of the metal on the inside of the nose is inaccessible or at least very hard to get to. The pedals make getting to that lower section difficult, but not as difficult as the area behind the dash, especially on the driver side. Accordingly, I did not get very complete coverage of the inside of the nose with CLD. Before I could start, the bus originally delivered with some foam stuff glued to the lower section (below the mid-point). This stuff looks like old Styrofoam cooler material, and made a mess similar to a broken cooler with those little white dots everywhere. It was very thin, so I doubt it did much. Once removed, shop-vac'd and surface-cleaned, I used ResoNix, hoping to maximize the vibration deadening from covering such a small percentage of the total surface. I removed the windshield washer bottle and successfully fit a full one-foot-square sheet of ResoNix on the nose in that area. I cut a second square, fitting material up behind the glove box and onto the big metal airbox on the passenger side. On the driver side, access was even more limited. I was unable to fit a full uncut square directly in front of the pedals, but I was able to get a pair of rectangles applied there. I consumed the rest of that sheet plus another, getting coverage above the running light (beside the headlight) as well as onto the airbox. It is hard to know how much those sections will help, but I used the higher quality ResoNix, so maybe it will matter. Because of the foil topper, I figured putting CLD anywhere near the fuse-box would be a bad idea, so the whole upper left side is CLD-free.

I had originally intended to use the Jute inside the nose, but I changed my mind after wrestling CLD in there. First, the Jute needs adhesive to stick. Second, it is stiffer than the Mega-Zorbe. Third, the foil on the Jute is electrically conductive, so, like the CLD, we do not want it near the fuse box or electric controls. So, while we would have probably appreciated the temperature management of the Jute, there is no way I could have constructed a thermal wall in there. This is all about absorbing sound, and inside the nose can't be seen nor felt. So, I used and will continue to harvest for use, trimmings from other applications of the Mega-Zorbe and patch-work my way to sound control on the driver side. On the passenger side, I was able to place a single sheet of Mega Zorbe in pieces. The driver side was very difficult to get to, and handling the super-sticky self-adhere was not working out too well. I was able to get some larger cuts (maybe 4 inches by 8 inches) along the lower section, but that was about it. As I generate trimmings around the rest of the bus, I will return to the nose to add more.

Cab Ceiling

Mega Zorb'd ceiling

After all the efforts in previous postings, from the rough-in electrical to the mounting of the luggage tub and the shelf, I was finally ready to do the cab ceiling. Recall that the drop ceiling has been removed, the old shelf came down, and the original 1972 Westfalia supporting superstructure was removed. I used a combination of ResoNix and Noico for vibration control, thinking that an extra pound was worth minimizing the noise closest to my head. Similar to the doors, I used the Mega Zorbe on the ceiling. I covered the ceiling from lip to lip, front edge to the cross support. Simply sitting in the seat with that single layer of 1/2" foam was incredibly quiet just sitting in the driveway with the engine off. It is quieter inside the bus than outside. If I utter words, they are simply gobbled up by the noise control material in a more pronounced way than a gentle wind takes your words outside. I had originally planned for a second layer, and still may before applying a true headliner, but it will not be because I need more sound taken out of the air. It will depend more by how to contour the ceiling and remaining steel so the transitions are smooth. I will sit with it as-is for a little while, as I do other areas, to see how I feel about it. I may get some basic automotive foam if I need to add something. I don't have the headliner material yet anyway. Seriously, this bus is getting crazy quiet.

