Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins (part 4)

Before I begin, I hope we all have a 2021 that allows us to all forget just how bad 2020 was. That really capped off quite a decade. Anyway, with the new decade now in front of us, let's all work together on making our little worlds more friendly, livable and Hapy. On that, I spent way more hours than I could count over the last few weeks clowning on this wiring. I work slowly, so even when I have a huge block of time, meticulous work takes nearly forever. I got so carried away in fact, I missed my usual posting day this week, so this one is a little late. HNY!

 

Wiring Diagram

I have completed the wiring diagram. I mentioned in a comment on that last post that I had to start over because of differences between the Jetta and New Beetle of the same year. So goes. I now have a 12-page custom wiring diagram for this build. It includes things that I have not yet completed nor posted about (like a glow-plug light), but it does NOT include anything about the original bus. So, when working on something related to the TDI, we use this new one. When addressing something in the 50-year old transporter, we reference the Bentley. I expect that I will be making small modifications to the diagram based on what happens during the harness surgery. I figure that if the diagram isn't accurate, it really isn't very valuable.

 

Complete the Cut-Apart
When I last posted, I was in the process of cutting down the part of the wiring harness that ties into the fuse box and relays. I have worked on this area before. In retrospect, I maintain that leaving the engine harnesses that go to the ECU untouched is the right answer. I had looked at cutting them down too, and concluded that is playing with fire. Besides, just this one harness was quite a time consumer. This harness has the T10 plugs (white, black, orange, blue) and a T6 that in the NewBeetle's case is red, but on other cars it is brown. As I mentioned, this also has the fuse box, and relays. It also includes the dashpod, an OBD-II plug, an oval "T10" that is also black that lives in the engine compartment and there are a handful of little 2 or 3 pin plugs for the alternator, air conditioning and coolant level. It's really a random collection of things; making a decent custom harness from it is not all that easy. Anyway, my goal was to label-label-cut enough so I could remove the harness and thin it out. After the over-zealous cutting I mentioned in my last post, this was going to get much bigger. I got the last few of that "handful of little things" label-label-cut so I could bring the whole thing onto my kitchen table. I will get into the thinning in a future post (probably my next one).

Install Plan

Few things that go well happen purely accidentally. You have to make a plan. With the fuse box, relays and dashpod out of the way, I could re-assess the spare tire well which I'm now calling the "wiring compartment". I need to keep the dashpod wired-in for the engine to run correctly. Since it is rather small, I planned for it to go into the far end of the compartment, with the rounded top slightly pitched so I can see it when I'm tinkering with the compartment exposed. On the other end, nearest the rear hatch, I planned to put the ECU, with the new fuse/relay box in between. For this to work, I'll need to shorten many wires in the harness I just removed, but the result will be a wiring compartment with a few cables, but no spaghetti. The T10's will plug into the thicker ECU harness below deck, so there will be some cleaning, arranging or obfuscating I'll need to do there.

Dashpod Mount

The donor pieces I received included the plastic surround for the New Beetle dash. The front/top cover snaps in place, hiding the screws that hold the dashpod to the plastic mount. This cover, however, makes the dashpod too wide to fit in the spare tire well, so I tossed it. I also had to cut down the plastic mount so it would fit, leaving the front-most flat section and the lower plastic bits that support the screw-holes for the dashpod. The second picture from the top shows the dashpod in 2 pieces. The upper 2 pieces were cut apart. I set and reset, fiddled with and eventually arrived at a spot for the dashpod. I marked holes, drilled them out and sent long screws thru the dashpod mount into the front curved side of the tire well. The dash pod clicked into place, and was quickly screwed into place. I checked clearance for the 2 cables that click into the dash pod, and there were no issues.

ECU (computer) Mount

Mounting the computer was not as simple. I received what looked like the plastic ECU holder back when I first got the New Beetle TDI, but I could not figure out how to orient the ECU so it would fit between the base and the protective flap door thing. So, I tossed the base, and screwed the flap door into the spare tire well instead. The ECU sits quite nicely on there and the cables are unimpeded. I will need to either Velcro the ECU to the mount or use something else. I will use short hook-end straps (like these) for now, since I have a few of them, so they are free. I intend to treat myself (and Hapy) to a Malone tune, eventually. I'll go Velcro after that, since I don't know how the Malone tune thing works with sending a computer in or if you get a flash download or what. Something to learn, and post about later, I guess.

