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- 

 

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.

Hapy Engine-Transaxle Dropped

Around the concrete work, I ordered a replacement flywheel, clutch and pressure plate from Kennedy Engineering for Hapy (TDI-powered 1972 VW camperbus). The flywheel entered fabrication early last week, so I spent part of the Independence Day weekend dropping and separating the engine and transaxle not-in-a-shop for hopefully the last time. Today's post covers the drop and separation; it took 10 hours spread across 2 days.

 

How Did We Get Here

hockey player smile

I have been queuing this most recent engine drop for over a year. Recall all of the starter swaps I have made in hopes of solving the intermittent starting issue. And, I replaced the starter adapter hoping that was the issue. Nope and nope. The flywheel had suffered sufficient incomplete meshing of the starter gear with the flywheel's ring gear, chipping teeth and wearing down others. During my research, I learned that oftentimes (not always) engines will tend to stop running at the same spot in their rotation. So, if the circle is 360 degrees, the engine will stop most of the time at the same point. I know that seems counter-intuitive when you assume an engine is a well-balanced smooth machine, but the 4 cylinders and the 4 steps in the combustion cycle create a frequency, if you will, that for some engines means that when you kill power it will naturally stop at the same point. In those cases, you would think having a complete ring gear is unnecessary, right? I mean, if you only ever use 15 degrees of gear, why have 360? Ok, in re-reading this, obviously you need an entire gear for the starter to spin the engine. LOL.

 

I found on my flywheel there was one spot in particular which was especially bad and 3 other spots which looked like there was wear, but not so much that the starter was really having trouble. This would explain why all the other times I looked at the flywheel I could not see an issue. The starter was not on the really bad spot, just one of the not-so-great spots. When I was unable to get the engine to start on the first try, but I got the gear-on-gear sound, I think I was starting on one of those spots. Inevitably, the engine would eventually land on the really bad one, and the sound would change from gear-on-gear to gear-in-the-air. 

 

Continuing this nonsensical thread, the TDI engine's flywheel can only fit on the engine one way, based on the bolt pattern. If there were any way I could have retained the flywheel and simply removed and re-installed it so that the really bad spot was in one of the zones where the teeth are never facing the starter at dead-stop... I would have. I mean, this flywheel has lasted 15 years of starting issues and abuse and for the most part it's fine. Well, fine except for the 1 big chunk that's missing and some other kinda-worn spots.

 

Getting Down

So, we enter Saturday, July 5th, the traditional first day Pacific NorthWest summer, tools in hand, blues festival on the radio, ready to get after the engine drop. To prepare, I re-read the last engine drop I can remember doing on this bus: to swap the transaxle from the original 002 to the AA Transaxle (Seattle) 1975 CM 002 transaxle. I did that on Labor Day 2012 in my real estate agent's driveway (See Transaxle Transition). It took 1 day to get the engine/transaxle out and separated. It took 1-1/2 days to get the new transaxle mated and the whole operation installed. I figured I would have a similar path, but my real estate agent's driveway was flat and smooth. The square of concrete outside my tiny garage is neither flat nor smooth. Quite the opposite, actually, it slopes away from the garage slightly and it has massive deep cracks in it. Like 2 or 3 inches deep cracks where blocks of concrete are lower/higher than the section next to it. This makes moving an engine on a jack much harder.

 

air disconnected

High level, my plan was to not raise the bus, and to only remove that which was necessary to allow me to separate the transaxle from the engine (and the bus) so I could do a clutch service with a flywheel swap out. So, I chocked the front tires and got after it. I started with the easier stuff: disconnect the air side first (cold air/filter to intake, unplugging the AFM and a vacuum line, then removed the charged air from turbo to intercooler). Then, the 13mm nut/bolts on the exhaust side of the turbo and removed the exhaust. Since I did not have to really move the engine other than up and down, I chose to leave the coolant related systems alone other than disconnecting the overflow bottle to prevent tension on the hoses. I made the same decision wit the fueling system, and chose to only disconnect the large filter, again to eliminate potential tension on the fuel hose. Last thing on the engine was to disconnect the battery and the 12V exciter from the alternator.

 

Shifting to the transaxle, I set a small jack under the center of the ribs and started removing things. First, I removed the CV joints and stuffed the greasy bits into plastic bags held on with rubber bands. The clutch cable and the mount for the bowden tube were next. Once free, I disconnected the shifter at the front of the transaxle, the grounding strap near the front and finished with the nose mount. At this point, the only things connected to the engine/transaxle I needed to address were the rear engine mount and the main carrier mounts.