Under the Seats

view of the under-seats

Moving on to the seats, I used the Heat Wave and MLV combination again. Consider the little compartments along the inner edge of the seats. These compartments accepted 6-inch wide, 26-inch long Heat Wave on the floor. Against the wheel wells, another 26-inch long 5-inch tall stretch of Jute was set. Then, I got to thinking about the MLV. Consider, the access is very limited and the side of the wheel well is vertical. Simply brushing or spraying on contact adhesive was not viable. I cut 2 sheets of MLV for each compartment, with a combined overall average length of 25 inches each (d-side shorter, p-side longer), but 12 inches wide. Dealing with a half-length, I rolled it up and stuffed it through the access hole, unrolling the 12-inch width in place. So, the bottom edge is against the inner edge where it meets the floor, and the MLV runs up along the side of the wheel well with the top edge roughly against the ceiling. I set the second sheet in similarly, and with an overlap, the compartments are covered.... mostly. The driver-side compartment has the brake reservoir and tubing, so I was not able to get as deep. Hence, the shorter length of MLV. Still, I knew this was not going to be 100% sealed/covered. This is about as good as I could have expected without putting MLV around the outside of the entire seat pedestal, but that would have intruded into the limited walk-through space, for what I think would be little improvement. I accept that the MLV may not stay in place long-term. Since there will be a card on the walk-through side, I can access it and check up on it periodically. Being honest, I probably won't. If I have left over MLV, maybe I will figure out a way to put it inside the walk-thru card. We'll see.

Other than the little compartment, the under-seat space was controlled rather simply. I put one piece of both Heat Wave and MLV under each seat, running from the outer edge of the little compartment (under the seats) to the door's edge. To fit, I cut a channel around the outer seat runner. I thought about lifting the seats, but decided that having an additional 1/2" of squishy lift was not desirable; having some noise travel through the rails was an acceptable tradeoff. After the seat compartment efforts, we are no longer looking at 95% containment anyway. Between the inner seat rail and the inner edge, I set another section of Heat Wave, covering up the remaining bits of steel. This final section was not rectangular since the seat pedestal is not exactly square, but it rests above the little compartment, so MLV was unnecessary. The Heat Wave, however, will allow the carpet to lay flat.

Wrap It Up

Once installed, I taped all of the MLV bits together. Why? Audiophiles suggest that the MLV works best when it hasn't any breaks in it. I know there are breaks under the seat rails and inside the little compartment, so the tape may not be as effective. Still, the metaphor I have read is that the seams are like slightly cracked windows in your house, letting in the noise of your neighbor mowing their lawn. If the window is completely closed the noise is much more contained. So, having lots of open seams is like lots of cracked windows, versus a couple around the seat rails. Since I have not been taking noise measurements along the way, I cannot say whether the patchwork MLV will help meaningfully more than just the CLD and Heat Wave. The sound experts swear by this stuff though.

At this point, I have the floor completely noise contained, from rear hatch to the front nose. We have CLD to contain the vibration, Heat Wave to absorb some of the sound that makes it through and MLV to block most of whatever remains. Since most of the noise comes from the engine, drivetrain and wheels, the work to date should have addressed most of the problem. I am continuing down the noise elimination path, though. I will be applying Mega Zorbe onto the rear ceiling, adding some deadener between the 2 rear ceilings, and solving for the slider and mid-bus driver-side wall. I feel that I have turned an important corner, however.

That's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along-

scattered and dashing

I've been kinda zig-zagging on this project lately, but at least I've been tacking in the right general direction. Its another weekend day without the boys, so I've been trying to get a bunch of different things done all at once. None of them are necessarily finished, but I'm making some headway. I'll hit the highlights.

Clutchy
After some additional poking around the 'net, and remembering the condition of my bowden tube from when I replaced my clutch cable (that's a story I don't think I shared, actually), I think my clutch troubles are a bad bowden tube. So, I got one at Discount Import Parts here in Beaverton. I didn't feel like sliding under the bus today, so I focused on other stuff. I know, I know. I can't put it off forever, but the interior stuff is more fun.

Carpet
I rough-measured everywhere I figured I was planning to put carpeting. With these numbers, I should be able to tell how many square feet I need. Like everything on these old cars, every project gets bigger than originally planned. I did resolve to a color scheme, though, that will mirror my plan for the outside. These old bus's have a 2-tone tradition with the upper 1/3 white and the lower 2/3 under the belt-line being something else. I'm going with a nice dark blue. To mirror this, I'm putting a door-outdoor carpeting on the interior up to the belt-line. At the belt line and above, I'm going with a beach-sand colored carpet. White wouldn't look white for very long, and the sand color should visually soften things a little bit. It should soften noise a lot.