Fuse / Relay Box Mount

final-ish look

With the ECU and dashpod located, there was really only just enough room for that fuse/relay box to fit between them as you can see from the picture on the side here. I chose to locate it on the inside of the wheel well, but it could just as easily gone on the other side. This way, the fuses are furthest from the rear hatch, but the orientation is consistent with my drawings (where I have the fuses at the top). This was a relatively simple matter of aligning the top of the closed fuse box with the top of the rear deck, marking the spots and boring them out. A standard hand drill doesn't fit there, so I put the drill bit in my Dremel. That is probably not the best solution, so I don't recommend it, but without one of those fancy 90* air-powered drill things, we make do with what we have.

 

That's it for today. Next time, I intend to get into the harness surgery. Thanks for following along and Hapy New Year-

Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins (part 1)

In the Summer of 2019, we barely made it home at the end of the Dog Days 333 (See parts 1 and 2). Hapy decided to just not start on command anymore. He was dropping into that modified limp mode and it was happening not just when he was cold, but pretty much at random. I promised him that I would fix it as we sat idling in a Dundee convenience store parking lot while C was in getting us drinks. Today's post starts that "fix it" journey. Before I begin, for my US readers, Hapy ThxGiving. For CoViD's sake, please stay home.

One Last Time

Hapy's usual home

After I finished the priming of all the Zed body panels (See Zed Prime), I moved them into the garage. This freed a covered one-car parking space. I had initially planned to put Nemo back in there and get after his wheel bearings. I decided instead that with the CoViD-19 numbers climbing to all-time highs, maybe it was okay if I didn't have a car that could take me too terribly far. Nemo can get me to the corner store and back; that's plenty until I can get the wheel bearings done.. once I confirm that they are the source of the noise, and it isn't just loud tires. So, I switched it up, and I am instead jumping into the Hapy electrical. I could have gone after this stuff at any point during the nice warm summer. That just wouldn't have been consistent with all the other work that's been done on this beast, so of course instead I chose some of the coldest days this year to do it.

First, I had to get Hapy into the spot. He is usually parked on a tarmac strip at the curve of our driveway so we can see him out our bedroom window. Yeah, we're weird. For any other car, moving it would be a simple effort of start, drive forward, reverse into the spot. Once I got the other cars out of the way, it was his turn, and just like so many times before, he just didn't want to start. I turned the key to start and nothing happened. Sigh. So, I tried to push him. Nope. There's a little dip in the tarmac that he would roll back into. I had to pull him onto the concrete with a trucker's chain around his front sway bar at one end (his front tow hook was pancaked by the prior owner) and around Nemo's front end on the other end. Fun. While I was trying to figure out how I was going to push him back into the covered spot, I lamented out loud to Hapy "why can't you just start one more time?". His response: he started. Of course; good boy. So, I backed him into the covered spot, and turned off the key.

Running Cable

In the TDI retrospective about secondary electrical, I mentioned replacing the single wires I originally installed 10 years ago with a cable. Well, I bought 30 feet (~10m) of 12-wire 16ga cable for this job when I bought cable for the additional gauge (see Oil Pressure and Temperature Part 4). It is not quite as thick as my ring finger as a sealed cable, and it has a nice thick jacket on it. I figured that the computer and rat's nest wiring is on the driver (left) side, as are the accelerator pedal and ignition switch. So, running the cable along the driver side made more sense than running it along the other side. Turned out, I thought the same thing 10 years ago, as the old wire bundle ran that way. I started from the rear, threading the cable through the bottom of the spare tire well and down into the engine compartment. From there, I ran it through manufactured holes in the frame over the rear suspension, along the inside of the mid-section frame rail to the cross member near the new heater location. I pressed the cable through a square hole in the cross-member, under the brake booster and then through another square hole into the area covered by the front belly pan. I had bored a large (~1/2 inch diameter) hole at the very front over the Summer when I routed the heater fan control cable through. I had planned to reuse that hole for this cable, and it fit with very little trouble. I pushed and pulled about 5 feet of cable up through that hole so I could stand alongside the driver seat to do the wiring bits.