 

simple coolant solve

I located and set the engine cradle on the ATV jack and supported the engine while I removed the rear mount and the tower between the support bar and the mount. With the engine supported, I removed the 2 bolts which attach the top of the bellhousing to the main center carrier.

 

Well, Now Its Down

This was all I thought I had to do to drop the engine. When I read the old steps, this was how far I had to go. Since then, however, I added the rear sway bar and it was set such that removing and then re-installing the transaxle was going to be more difficult. I removed the 4 14mm nuts that held the middle of the bar to the frame and it swung down far enough for the transaxle nose to clear. But there was not enough room for the shifter linkage above the side-to-side main support to clear. The engine needed to move backwards a couple of inches. So, I removed the rear engine support bar. In retrospect, I realized that I had removed that bar last time too. Now, I could pull the engine far enough back to get the transaxle off of the engine, rotated and then onto the ground. Sitting on cardboard, I pulled the transaxle out the driver side. I regret not taking a picture of the inside of the bellhousing, but it had so many little metal flakes (from the flywheel). I shot the bellhousing with brake cleaner and then, after I had wrapped the cv-joint mount points with plastic film, I shot the whole transaxle with de-greaser. I hosed it off and let it dry in the sun. While I had the de-greaser out, I cleaned the rear engine support bar too.

 

Pressure Plate and Flywheel

jack on crack

Now, I was basically ready for a clutch job. The pressure plate came off with little fanfare. It looks like its in great shape. The clutch still has most of it's friction material, so in a pinch I could probably reuse them. I got new replacements for both, so I may retain them for an emergency. Honestly, after 12 years of running this clutch and still have that much friction material left, I figure I may not have to replace this clutch ever again. I did notice a couple of spots on the flywheel which had a slight blue-ish hue, though. That's usually a sign that the clutch got hot and sticky. Something to think about. Maybe going with the stage 1 clutch this time rather than the stock pre-1972 VW bus clutch was the right call after-all, and the old clutch/pressure plate are not worth keeping.

 

Last, I had to pull the flywheel. Fortunately, I have a flywheel lock for old VW's and since this is a 200mm flywheel designed to fit inside a 002 transaxle, the lock fit. I could not get good leverage lying on my back under the bus so I smacked a rubber mallet against the end of a ratchet to pop the torqued bolt. All 6 came out without too much trouble. Applying a torque wrench on install will be interesting. Because of how snug the flywheel mates to the engine output, I needed to work the flywheel off with a small prybar. Once on the ground, I could more clearly identify the really badly worn spot (pictured above), but the other spots did not look as bad. Perhaps, once I have the new one to compare, the damage on this flywheel will be more apparent.

 

Conclusion

no downhill roll please

That's as far I've been able to get. I am still waiting for the flywheel, clutch, pressure place, throw-out bearing, etc. It took me most of 2 days to get to this point, so I expect the re-install will be similarly extended from 1-1/2 days to maybe 3. It is interesting to see how an uneven surface and 12 years of personal aging can slow a process down. The sway bar and engine support bars each represented maybe an hour of extra work, so I can't attribute it to them. This is probably really about me getting slower and the work location making everything that little bit harder.

 

For those tracking on the shop construction, we may be falling onto their schedule as early as the end of next week. Fingers crossed, I may have a structure before I have Hapy back in one piece. 

 

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

Door Cards

Today I will be picking up where I left off regarding the doors. As I described in my last post, the front doors now open, close and lock like a real car. No slamming, not funny jiggling of the handle, etc. Just open, close and lock. Well, the passenger door lock is different from the driver, but I'll swap that out once I find all my parts. Anyway, since I had to remove the cards to fix the doors, I thought I would take the opportunity to improve them.

Door Cards As-Was

foamed card installed

With operational doors, I got to thinking about how to get the door cards to hold to their respective doors. The Arizona gentleman who ran the business creating and selling these ABS door cards was looking to sell off the business a couple of years ago, so I imagine that has happened by now. He had a mixture of molly-based fasteners delivered with the cards. Either the fastener was a screw that dug into the molly which was pushed through the card into the original mounting hole or it was a push-to-hold plastic bit. Regardless, the molly's did not hold in all of the original mounting holes on my bus (YMMV). This could have been poor implementation on my part, something particular about Hapy or just less-than-ideal engineering on the fasteners. It doesn't really matter; for Hapy, they did not work. When combined with the slamming doors, the door cards would rattle and Hapy had a very junky vibe. Now that the doors no longer need to slam shut, improving the cards adherence to the doors will help un-jalopy Hapy that little bit more.