Insulation rip-out continues
I focused on getting the passenger side to the same place as the driver side within the main cabin. This meant removing the interior walls next to the bench seat and removing the interior wall on the slider. This was messy. I didn't take the bed (bench seat) out, but it was not installed when the walls were first put in. Nothing broke, but the cleanup of the loose insulation was a pain. Nothing the shop-vac couldn't solve tho. Just like the driver-side, after I got the last scraps of insulation out, I shot the cavity with rubberized undercoating. It was still drying this evening, so I'll lay the reflecty-flashy insulation in tomorrow.

15A Inlet revert
Last, I attacked the power inlet. I never really liked the solution I had before. When I removed the original 1972 power inlet a few years ago, the socket broke. Rather than try to repair it, I tried to make the 1979 power inlet work. It didn't quite fit in the same hole, but it worked well enough. Now that I have everything open again, I've decided to fix the old inlet, and sell off the 1979 inlet. This meant separating the broken plastic socket from the steel. After hitting the rivets with a 1/8" drill, I was able to rough-fit the new socket. The old inlet was tired and rusty looking. I mean, it looked bad. I hit it with Naval Jelly, and some 240 grit sandpaper, and it cleaned up pretty nicely. Knowing that I plan to paint the top 1/3 white (as well as the pop top and bumpers), I figured painting the inlet white would tie it in nicely. It certainly looks better. It will need another cuff-down with 240 grit and a light mist-coat of white to be done, but it sure looks close. Unfortunately, when I removed this inlet 5 years ago, I misplaced the body panel that fits around the inlet to help make a better body seal. I put out feelers for a replacement, but I haven't landed one yet. Since this effectively stops me from re-installing the kitchen, I guess I'll have to go back to the clutch and engine wiring stuff now.

That's it for today. I'll be putting in a few hours tomorrow before my nephew's birthday party, and then its another fun-filled work week..... and a Stanley Cup game on Monday. I probably won't get much done before Wednesday, if even then. Gotta maximize these weekend opportunities.

pictures-
top: inlet after brushing it off, removing old (all scratched up) warning sticker
middle: inlet after cleaning and Naval Jelly
bottom: inlet (and inlet door bits) drying in their new white coats

mount re-started

Hal (the VW friend I mentioned in the last post) get a big jump on the rear engine mount last night. Here's a picture of him working the hand-grinder. His design is really very nice. There's a rectangular bar running across the rear of the engine bay from frame rail to frame rail. That mother is heavy. It is welded to 2" angles that were cut and drilled to re-use the bolt-holes that the bumper bracket threads through. As a result, there are no new holes, no cutting of the bus. The mounting bar has slots instead of round holes so there is some flexibility for mounting. The bar floats about an inch in front of the rear apron. This weekend, he'll finish by fab'ing a tower on the bar to get up to the stock TDI engine mount.

I pretty much stayed out of the way, and held stuff when an extra hand was needed. Otherwise, I popped a rivet onto the triangular pop-out driver's window, and messed with the luggage rack. Like I said before, that thing was dirty, and the bars nasty. They all had some surface rust, so I sanded them down, did a Naval Jelly treatment and shot them with Eastwood's Tank Tone product. It was the only gray or silver paint I had, and I figured the high zinc content wouldn't hurt. I'll push a picture of the painted bars, but in the meantime, here's a picture of a pre-sanded (the 2 on the left) and a post sanded bar (the one on the right).