Wire Front First

The 12-wire bundle is more than I was really ready for. The accelerator pedal needs 6 of them. The start and run signals account for 2 more and the OBDII signal is the last. The other wires will be used in the future for things like a speed sensor and a glow plug light. Like the extra wire in the cable I strung for the oil temp and pressure for a low coolant warning, I'll get to those later. For posterity (and my own personal reference later), these are the circuits for the 12-wire cable. I will update this as I make changes or discover mistakes:

circuit	wire color	purpose
1	Red	Accelerator Pedal 1
2	Yellow	Accelerator Pedal 2
3	Orange	Accelerator Pedal 3
4	Brown	Accelerator Pedal 4
5	Blue	Accelerator Pedal 5
6	Black	Accelerator Pedal 6
7	Red/Black	Ignition - START
8	Blue/Black	Speed Sensor
9	Orange/Black	OBD-II
10	Yellow/Black	Ignition - RUN
11	Brown/Black	Glow Plug signal
12	Black/Red	OPEN

I started with the ignition, splicing into the existing "RUN" circuit with the new signal wire. I figure the existing stuff (like lights) need power too, so the existing wire will simply feed old circuit #15. For the "START" signal, I just ran the new wire. The old starter signal was pretty batty, but it proved the TDI install was viable. Recall, it ran from the ignition down the old wire to right near the starter where it was spliced into a new wire that ran around the engine compartment to the spare tire hole through a relay to the computer, which then signaled TDI-donor relay to fire the starter... thru a new wire to the starter solenoid. There's like 20' (7m) of excessive and old wiring that I can eliminate. Then, I moved to the accelerator pedal.

Now, recall that I had to swap out the original round-plug accelerator pedal plug with a newer-model flat one after the old fly-by-wire pedal started to short out. I took a picture to help me identify which wire is which at the other end, but because the plug was changed, I expect the wire colors were as well, so when I cut the old wires off, I left about 1/2 inch of flat-plug wire on there so I can compare with the picture (here on the right) when I get to the rear-end wiring.

EDIT: I have updated the picture on the right here and the wiring reference above to reflect the actual circuit numbers in the wiring diagrams to avoid any confusion. Originally, the numbers ran the wrong direction relative to the official wiring schematics.

Even without the change, it was important to consider placement of the cable and the things that were going to be wired into it when I made my cuts to the wires. The ignition, speed sensor, etc are all at the dash where the accelerator is at the right foot. I made sure there was about 3 feet (1m) of cable between the ignition and the accelerator pedal cuts so there is room for cable routing. Also, it was important to pre-route the cable as much as I could so we didn't end up with the cable running in front of the steering column or goofy some other way.

Next

I admit, that doesn't sound like much. I moved the bus, ran some cable and did the wiring at the front end. Still, in sub 40*F (4C) it was a feat getting that much done without going numb. The weather around here is decidedly cold. I accept that I will not be able to get things done on Hapy very quickly, but with him out of the rain, at least it is not completely miserable. Just cold. If I can stand the cold, I will finish up the wire cable in the front by wrapping it with some plastic wrap, and pressing the excess cable back into the belly pan. Then, I'll push/pull the excess back to the rear so I have room to wire up the controls back there, probably leaving me close to 3m of leftover cable. There is a great deal of electrical housekeeping that I have not done back there. I think this is the right time to clean all that up, removing the unnecessary, trimming and mounting, etc so it is nice and clean. And, or course, our sporadic modified limp mode will no longer appear. It's all about staying warm enough to take small steps forward and eventually the wiring will be done. Then, I'll switch to diagnosing Nemo's rear bearings again.

Thanks, as always, for following along. Posts may appear more slowly as my work slows down. I'm still working on it (and staying CoViD safe, of course).