Door Cards, Mounting Upgrade

broken M4 riv-nut bit

To remedy the floppy door cards, I tried a more permanent solution: Riv-nuts and bolts. The plan: into each original mounting hole in the door, I attach a riv-nut (it's a nut that is applied with a rivet gun, basically), and then send a bolt through a washer and then the card, into the riv-nut. Such a simple plan, and while a little time-consuming, it was easy to do. Of course, I found that not all of the original holes were the same size. To fix, I used some as large as an M6 or as small as an M4. I think this is why the supplied molly-based fasteners did not work as well: the M6-sized holes were simply too big for the molly and they fell out. As shown in the picture here, too much pressure with the riveting tool and you can break it. Once I had all of the riv-nuts set, I shifted to the cards themselves.

Noise Abatement Revisit

setting riv-nut

While I had the door cards out of the bus for repairs, I applied a thin noise-absorbing closed-cell foam to the 3 cards. This material was among the things I got a few years ago when I did the sound deadening effort, and it's application to the door cards was part of that plan. At the time, the research I did (See Hapy Noises - Part 2) indicated that multiple attack vectors would bring the best result: Constrained Layered Dampener, an open cell sound deadener like Jute Thermal and then Mass Loaded Vinyl. These all really address reducing the impact of external (and mechanical) noises transferring into the cabin. Any noises or sound that make it into the cabin which are not absorbed by the seats are prone to bouncing around. I placed some larger acoustic panels (these) under the upper bunk, in the slot where the original sunroof used to go. I believe they are helping absorb some ambient sound. I also covered the ceiling with Mega Zorbe to address the sound reflection and ambient sound absorption. In the picture on the right, here, you can see the MegaZorbe applied to the inside of the outer door skin. 

Based on the tests I did at the end of the effort, the only real gains as-measured were in the "around town" (under 40mph) zone. Decibels at idle or on the highway appeared about the same. In practice, however, using a less complex "measure" like how loud we have to run the stereo to hear it on the highway, it is definitely quieter. An even less precise indicator is how loud we need to speak to each other to have a conversation: barely louder than we talk at home, which is quiet (no yelling house) where we used to have to almost yell without the stereo on. So, I am setting aside the scientific evidence and embracing the anecdotal: this implementation of the sound abatement absolutely and significantly improved our road tripping experience. I may take more readings because the numbers I took before continue to bother me.

Door Cards, Reflective Sound Absorption Added

applying the foam

So, with all that context, I decided to press forward on my original plan to apply the thin foam sheets to the hard plastic cards. I started with the cards along the sleeping deck, running from the rear hatch forward along both sides under the windows to the rear of the rock-n-roll bed (1 foot tall by about 4 feet long). I started here for 2 reasons: it was very easy and the plastic cards were jarring-cold when bare skin pressed against them while sleeping. The foam definitely improved that.

For the slider and front doors, I simply traced the door shape on the peel-off paper side of the peel-n-stick foam and cut along the line with scissors. I aligned the cut along the card and peel-stuck them down, working from one corner, down along one side and then across. I will be applying carpet later, but felt that the foam might help reduce the reflected sound while also providing a cushion under the carpet.

With the foam applied to the cards, I considered the game of "which bolt fits" for each mounting point. I could have just started trying bolts, but that felt like an exercise in frustration. So, instead, I grabbed some painters tape and marked to the outside of each hole (where the card would not cover) which bolt size to use. I set the front door cards in place using the door pull to hold the card in the right spot. Then, I simply sent bolts through a black vinyl washer and then the card into the door. Once mounted, I removed the tape. Easy-peasy. If you do this, I suggest that you do the corners first, and only threaded enough to hold. Then, skip around the card, and have all of them like that before you start tightening. Then, again, start with the corners and pay close attention to the bottom edge near the vent. These ABS cards fit perfectly, but the one hole near the bottom align the trailing edge of the door did not line up for me and I had to skip it. YMMV, of course.

slider door foamed

The door card kit included panels for the wall under the driver-side jealous window and for the partitions behind the front seats. I have yet to do those cards, but I am holding off on doing those until I am ready to fast-follow with carpet. The foam is not as scratch-resilient as the hard plastic, and those cards take the brunt of the abuse when camping or music gear is loaded, unloaded and in-motion. So, I will apply the foam and the carpet at the same time. All of that will happen at some point in the future. As it is right now, there is that little bit less noise reflection happening and when bare skin touches the side of the sleeping area, it no longer triggers a shuddering wake up. We are taking the win.