I don't expect to make any additional headway until Friday. I still have a garage full of stuff that didn't go during the garage sale. Apparently, the Salvation Army won't tell you when they're coming, and so unless you wait around all day, you miss them. Great. I guess I'll be hauling that stuff down to Goodwill so I can get to my ATV Jack. I need / want to get the fuel tank in and he engine back in place before we finish the mount work, but I'm starting to think that may not happen. More next time,

Rust Never Sleeps

It was a beautiful day here in the Pacific NorthWest on Sunday. The kids were playing in the street, lawn mowers were humming and I was trying to find something on Hapy that I could putter on while really just enjoying the weather. Now, I could have opened the garage door and started the process of tracing circuits and plugging things in on the new engine. That would have been too productive, though. Clean the garage? Reorganize the shop area? Nah... How about tearing out the front carpets in the bus? Well, that sounds like making more work for myself later, so... lets do it!

The "original-to-me" carpet was attached to the floor with sheet metal screws. "Interesting idea," I sarcastically thought. The carpet itself was a striped orange/brown indoor-outdoor carpet, so even finding the rusted heads wasn't easy. Once located, it was clear the most of them has rusted in place. A hammer and chisel quickly took care of that, and the carpet was no longer attached. Under the carpet was the original rubber mat. It looked a little worn along the edges, but otherwise, it looks serviceable. I'll be reusing it. Under the mat, though, was clear evidence of neglect: rust, and it looked like lots of it.

I'll post the pictures I took with my cell phone later, but for now, lets just say that there was a nice dusty pile of rust under the rubber mat. A few minutes with a dust-buster, and then a dust broom, made me feel much better. It didn't look nearly as bad. After wire brushing the rust to get the loose stuff up, I cleaned it with some soapy water, and dried it with paper towels. The "wire brushing" was just hand-scrubbing a handled wire brush, not some power tool, by the way.

There's a commonly available substance called Naval Jelly that's great for getting rid of rust. No, it is not the distant cousin of Toe Jam, it actually eats the rust. I blobbed a lot of Naval Jelly onto the rusted sections of floor and spread it around with a paper towel. it was about this time that the kids wanted to shoot some baskets, so I spent the 20 minute waiting period showing off my dunking prowess on a 7.5ft basketball hoop. Yeah, I got the mad hops. hehehe...

I kinda lost track of time, but fortunately, one of the neighborhood kids discovered the garden hose and started spraying everyone. That's when I remembered the Naval Jelly cooking my rust. I took control of the hose and turned it onto the inside of the bus. The incredulous looks on the faces of the kids when I started blasting the water into the bus was truly priceless. It did, however, get the Naval Jelly off the floor. After squeegie-ing the water out, I dried the floor a second time with paper towels. In the pictures, you can see the places where the rust was completely consumed - its a dull grey.

Once the floor was completely dry, I poured Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator onto the treated areas. Rust Encapsulator converts the rust into an inert chemical, seals the rust away from air/water and serves as a thin primer. After 24 hours, it can be painted with any automotive paint without concern. I spread the paint around with a piece of cardboard. Yeah, I could have bought a case of disposable brushes from Harbor Freight, but the finish didn't need to be pretty, and I just wanted the product in contact with the right areas. When I was done, the strip of cardboard can still be recycled. I left the crank-out windows open and the poptop up over night while the paint dried.

I was lucky. The floor had been ignored my all of the previous owners and yet I didn't have any rust-through. In fact, the rust was mostly cosmetic, and wasn't really very deep. The pictures look worse than it really was. I need to paint over the Encapsulator with something to protect it. The Encapsulator scratches easily, and shouldn't be used as a topcoat. I have lots of different cheap rattlecan paints, and I'll probably pick one at random. Ultimately, those sections of floor will be covered with sound deadener, then the rubber mat and then a new carpet, so the color is pretty much insignificant. As I complete those steps on subsequent beautiful sunny days, I'll post on it.

The progress on the bus will come to a stop for a few weeks while we get some projects completed on the house. As I get tiny windows of time, though, I'll be completing some of the camping interior install from 2 years ago that were left unfinished, and reassembling the front floor. Camping season is about a month away, so I have to maximize what little time I have.

until next time...