Oh SNAP

A couple of weeks ago, I had the $500 Jetta suddenly stall in the driveway. Today's post covers the root cause investigation.

P0341: cam position sensor
P0422: o2 sensor

Stall

So, Boo is standing in the driveway next to her idling 2001 VW Jetta (named 2dot0) when it suddenly stopped running. There was no special noise, nor did it gasp on it's way down. It was just running one second and not running the next. My mind ran through a few scenarios, but I landed on electrical because of how quickly it shut off.

What You Should Do

Since a gas engine runs with the correct combination of fuel, air, compression and spark, These are the things that should be checked, and checked in that order, before you start swapping parts... even if you think you're sure you know what's wrong. If you have a more modern car, get a code reader and pull the codes from the computer. Sometimes, the computer won't give you a code for a while. I didn't get these codes here until after I'd figured out what was wrong through the steps below. The P0341 code confirmed my findings.

Fuel

fuel pressure regulators
(new on right)

Simply put, verify that you have fuel at the injector. To radically simplify things, I verified that I had fuel at the fuel pressure regulator by removing the regulator and letting the fuel pump cycle. I had fuel bubbling over. Pulling an injector can be difficult, so for me, this demonstrated that I had fuel at the rail. The probability of all 4 injectors clogging so badly that the fuel wasn't making it to the chamber was so low, I ruled out fuel, but replaced the fuel pressure regulator anyway since the old one fell apart on extraction (see picture).

Air

Check the air filter. It is completely clogged? It's probably not the issue. Check the "snow snorkel" that runs from the air box to the outside. Sometimes something can get jammed in there (like snow), preventing the engine from getting air. Remove some intake piping between the air box and the metal bits so you can see the little gate on the air intake. When the foot pedal is moved, does the flap move? You're probably getting air. This would be a good time to check the air sensor. This usually would throw a code, but to verify it isn't that sensor, unplug it and try to start the car. If it starts, that sensor is bad. The car will run without the sensor, but badly. Sometimes this sensor can prevent a start, but that wasn't the case with me. I ruled out air, and put everything back together again.

This is where I should have checked compression, but I was convinced it was an electrical thing, so I skipped ahead to Spark. Don't. Checking your compression is easy, and it reveals some very interesting info about your upper end, the mechanical timing and, possibly, a lower end issue.

Compression

2.0 ignition coil

Grab your compression tester (they are pretty cheap, if you don't have one) and test your cylinders one at a time. It's best to remove all four plugs, and test each cylinder multiple times. Take care how you manage your plugs and wires so you don't set yourself or your car on fire nor do you lose track of which wire goes where. Unplugging the coil is the simple solution. Anyway, if you get any reading under 100psi, try squirting a little oil into the cylinder and retest. If the reading is better, your rings are going and you'll need a bottom end rebuild soon. Start saving. If the reading doesn't change, its a valve-train issue. Assuming all of your reading are within 15% of each other and they are all above 100psi, move on to fuel.

Had I done this step before Spark, I would have found all 4 cylinders at 0 PSI, indicating a broken timing belt. This was verified by removing the timing belt cover and not seeing the belt. Yikes.

Spark

Remove the spark plug that's easiest to get to. In the 2.0 engine, that's #4. Take care how you remove the plug wire. Now, with a partner turning the key, hold the plug against the engine block (forming a ground) and watch for the spark. No spark? Could be your issue. I was way overdue for a tune up, and the plug socket fell off the plug wire when I touched it, so I concluded replacing plugs and wires was a good idea. 2dot0 still didn't start. I should already have checked compression, but still, I should have stopped here and gone back to it. I continued down the electrical gremlin path instead.

The new plugs and wires didn't do it. So, I got a new coil. And then a new battery. And finally a new crank position sensor. Still no start.

Realizations

no, I'm not a Packer fan

It wasn't until I got to this point that I reverted to the compression tests and learned that I had just thrown over $100 of new parts plus a battery into a large boat anchor. The timing belt broke, throwing off the timing and causing the valves to hit the piston tops. The engine was effectively blown. Tiny fragments of valve and piston will work their way into the deeper recesses of the engine while the breaking belt could have damaged rollers or the coolant pump. I sold the car for scrap and its gone.