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

4Peaks 2024 - Road and Festival report

It's that wonderful time of year again when Boo and I trek over the Cascades in Hapy the Wonderbus to take in whatever Stacey has cooked up for 4Peaks. After taking a couple of years off, she and her staff put together a fantastic return. Some years, I have spread my love of 4Peaks across 3 posts, covering our travels, the festival and the music as separate posts. Since we had very little in terms of adventures getting to and from, I will only have 2 posts this year, with the other one dedicated to the bands.

Backdrop

4Peak sunset

After replacing Hapy's starter and then doing the seals on the injection pump (see Diesel Dumping Discontinued, we still experience sporadic issues with Hapy starting. Once he starts, he runs like a champ. For example, the weekend before 4Peaks, I had driven Hapy, laden with gear, to a show and then over to the after-party. He was not interested in driving home. So, he came home on a flatbed and after removing and re-installing the starter, he would start again. A 1972 microbus should not behave like Windows 95, requiring a shut-down/restart sequence pretty much anytime the temperature changes.

I am also seeing diesel fuel drips on the bottom edge of the oil pan. Overnight, there will be a small wet spot underneath. While we are all fairly well aware that VW's like to mark their spot (it's usually oil), I think the Injection Pump reseal may not have 100% solved the problem. In fact, I think the failure-to-start issue has nothing at all to do with the starter and everything to do with the pump losing some of it's prime overnight. With starting concerns in my head, we spent the day before 4Peaks locating and packing our gear. I say locating because with the move and all the construction, our gear had moved around a bit. We used what we call "the Boot" to carry lawn chairs, the folding table, a just-in-case personal porta-potty, and a few other larger items. This makes for a much easier vagabond, and much better visibility.

There and Back Again

sporting a 2019 cup

With thoughts of no-start in our heads, we followed the philosophy we had years ago when we left town for ChinookFest (see ChinookFest 2017 Road Report) to go one stop at a time. Each time we stopped, we would park on an incline and well out of the way in case we needed to roll-start or R&R the starter again. Luck was on our side as we did not suffer a no-start, but luck favors the wise, and we did not shut off the engine unless we absolutely had to. For example, we had to shut off the engine for the fill-up on our way out of town, but we chose to try to get all the way home without re-filling (that's almost 350 miles round trip, which is especially dicey with a fuel leak). We also did not turn off the engine at the rest stop on the US-22 or any other time until we parked for the night at WinCo in Bend.

The route to and from 4Peaks is well worn by now: US-217 to I-5 South to US-22 East to US-20 East. We left before dark, but it was still almost 8PM. Traffic was light all the way to mile post 72 on OR-22 where we hit a night-time paving operation. Again, we chose to not turn off the engine while we sat for at least 15 minutes. Once we were through the construction, the traffic pressure behind us was downright scary. Apparently, many others who travel at night believe the speed limits and other safety expectations (like not tailgating, not cutting people off and not trying to run others off the road) expire at sunset. 7 or 8 vehicles of the possibly 30 which were in the construction queue passed us before we reached Sisters. Of those, the first 2 were perhaps the most dangerous I've had the displeasure of sharing a road. One was in a lifted truck who was following so close I could not consistently see his high-beams, but they were so bright they illuminated the road around us. Recall, we had the Boot, so the rear of the bus was a full meter further back than the bumper usually was. I now wonder whether a person could have walked between our vehicles, he was so close, and we were going 55-60 mph on curvy mountain roads.

 

When we arrived at the first passing lane, I immediately moved to the furthest right edge of the lane an eased my speed down to 55. He blew past and then I discovered he had a lane-filling double-axled utility trailer attached. If I had made a sudden stop to avoid wildlife, debris or a broken down car, his mass would have plowed through us. But he wasn't the scariest. The truck immediately behind him was worse: He tried to pass after the passing lane had ended and practically skimmed my mirror off as he passed. That road menace was also hauling a double-axled trailer, but his was a camper and twice as long as the utility trailer. I nearly hit the gravel on the far side of the right shoulder before he passed and I could aright Hapy. The others passed during dotted yellow lines or regular passing lanes and mostly did not create too much excitement.

restival

We vagabonded (slept in Hapy without putting the top up) in the WinCo parking lot, parking around back where the employees park, but also where the ground has a slight downgrade towards the exit. We hit the bathrooms and bought ourselves some dinner from the service deli, scarfed and went to sleep. The following morning, we returned to WinCo for bathrooms and breakfast. We were 20 minutes from the gates and had all morning so we hit the shops, collecting the things we were unable to find before leaving town (camp shower, an extra yoga mat, some bath towels, etc), and, of course, the coffee cart for a couple Americanos.

The drive home was less eventful and once Hapy started we didn't shut him off until we got home. We were very appreciative of all of our friends at 4Peaks sending "he will start" vibes our way. There were multiple stretches of road where the traffic was bad enough for us to clutch in and out of 1st gear: heading into Sisters from the East on US-20 and heading North on I-5 between Donald and Wilsonville. These are both common slow traffic areas, but I felt that clutch pedal in my left butt cheek the next morning. Otherwise the roads were clear, the traffic non-threatening and the weather was a comfortable 25*C (77*F).

4Peaks - The Festival

Sonny and Hapy

Boo and I have been going to 4Peaks since 2015 (see the first 1..2..3..4Peaks). The festival had been growing through 2019 and then CoViD hit. Stacey cancelled 2020 for CoViD, did a mini-Peaks for 2021, but then skipped the next 2 years to rethink/retool/refocus (and get married! Congrats Stacey!). I thought, perhaps, 4Peaks was not coming back. Needless to say, we are glad it did. 2024 was smaller, maybe even smaller than it was in 2015 at the old location. It was the same groovy, with art by Ryan Kerrigan, great local food vendors and our emerging favorite: yoga with Nicole. Boo and I hit Nicole's class all 3 days it was offered, and fell all the more in love with her approach. So holistic, and full of explanations of why we're doing certain things. Afterwards, we feel physically great, emotionally centered and a little smarter. Thanks Nicole!

We arrived about an hour after the gates opened, so we were able to set up near the entrance to the festival grounds. This meant that, like mini-Peaks, we would have incredible sound quality at our camping spot. Boo suffered with sinus pressure on Saturday so we heard most of the bands from "home", rather than in-venue, unlike Friday when we spent considerable time inside. The sound was amazing, and when she had stretches of feeling good, we danced in the grass. An additional benefit of where we camped was our proximity to the 4Peaks Founders' camp (Stacey and her closest friends, basically). So, while we had seen most of them over the years at various spots within the festival, we hadn't really met them, had drinks, swapped stories, etc. They're lovely people and massive Phish-heads, so we got on great. Michael, one of their friends, arrived late in a yellow-orange late Bay named Sonny, and set up alongside our camp. Michael farms cherries, and just completed his harvest... causing him to arrive so late. Griffin was in a golden tent and worked at a camp outside Sisters, and Pete drove down from Montana and slept in the bed of his truck. Further up the fire lane, a 1978 VW Westy driven by Natalie (2nd owner!) and her husband camped. She had a sign-sign on the side of her bus encouraging attendees to write a positive note and sign in exchange for a 4Peaks sticker she had made. Of course we participated and that sticker will appear on Hapy shortly. Over the course of the weekend, we re-connected with many of our old friends (Mike and Suzie, now living in Central OR, eg) as well. Obviously, we made a bunch of new ones. There are few things like a couple of old VW's to bring the curious, and we are more than Hapy to chat up whoever drops by.

Main Stage from behind Hapy

The last morning always comes too soon, and like every other year, we left before the final band (Garcia Birthday Band) had completed their set. We were not alone. It is actually fairly common for most of the festival goers to be gone before the final band finishes, and we were not in the 1st half of those who left. We had tried every food vendor, explored every product vendor, visited Kidlandia, played on the swings, walked the entire camping zone, danced and laughed all weekend. We will be watching our email for early-bird ticket announcements for 4Peaks 2025; we are 4Peaks lifer's now.

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That's it for today. I'll post about the bands next time. Thanks, as always, for following along-

temp tattoo from the Founders