Watching 2dot0 get towed away, I ran a quick accounting. I bought the car for $500, and had it running for another $30. Since then, I only bought tires and oil, so that's probably another $600 or so. Rounding up, I was probably into that car for $1200 before it broke and then threw another $300 into it. That's $1500 for a car including maintenance for 18 months minus the salvage I was paid, means it cost me less than $70/mo. Since you can barely rent a car for a weekend at that rate, I think we did extremely well. I just wish I had performed the timing belt maintenance.

That's all for today. After 2dot0 broke, I served my penance for not doing the timing belt by riding mass transit for a few weeks. Today was my first day back driving to work. It is such a luxury, though I do kind of miss the light rail. Thanks for following along-

Film at Eleven

With the start of April comes the Pacific NorthWest's faux-Summer.  We're really experiencing that now, with mid 70's temperatures, clear blue skies and bright smiles on everyone's face.  In an ironic contrast, I spent Sunday afternoon in my sun-blasted garage solving the water-block problem both under the belly-pan and in the passenger door.  I'll hit that today.

Plastic Fantastic

from vw-resource.com

First, I need to give credit where due.  I stumbled upon this website while trying to figure out a viable way of keeping the water that makes it past the window seals from damaging the new inner door panels / cards.  The old plastic was pulled out, and the cards were destroyed.  The guys at the vw-resource web site had a great suggestion for using BlueTak on their page dedicated to the doors.  In my last post, I mentioned that I bought some of the 3M stuff that was basically the same.  I borrowed their picture on the right here.  The 3M stuff is white, so it doesn't show up as well in pictures.  I posted one here anyway.

trash-liner door-liner

Note how much less I used (I relatively uniformly used around 1/4" thickness).  That became an issue when I tried to hang visqueen.  The plastic sheeting that you get in most home remodeling shops is too slickery, and won't stick easily.  Instead, I considered what was originally in there: a very thin film.  I grabbed a kitchen garbage bag, and hung it on there instead, aligning the bag bottom with the door top and one edge against the front edge of the door .  Because of the static electricity built up in the bag, it immediately clung to the steel, making the pressing into the 3M stuff much easier.  I cut the bag in half along the front / leading edge of the door, and folded it back against the rest of the door.  Some simple trimming later, and the door is sealed.  Like the vw-resource guys, I poked holes where the rubber bits will be going and made sure to run loops of sticky-stuff around those holes.  Be sure to run loops of the sticky-stuff around the holes for the window winder, door pull and the latch.  One other thing to note, I didn't run the plastic to the very bottom of the door; only to the very bottom of the hole in the door and then put multiple runs of sticky stuff along the bottom.  Remember, the whole idea is to keep inside the water that's inside the door, so it runs out the bottom.

Bag in the Pan

exposed electricals. 3M sticky

After such a simple success with the door, I slid under the front of the bus and pulled the belly pan off. My drive-by-wire electronics are under there.  This has been a source of concern any time I go for a drive when the pavement isn't dry.  While it is really just a simple resistor attached at one end to the pedal and the other to a wiring pigtail, its still an expensive replacement.  If it got wet, it would fry, and I'd need to replace it.  As I write this, I realize that there aren't any fuses in the wires either, so if something shorted out, there could be ECU troubles.  Anyway,  in looking at the exposed electronics, I noted so many openings where water could get through: from the rear where all the controls go through, over either side of the main frame members, etc.  Yikes.

same view, but bagged now

I had thought of plastic-sheeting the entire area, but that would have been nearly impossible.  Instead, I figured I could just "bag" the electronics by running a circle of sticky along the bottom of the floor and sticking another kitchen trash-liner against it.  It totally worked.  It has a small hole for the pigtail, but otherwise, its protected from water.  Once the rainy season returns for May and June (like it always does), the bus will be road-capable.

That's it for today.  I spent Saturday watching C play in 3 lacrosse games, starting the Spring sports season.  We hoped to hit Mt. Hood on Sunday, but it was raining up there, trashing those hopes.  I'm starting to believe that the Ski Bowl season is about over, between that rain and today's warm temperatures.  I've heard it will hit the mid 70's through next weekend.  So, after an unimpressive snow season, our Spring conditions appear to be disappearing.  Time to plan camping season instead!  Thanks for following along-

Run, Bus, Run

Its busy time of year, and I'll respect your time and try to stay brief today.  The mountain got a ton of snow last weekend, but I didn't make it up there.  I spent some time with the bus, but no snow :(  Sorry for the lack of pictures.

Turbo Turbo'ing
The bus hasn't been producing the power I expected, especially on hills.  I kept battling a very short section of pipe in the charged-air circuit falling out at one end.  The pipe didn't have any kind of a barb on it.  So, it was held on basically through the friction of the pipe clamp through the rubber on the pipe.  When you figure that some oil makes it into the intake system, you can see why it kept separating.  I found a 4" long pipe (including the barbing) at ACE Hardware that fit perfectly.  The rubber sections had sufficient straight sections that I could adjust the depth of the new section of pipe within it.  A simple application of the pipe clamps and the system is well contained now.  Test driving, however, was stymied by the battery needing a charge.  So, when I moved out of the rental townhouse, I left garage-life behind.  This means that finding something as simple as a battery charger is not so simple... so getting back on the road took more than just a couple days.

Leak Leak Leak
I dare not look back through this blog to see how long I've struggled with the coolant leak, nor how many hours I've been frustrated by it.  I didn't check my coolant level before driving off to work this morning.  I should have.  The temperature rose no more quickly than any other day.  The heat through the defroster cleared the morning mist from the windscreen, and I was genuinely enjoying the drive.  That is, until the temperature hit and passed 190*.  The fans were on, but the temperature continued to climb.  Once it hit 200*, I pulled into a parking lot and topped off the coolant.  The drive home had another adventure I'll get to in a minute, but when I parked in the old covered spot, I could see a trail of coolant drops, telling me that the challenges I've had trying to get the coolant temperature sensor in right will continue.  I'm ready to call Justin.  I just can't lose any more hours to getting that c-clip, o-ring and sensor to play well together.

Not Limp Mode, Just Limping
A funny thing happens when the drive-by-wire signal from the accelerator doesn't make it to the computer.  The engine drops into a funky state and limits at 1200 RPM.  If 1 wire doesn't carry a signal, its okay, but if more than 1 fails, we drop into 1200.  I had this happen a few times before I messed around with the wiring up front.  I thought I blogged about that, but I can't find the posting.  I did it when I was swapping out the transaxle at MS' house.  It seems the other end (near the computer) needs to be fixed as I had "drop into 1200" issues.  One more thing to address in the parking lot.

That's it for today.  I'll probably be reaching out to Justin to help with that leak.  I just can't deal with it any more.... and seeing the coolant drips on the ground is starting to get to me.  Thanks for following along, and I'll post something more positive next time.  Honest! :)

Accelerating, slowly

I haven't been able to do anything on the bus these last couple of weeks. The project that I'm working on is nearing the end of its development cycle so we're working lots of evenings and weekends to get it tight. Basically, I've worked some every day since I've gotten back from Mt. Bachelor. Good times. Better to be getting worked too hard than not have work at all, though. Anyway, I did get a few hours yesterday, so I focused again on the electrical. I'll flap about the accelerator pedal today.

Inside Electrical
The morning started cold, with a stiff wind. After gearing up, and mentally psyching myself, I got the bus uncovered and climbed inside. I re-connected the westy electrical stuff that I had pulled out last Fall when I was looking at putting the fuel tank under the rock-n-roll bed. I discovered that the wood box thing that covers the power inverter was never physically attached to the seat frame. Huh. Now it is. I then pondered the impacts of trying to remove the fridge unit.
I had planned to remove the fridge, since I don't use it anyway, and put the harness in there. Then, I was going to build a false-bottom with a piece of plywood and use the cabinet as dry-good storage. Sounds great, eh? The problem is, that would take the better part of a day to do, and I don't have that kind of time anymore. So... that becomes another punt-it-to-Fall item. Instead, I'll be running the main harness through to that cabinet and then under the rock-n-roll bed. I'll lose a little storage for the Summer, but it will take far less time to get good-enough-for-now.

Accelerating
The TDI engine, like most modern marvel engines, is controlled more by the computer than it is by your foot. Sure, when you step on the "gas", you speed up, but gone are the days of stomping on it and producing a big cloud of exhaust smoke as you rocket forward. Okay... that never actually happened in a microbus, but if you drove one of those carbureted cars of yester-year, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, the modern cars have a rheostat (variable resistor like a dimmer for your fancy house lights) connected to the pedal, and that sends a signal to your computer to tell the engine to go faster. Now, the computer is smart enough to know that you can't just throw gas into the engine like a monkey sitting atop it with a bucket. The computer figures out how to get to your intended velocity without wasting fuel, so you take off like a rocket, but no cloud of smoke. I can't really imagine that kind of force in a bus, but I should after this. Anyway...

Think, then Act
Before Christmas, Hal and I spent some mental cycles on this issue. After cutting the accelerator rheostat from the donor housing, we slid under the bus an figured that the dangle that used to connect to the old pedal could connect directly to the "V"-shaped bracket on the bus pedal that used to pull on the cable back to the old carb. All we needed was some time, a bar of steel, and some care. I put those 3 requirements together on Saturday, and fab'd the bracket. I'm the first to admit that my welding skills are just crap, but after messing around with is for a while, I got this so it will hold no matter how much pull pressure I put on the rheostat. As you can see, the rheostat housing is not in a perfect line. That was done on purpose. The "V" on the accelerator needs to travel in a straight line, but the bracket couldn't fit directly under the pedal. So, it is attached on an angle. I drilled 1/4" holes in the bar before welding so I could fit it around the accelerator pedal bolts. The one closest to the rheostat housing is for one of those screws to slide through. This helped with placement.

Mount Accelerator
Once the bracket was constructed, install was a relatively simple matter. The bracket slid right over the pedal mounting screw and I marked the 2 mounting holes by scraping the paint underneath. Unfortunately, these 2 holes were almost directly above the steering mechanism, so I had to punch pilot holes from below and drill them from above. The picture to the right here shows where those 2 holes were made relative to the bottom of the pedal. I slid the bolts through fender washers from above. Then, the bracket slid right on to the 1 screw and 2 bolts. I thumb tightened them, and with the use of vice-grips, got the bracket in.

Set Motion
Once the bracket was mounted to the underside of the bus, I had to verify the range of motion of the pedal relative to the motion of the rheostat. Up until now, I had the accelerator pedal pulled up with a loose bungy cord. Now, it was time to connect the bits. By retaining the original housing, I was able to take advantage of the original adjustability - it has an allen bolt on either side. It was a relatively simple matter of loosening the bolts, and trying the action until I was able to get the accelerator to go to the floor for full throttle and 3-4 inches off the floor for at-rest. The range of motion for the bus pedal will now be less than it used to be, but there is no standing resistance / pressure on the rheostat until a foot is placed on the pedal. The picture to the left, here, shows the pedal after it has been completely installed. It is important to note that this section of the underside is covered with a belly pan. I will be putting in a seal to keep water out, so this should be a safe location for it. If you are thinking of doing this, consider whether you like to ford streams before jumping in. If this resistor gets wet repeatedly, it will fail, and you'll have to replace it.

That's it for today. I'm working again today (waiting on a job to complete now, actually), so I probably won't be getting into the bus much today. The weather is perfect for working outside, so it really pains me to say that. I am growing increasingly concerned about my time line. If this work level keeps up, I won't hit my dates, and I won't be camping in the bus this Summer.

Pictures:
top left - my awful welding of the accelerator housing to the steel bar.
top right - the bracket from the other side
middle - mounting holes in the floor. note the base of the accelerator pedal barely visible
bottom - accelerator pedal control switch (rheostat) in place